Nostalgia! Great for music, terrible for policy!
🎶 Let’s go back to mid-century…” 🎶
Recently something said by a member of Congress from Wisconsin caught my ear because it perfectly exemplified the mentality I make fun of in the opening song of my new comedy special. He said he hoped there was a plan in place for January of 2025 to get the country back to where we were in the 1960s. That would be great if you were a 12-year-old Beatle fan but not great if you were black, a woman, a draft-eligible young man, gay, or someone who would prefer not to ponder nuclear war every day.
But nostalgia is about emotion, not facts; and it’s a mixed emotion. It’s like a sad longing mixed with a dose of comfort. And people can not only feel nostalgia for times in their past (even if those times weren’t always great, like middle school) but can feel nostalgia for times they never lived in or things that never happened. That’s because memory and imagination are intertwined in our brains, using a lot of the same circuitry.
“Were those really the days?”
A common ploy of politicians is to take the emotions triggered by nostalgia and use them to gain support. Fascists have used this tactic over and over.
“We must reclaim our imagined past!”
The trick is to mythologize the past, make people sad that the mythologized past doesn’t exist, blame an out group for destroying that past, and use that stoked anger to rise to power. The Nazis did it by creating a mythologized past of Teutonic greatness and blamed its downfall on Romani, homosexuals, and Jewish people. Currently in the US the GOP blames the loss of a past that never existed on “woke,” which is a handy term that can encompass anything they don’t like. Woke starts by meaning the black community, gay community, trans community, and extends to feminists and people who believe in global warming.
So enjoy the emotions brought on by nostalgia when remembering childhood friends, or maybe fairs and events in your hometown, but be wary when someone tries to use nostalgia to blame a group of people for why things suck. If someone wants your support, ask for specific policy ideas, not feel-good imaginings. And when they say that we need to go back to the way things were, find out who they mean by “we.”
“…or is this just a power play hidden in a nostalgic haze?”
And now, please enjoy the stand-alone music video of “Were Those Really the Days?” an upbeat, Brill Building era tune that plays with the idea of nostalgia and its (ab)use by people seeking power. Or better yet, check out the whole special, The American Songbook: Redacted on YouTube!
