,
8 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
I'm working on a book about nostalgia in 19th C American culture, so I couldn't help but notice Trump's invocation of the "good old days" here. Trump always associates the "old days" w/ violence used w/ impunity by the powerful to discipline unruly others. latimes.com/politics/story…
Like here, where he fantasizes about executing the person who blew the whistle on his abuse of power. 
Or during the campaign when he talked about how protestors would be handled differently back in the "good old days," when America was presumably great.
If you think the past was great because you used to be able to harm people with impunity--like parents used to be able to spank children or police officers used to be able to rough up suspects--then you just might be an authoritarian. washingtonpost.com/news/post-nati…
Trump sure didn't invent this move, he's just the latest person to put it into practice. The 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd, offered a brilliant (and terrifyingly prescient) take on this theme.
For the history nerds out there, here's an article I wrote a few years back on the first decade in which Americans started using the term "the olden days" with great regularity, the 1820s. books.google.com/books?id=zi6fD…
You'll note that I argue that the politics of nostalgia are often far more complex and ambivalent than we generally consider them to be. I would not extend that argument to include Trump's brutalist deployment of nostalgia.
More nostalgia nerdery can be found here.
