Utopianism is a centuries-old pursuit. And, in its defense, the pursuit of a utopia has yielded a steady crop of genuinely beneficial human achievements.
But I do think people mistake being young and naive with being on the cusp of a brighter future. As though US politics wasn’t a clown-car full of bigots, sex-pests, and greedy fuckwits under Bush or Reagan or Nixon.
We are a nation that yearns for a New Deal but refuses to acknowledge the real possibility of a Great Depression past every horizon. We want another Lincoln to lead us, but are scared shitless of a new Civil War. We want to go at the Constitution with a Sharpie and an eye towards the 21st century, but we don’t want to endure the Revolution that comes with it.
The audio recordings are from several of the Reagan administration’s press conferences in the 1980s. The audio is juxtaposed with images of AIDS patients at Seattle’s Bailey-Boushay House in the 1990s.
A clip showing a White House Dinner event in which George Bush laughs and jokes about the US not finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) in Iraq.
The “Nixon Jew count” of July 1971 is the name given to then-President of the United States Richard Nixon’s attempts to demote and remove Jews from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Utopianism is a centuries-old pursuit. And, in its defense, the pursuit of a utopia has yielded a steady crop of genuinely beneficial human achievements.
But I do think people mistake being young and naive with being on the cusp of a brighter future. As though US politics wasn’t a clown-car full of bigots, sex-pests, and greedy fuckwits under Bush or Reagan or Nixon.
We are a nation that yearns for a New Deal but refuses to acknowledge the real possibility of a Great Depression past every horizon. We want another Lincoln to lead us, but are scared shitless of a new Civil War. We want to go at the Constitution with a Sharpie and an eye towards the 21st century, but we don’t want to endure the Revolution that comes with it.
At least they had the decency to pretend to be better people.
These days that clown car also has flashing lights and loud noises.
When AIDS Was Funny
The audio recordings are from several of the Reagan administration’s press conferences in the 1980s. The audio is juxtaposed with images of AIDS patients at Seattle’s Bailey-Boushay House in the 1990s.
George Bush Jokes about WMD’s at White House Dinner
A clip showing a White House Dinner event in which George Bush laughs and jokes about the US not finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) in Iraq.
The “Nixon Jew count” of July 1971 is the name given to then-President of the United States Richard Nixon’s attempts to demote and remove Jews from the Bureau of Labor Statistics