Back when things were good (Patreon)

In the 20th century there was a powerful expanding civilisation who idolised the Ancient Romans. They had big regal red flags held up by golden eagles, an autocratic political system, huge oratorical rallies - they even saluted just like the Romans did. Do I need to keep pretending I’m not talking about the Nazis? Okay.

The Nazis were sure proud of their “heritage” and they modelled a lot of their ideas on scraps from all over history. Hitler’s plan for expansion across Europe was based on the American “manifest destiny” and even some of their racial nonsense was similar. Incidentally, the Founding Fathers of the US also really dug the heck out of the Romans. The point is though, the Nazis were really certain things were all fine and dandy back in the way olden days of glorious Ancient Rome.
But the thing is the Romans didn’t all think things were so swell in their own time. Lots of them idolised the Ancient Greeks, some for their philosophy and logic, some for their military prowess. Laconophilia - worship of the Ancient Spartans (something the Nazis were also waaay into) - was first fashionable amongst Romans actually.
But the thing is the Ancient Greeks didn’t all think things were so swell in their own time. Plato rallied against this new technology, called “writing”, saying it would make young people lazy and unintellectual. The Greeks by-and-large thought that the Ancient Egyptians were really fucking swell. In fact when the Greeks held the first Olympics they were worried their Greek judges would bias unfairly in favour of Greek athletes, so they sent word to Egypt asking how they could be better at judging fairly. The Greeks really thought the Egyptians had it figured out.

BUT THE THING IS the Ancient Egyptians didn’t all think things were great in their own time - and their own time spans 3000 years so generally there were always people around who thought Egypt had been better before. It’s really common to see carvings that say “not since the time of Snefaru…” 

Oh sorry, I should explain: Snefaru - great name - was the first pyramid builder of the Egyptian Pharoahs.

BUT THE THING IS not everyone thought things were great even in Snefaru’s time. Some of the oldest recorded thoughts about the current state of things are people complaining that things aren’t as good as they used to be. Unfortunately for this rollercoaster ride of an intro, Egypt is the oldest nation on earth and before that is pre-history, so I don’t have accounts of like, Homo Erectus saying “you know... things were better when we were Australopithecus”.
Totally unrelated - when I say prehistory, I mean before recorded history. Like Herodotus the Greek came around Egypt and wrote down what had happened there and he called it “historia” and that’s where we get the word from. Obviously there were people living full enriching interesting lives before we know about.

The reason I’ve pointed out all these instances of people wishing they lived in the past is that I think it’s fascinating and a very human thing to do and I want to think about that for a moment. The reason I started with the Nazis though, is because it’s a mistake.

The term “Prelapsarian” refers to an idea of a place and time, basically before everything got really shitty. In the bible this would be the Garden of Eden. If we’re talking about games it was any time before Todd Howard. If we’re talking about anime it was never; it was never good.

I think everyone has this idea of some prelapsarian fantasy world where everything was good and pure and simple. I’m saying fantasy world because it’s really important to understand that that world isn’t real, and never was.

If you think of say, the 1950s as a time when things were simpler and easier, or you’ve heard people who say they wish they were born in the 50s… look guys, that’s bullshit. The 50s were easier and simpler for a pretty small group of (mostly white mostly male) people and if you could magically wish things back to the 50s life would get a lot shittier for a whole ton of people.

You got the intro right? Like, some people have always thought things were better in the past. They weren’t.

I’ve said this is a really human thing to do - to imagine a previous time when things were all good and blame how things are now all on one thing - but is it a politically ubiquitous perspective? Do people from every political perspective do it? Well ye--no. It’s something everyone with any perspective is capable of, but it’s not an evenly distributed way of looking at the world. It’s a very conservative point of view - I mean, it’s not called conservatism for nothing, they want things to stay the same as in the past…

So I guess… I’ve debunked… all conservative ideology? Well that was easy huh? Okay that’s not fair. There are some ideas you’d call right wing or conservative that are not all about idealising the past. There are conservatives who are enormous fanboys of capitalism and think it holds the solution to every problem for the future. I call them muskologists, but the technical term is “neoliberals”. There are also libertarians, although some of those guys also imagine there was a time when there were no regulations and that’s when things were good. That’s their prelapsarian fantasy world, because they hate regulations.

Think about the 1950s again. In the west there was a lot of rebuilding going on, which meant a lot of industry growth and jobs available, and in many ways it’s really natural that the 50s is that prelapsarian time for many americans, but it was because of very specific conditions that didn’t carry on into the future. There are conditions you could recreate now, like Eisenhower’s 75% tax on the highest earning people. I think that’d be fucking great. It stops people from taking all the money from their companies and instead makes them spend it on like, healthcare, and more jobs. The horror…
There are other conditions from the 50s you can’t recreate though. Like, because most of the conditions were due to the rebuilding. You know rebuilding. You know… after the… stuff? The stuff before the 50s? Right?

Nonetheless lots of americans idealise the 50s and have idealised it pretty much since the 50s. The problem is, those people imagine this time in vague, fuzzy broadstrokes, not in terms of actual details. When Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1980 he wanted to make America how it had been in the 50s, but he didn’t run on the slogan “Let’s Make America just how it was in the 50s by reinstating the most sensible of the policies including taxing the rich”. He ran on the slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again”.
Reagan was a libertarian, so actually taxing the rich was… not high on his list… and as such he made a period in the 80s that was absolutely fantastic for greedy assholes who already had more money than a person could ever need.

So you can imagine that if someone was one of those greedy assholes in the 80s who already has more money than anyone could possibly need, had next to no political literacy except knowing that they didn’t like taxes or black people, and they were gearing up to say, run for President, they might idealise the 80s as their own prelapsarian fantasy age. They might even want to emulate President Reagan as much as possible. They might even say they want to Make America Great Again.