But, starting with the Reagan presidency, a new kind of anti-democratic system began to emerge, one grounded in the US's being a superpower.
I don't think this is new at all. I see echoes of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine all over it...
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Also, what I was thinking of was that during the Reagan presidency, the press changed, becoming postmodern. The idea that journalists could be objective observers of reality was given up. Any position became just a point of view, with the new journalistic standard being that "both sides of the story" need to be told.
I remember watching a discussion about Star Wars on the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour in the early 80s, and thinking I was seeing something new. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
This tendency had been kept mostly in check during the early postwar period, by a variety of different institutional, social and legal constraints (anti-trust laws, comparatively strong newsie labour unions, fairness doctrines, the comparative lack of political polarisation and many others). Those constraints were either withering or being actively dismantled in the early 80's and late '70s, and so the press returned to its earlier role as propagandist (of course, on those matters where the political consensus departed from reality - most notably in matters of foreign policy and "The Cold War" - this role had never really been abandoned in the first place...).
There were three crucial differences this time around, though: The absence of any kind of organised labour with the capacity to underwrite their own news organisations, the existence of a large, organised propaganda industry and the comparative affluence of modern society, which to a large extent enable us to insulate ourselves from the consequences of wrong-headed policies until they are deeply entrenched and have already done considerable damage.
(Television didn't do public discourse any favours either, nor did the fact that these developments coincided with the decision by one of your major political parties to take leave of its senses...)
