Family Ties

What 80's tv can tell us about our nation

I watched Family Ties growing up and loved it. The humor, the heart, and the actors all made it a worthwhile viewing. All these years later, it's on a channel I watch and it hasn't lost a step for me, especially with the laughs. But it was political and topical and that was a risk the writers took. Every character was fair game: the hippie parents, the daughters, and capitalistic Alex. Everyone was teased for the shortcomings of their world-view.

Jennifer was writing a book report on Huck Finn and the teacher and principal were censoring her because it was not on the acceptable books list. I found this parallel to now to be fitting and food for thought. Her book report started by describing the book and how it was a book about our nation facing its ills and growing up.

This question is at hand now in America but with astronomically higher stakes. Can we really look at our past? Can we be mature and face who we've been in order to become who we need to be for our constituents. And can we do this in time to stop the seemingly inexorable slip into fascism.

A very vocal minority is trying to infantilize its constituents and vilify its supposed enemies. By coddling their constituents they amass power.

They would limit access to books that 'offend' the sensibilities of these coddled citizens. Such humoring leads to a bubble of misunderstanding and an air of superiority among the coddled. Instilling a perennial sense of indignation and victimhood among those same citizens keeps them seeing enemies all around.

Somehow mythologizing the worst moments of our nation’s bloody history is a way to revivify and escape into the lost cause narrative itself . A place where everyone knew their place. That place worked well for white skinned people. Their money and laws gave them an unfair advantage over other groups. Who wouldn't want such an enterprise?

Everybody else, that's who.

So the extent to which people want to deny what happened seems to match the extent to which they want to go back there and make a fantasy world of antebellum aristocracy. This is of course, a child's fantasy. Lords and ladies and the Help. No inconvenient lgbtq people to confuse the children. No black men competing for jobs or women. A plantation that centered around pleasing the rich white family whose natural place was at the top of a pyramid of suffering and toil.

Racism is often hurled at the out-group and used to scare, beat, kill, and blame. But racism is the lie that we tell the children of privilege. It tells them why they're special, different, better, more holy. And it keeps them infantilized.

It's the lie we tell the poor have-nothings who resemble the rich aristocrats. "You may not have our money and prestige and power, but you are above your black and brown denizens." Racism is the swiss army knife of deceptions.

And it is an animating force in America life and politics as it has been since before we were a nation.

If people were forced to look at the results of racism in America, they would have to reconsider the fantasy of living in the unreal pageantry of the antebellum south. These fantasies are alluring, especially when they're being used by cynical forces to amass power.