Serious question: Do the republicans in office want to go back to the America of the 50's or am I trying to make sense of it by thinking too simple?

[deathbybigsad@sh.itjust.works]

The voters were probably thinking about the nostalgia they had as a result of the progressive eras, because they'd get all the benefits, while also not having do deal with racism since they're white.

[calliope@retrolemmy.com]

Correct.

They are legitimately too stupid to tell the difference between their specific childhood and the state of the entire world, so they think they can go back there if they try hard enough and force everyone else to pretend.

[wjrii@lemmy.world]

Agreed. I think this is more specifically it rather than the 50s.

• Unfettered domestic commerce devoid of worker protections.
• International trade viewed as zero-sum and managed using blunt instruments like tariffs.
• America as a rising manufacturing power.
• Nominally speaking there is no slavery, but Reconstruction is "done" and Southern elites have been rehabilitated and reintegrated without having to give up their power.
• Foreign policy built on late-stage colonialism where areas within a great power's sphere of influence are silently allowed to be dominated so as not to antagonize other great powers. Relations handled by a stupid nest of ad-hoc limited-party treaties.
• No effort is given to contextualizing what the American experiment has meant, and who it has harmed, just literally a "manifest destiny" from god to fill the land.

Ignore that the era was laissez-faire with immigrants actually arriving (though of course the robber barons who were working their laborers to death were okay with this... until they began to unionize), and it's a remarkably apt analogy. I'm pretty sure you can see Trump openly pining for The Gilded Age from time to time, though that may literally just be because he thinks gilding things is awesome.

[greenbelt@lemy.lol]

I think people are desperate for change. Housing crisis and costs of living are unbearable for a huge portion of the population, which drives them crazy.

[freedomadvocate@lemmy.net.au]

Do you have any examples of what you mean?

[theneverfox@pawb.social]

They're the Technocracy movement, started in the 1930s and stewing as a behind the scenes backer of conservative movements, such as the heritage foundation

Wikipedia link. If you read through that, you'll find a lot of the seemingly random shit they say, like taking the Panama canal, Greenland, and Canada, it's all related. This is the end goal

[greenbelt@lemy.lol]

I do not think that they are pure technocrats. I think they do want to make an American empire, which has a spiritual and religious component to it.

[brendansimms@lemmy.world]

I gave up on trying to understand because its all just racist, sexist, xenophobic bullshit with no substance of thought behind it. It's all the loudest, dumbest people taking control of the government while ultra-wealthy, straight-up evil oligarchs try to steer the idiots to their benefit. I stopped trying to convince MAGA-folks of anything because they are incapable of listening and thinking for themselves, and instead I'm working on my pistol aim and developing a mutual aide community.

[samus12345@sh.itjust.works]

The want the racist, sexist social aspects of the 50s, but not the economic ones. LBJ's New Deal allowed a thriving middle class to actually exist at the expense of wealthy people having as much money in their hoard. Can't have that!

[greenbelt@lemy.lol]

I think they want to remove Atheism and all associated things with it from society. Trump calls himself christian, and his followers (voter base) are evangelical Christians.

Evangelical Christians ...

• believe once Israel builds a temple the judgement day comes
• all people who do not believe in Jesus is the personified God (or something like that) will go to eternal hell
• believe in free market capitalism and hate all kinds of communism and state control in economy (even science)

And these evangelical gospels align well with Trump.

[bronzebeard@lemmy.zip]

Ok? Even that archaic law is still world's better than "he's an asshole and there's no love left, but since he hasn't beaten me yet I can't EVER get a divorce" like it used to be before no fault divorce was legal. And marital rape was just...allowed.

So not sure what point you're trying to make here.

[glimse@lemmy.world]

I was agreeing with you and providing an example of a stupid archaic law about marriage.

[darkfuture@lemmy.world]

They're fascists. Literally.

They want to oppress in order to gain total control. Because that's what fascists do.

So no, the 50s don't really fit the bill for what they're being clear they want. In the 50s the middle class was strong because we taxed the everloving fuck out of the wealthy. That's not what they're going for here.

[theneverfox@pawb.social]

What's a pure technocrat? Technocracy wants to control all aspects of life, they want the tech oligarchs in charge, they want to be generally isolationist and carve up the world into blocs

That's how these people act. That's where they focus, that's what they hint and feel out responses for. This is the roadmap they're using

Spirituality? Religion? Patriotism? These things are a veneer to fascists. They don't believe in any of that, hell they generally don't even believe in Technocracy... This is a means to an end

They're Fascists. They don't believe in anything but power and using it against their enemies

[flax_vert@feddit.uk]

I don't think the America of the 50s is what they think it is.

The ideal though is being able to afford a house, a car and a family all on one wage.

[flax_vert@feddit.uk]

• believe once Israel builds a temple the judgement day comes

Not true, that's zionism.

• believe in free market capitalism and hate all kinds of communism and state control in economy (even science)

Also not true.

It's an overlap. Those two things have nothing to do with Evangelical Christianity.

[devolution@lemmy.world]

1750s. They are monarchist fucks.

[part4@infosec.pub]

It is silly. You do not go back to the America of the 50's without the rest of the world being in the 50's.

See Europe and most of the world other than America destroying itself in the second world war, and the Bretton Woods agreement.

Boomers were able to buy a house on one income because they took a load of the world's income because of how America exploited the world post WW2.

This does not happen now.

[captainlezbian@lemmy.world]

Yes but also, the 1950s here were a time of social backlash. In the 1940s women were wearing bold red lipstick (because Hitler vocally didn't like it) and engaging heavily in the economy even in male dominated fields because so many men were in the military that we couldn't keep the country going otherwise. Meanwhile the men were fighting side by side in desegregated units.

So war ends, and a decent portion of the returning soldiers think things are going to return to normal. But the women got a taste of the freedom of economic independence and black men got a taste of being treated less awfully. The white men feel emasculated. But the benefits of the new deal are here and so a single man can support a family and even move to the all white suburbs on his income thanks to his union job, veteran benefits, and government assistance meant to prevent another period of mass poverty. And this is ignoring the whole deal of how LGBT issues were impacted by the war and its end. Also the second red scare and lavender scare (McCarthyism) happened in the late 40s-early 50s.

And so yeah while you have some counterculture movements in the 50s like beatnicks, biker and leather clubs, the mattachine society, and greasers as well as fighting for black civil rights, the 50s were largely defined by the reactionary forces as the discontent built. The 60s didn't spring up out of nowhere.

[theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world]

They want something closer to what Pinochet or Franco had going on