The Heritage of Ronald Reagan
“If you were to take, say, Jeane Kirkpatrick, circa 1982, and sit her down with Johnny Rotten — I’m pretty sure they would agree on more than they disagree on.”
Might have beens or never wases?
Elvis Needs Boats’ Brad Laidman points us to a new version of a conservative classic. Beloved Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld offers the latest try of a right wing standard trope: “He/She/It [insert left idol here] was really a conservative”. I don’t think Malcolm X has been tried yet but give them time.
The latest candidate: incendiary punk icon Johnny Rotten is the new Ronald Reagan!
It’s a meandering saga that wanders from Santa Cruz to Venice California with a side trip to New York. Mr. RedEye‘s anti *hippy rage [and is there a safer target in America?] drives him onward. He is shocked to discover hippies marring the gentility of Santa Cruz California, and his faux naivete somehow justifies his faith that the incoherent ramblings of Mr. Rotten amount to a vindication of Reagan-ism.
While assuring us that “ROTTEN HATES EVERYTHING intellectually lazy” he tells tales of Rotten and a friend enjoying one of the oldest cracker comfort foods, the Confederate Negro:
“Johnny and his good friend Rambo are obsessed with American history, primarily the Civil War and black Confederates. Rambo lectures me that the war wasn’t about slavery, but sovereignty, and that the South treated blacks far better than the North ever could.”
And It Was Johnny What Won It:
“I always sort of thought that the punk movement made Ronald Reagan more than a bit possible. … It’s no secret that the punks happened because the hippies failed. By killing the silly, bucolic, utopian hippy ethic, the punks allowed for a sober reassessment of all that ’60s crap. And the result was a restoration of America’s faith in itself, a new embrace of genuine reality and not some Shangri-la over the horizon somewhere. Like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, conservatism was realist, urban, and tough. And that got us Reagan, and ended the Soviet Union. ”
* “Some of the hippies now look a little like punks — lots of piercings, tattoos, and shaved heads — but in my book they are not punks, they’re still scummy hippies. “
“Hippie culture was always the most evil and false kind of lifestyle — laziness, selfishness, and emotional violence wrapped up in “why can’t we get along” claptrap. Hippies loved fascists, and would kill you if possible — Charles Manson proved it.”
