"Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days."
-- Doug Larson
Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles: there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store, our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for her invaluable support!
No Fair Remembering Stuff is a Professional Left podcast production and is brought to you by our wholly imaginary
"sponsors" and real listeners like you!
Links:
2 comments:
BlueGal at 25:26: "Let's go back to Nikki Haley for a minute..."
Me, speaking to my office (and cats): "Ugh, do we have to?"
Thanks for all y'all do. Wonderful cast with a lot of history lessons as well as pointed critique of the horrid current-day GOP.
Stay safe.
One more comment on this post/cast.
BG at 5:55: "Now, having some nice memories of your childhood is perfectly normal; nothing wrong with that - until those memories are weaponized, as Republicans have done."
So funny story. Not to wail and beat my breast, but my childhood wasn't fun. Looking back for pleasant memories of that time is very difficult for me. I absolutely DO NOT WANT to go back to "the way things were" in the 70s, 80s, and even 90s, though my memories do get better in that most recent decade. Even then, I wouldn't want to be back there.
I can't honestly think of a halcyon, rose-lenses time out of my past. Maybe I'm just a damned pessimist, but I can always remember shitty, awful stuff happening (whether directly to me as a depressed, lonely only-child in a broken home, or on the larger scale once I became a little less solipsistic). Literally. Always.
I think this speaks directly to what you are talking about in this cast, and it's something I've believed (with supporting evidence) since before I ever found your blog and casts:
Literally everything the Republican party offers is based on lies.
It's all deceitful, manipulative mass-marketing, misusing the tactics of salesmanship. (Note: as someone who's worked in sales on and off for decades, I can tell you there's plenty of shady shit going on there just in sales itself - let alone when the techniques of selling are twisted and turned into a tool of incitement and inflamed public sentiment). The same selling tactics that were perverted into slimy "Pick Up Artist" methods; the same tactics which were similarly warped into service to bilk the congregations of American churches for millions on millions of dollars by preaching the unbelievably filthy "prosperity gospel." It all comes back to the same thing: Using sales tactics to get people emotionally engaged, to profit off the results.
I'm not sure if my lack of emotional connection to my childhood inures me to some of this dreck. I can just say, looking at the 70s-90s through that lens really does illustrate, to me, that any plea to idyllic childhood is, frankly, weaponized bullshit.
Just as you noted.
Thanks for all y'all do.
Post a Comment