MISfortunes
How Nostalgia Corrupts Politics and Pop Culture
How Nostalgia Corrupts Politics and Pop Culture
In Philip Kaufman's movie The Right Stuff, much is made of the titular quality ascribed to test pilots in the 1950s -particularly the heroic Chuck Yeager, portrayed by Sam Shepard. The "right stuff," we're told, is the refusal to panic in the face of dire circumstances.
Major spoilers for Stranger Things.
Trump won his campaign, it’s said, on the strength of white voters. But “strength” is not the right word. “Weakness” is better. Mostly—but not entirely—Trump won thanks to “disaffected” voters in the Rust Belt: white male voters yearning for a past in which they could work steady salaried jobs in steel mills or coal mines, and, too, white female voters who felt that their way of life was threatened by the crumbling of the white patriarchal nuclear family. Sincere women who raise kids, bake pies, go to church. Citizens who want one thing: for things to go back to the way they were.



