Living in the Dream 0
David Sirota traces today’s conventional wisdom to yesterday’s fiction.
I’d think his argument silly except for this: so many persons in power seem to believe and act on stuff that just ain’t so, such as that wars can end wars, killing people makes evil disappear, crushing the poor is virtuous and wise.
It’s called “suspension of disbelief” and is a key factor in the ability to believe that characters on a stage mouthing prepared words are represent real people doing real things.
An excerpt:
What contributed to the change? A steady ’80s diet of Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties,” Ricky Stratton on “Silver Spoons” and a larger “greed is good” ethos that equated the American Dream with following “The Secret of My Success.”
Likewise, at the beginning of the 1980s, Gallup polling found just 50 percent of Americans — still carrying the scars of Vietnam — expressing confidence in the military. But that number jumped to 85 percent by the end of the decade and has remained high.
Why hasn’t it dipped back down to early-’80s levels in the face of bloated defense budgets and controversial wars? Because even as militarism received a short-term boost among adults in the 1980s via Reagan’s martial cheerleading, it was solidified for the long haul among ’80s kids through war-glorifying films and video games — not to mention combat-themed toys, which hit their highest sales levels since World War II.
