Thread by @ToryAnarchist

“Family Ties” is worth a brief comment. The ‘80s sitcom’s premise was that good-natured hippie parents had a provocatively Reaganite son. The feel-good irony was that the rebelliously conservative son helped his parents grow up a bit, but they were still wiser in the end.

Boomer nostalgia was already a powerful trend in the ‘80s, and the show tried to helped idealistically hippie boomers—or boomers who imagined they’d once been idealistic—reconcile themselves to a Reaganite present that was nothing like the foretold Age of Aquarius.

What happened to the cultural matrix that made “Family Ties” not only possible, but a hit? In the ‘80s, boomers like the Keatons might have hoped their own Alexes would mellow out as they learned lessons in niceness from their parents.

Conservative viewers at the time hoped Alex might grow up to revive the pre-hippie American family. Brash young capitalism’s destiny was to restore American family values to what they were before the ‘60s. In the Reagan era, that didn’t seem implausible.

The Christian right was gaining strength at the same time the yuppie right was coming of age. The idea the hard New Left was about to become cool and dominant seemed unfathomable. The Keaton parents were soft, decidedly square, middle-aged hippies: neither cool nor militant.

But what actually happened in the 1990s was that Bill Clinton beat Alex P. Keaton. The left took a culturally hard, politically correct turn but also wanted to make money. People who hated pre-60s values were ascendant. Alex wouldn’t be PC enough to prosper in their America.

In the 1990s, kids like Alex Keaton were expected to turn culturally left. If they were still Republican, they’d have to be on their way to becoming Republicans for same-sex marriage. Their libertarianism had to soften its economic edge and emphasize cultural progressivism.

Real-life Alex P. Keatons turned into the mediocrities of the George W. Bush-era conservative movement. They became echoes of the neocons. They could worship Reagan all day, but they knew they must bash the too-libertarian or too-traditionalist right to stay respectable.

Alex P. Keaton grew up to be Nikki Haley. At least, that’s the thematic progression—in real life some Alexes did find their way back to the ‘50s. But more became Democrats or the kind of Republicans that Kamala Harris thinks she can win today.

The hippie parental Keaton ethos, meanwhile, died without heir. Today’s leftists aren’t gentle souls dreaming of a future of peace and love. They are paranoid, politically puritanical, and personally debauched—authoritarian hedonists who see racism and fascism everywhere.

A vintage Alex P. Keaton, a true-blue Reaganite, isn’t prepared to compete with a left that is money-loving, economically globalist, morally militant, and institutionally intolerant. It’s why the young right is so drawn to Nixon instead, a symbol of conflict, not overconfidence.

Again, that’s putting things in simplified, thematic language—the real Reagan was plenty tough. But it’s a mythical stress-free Reagan that the nice right idolizes. They’re still fighting Walter Mondale, and winning easily. They dare not admit today’s left is tougher.

And because they pretend the enemy on the left is Mondale or Jimmy Carter, they blame the right for any GOP defeats. As if the only thing that’s changed since the 1980s is Trump!

But this is how many old Reaganites—and some young ones—of my acquaintance really see the world. It’s forever 1988: Russia is the USSR and is about to collapse if we send more arms to the Afghans, and there’s no problem at home a Republican optimist can’t easily solve.

Alex P. Keaton was a sitcom character, but for the nice right, he’s still the seed of the future, as if the 1990s and everything since never happened. (And yes, I know the myth of Clinton as moderate. The reality was more left-wing, and Clinton was the gateway to today’s left.)