In his 1965 novel: “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine”, Kurt Vonnegut introduces us to the fictional U.S. Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana who started a foundation so his descendants could avoid paying taxes on the estate in Rosewater county.
Sound familiar?
Vonnegut is prescient on how the American Dream devolved into the American Nightmare:
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws have been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scumming surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
Vonnegut was observing the streak in our culture reaching back through the self-congratulatory monopolists and robber barons, through the slave owners, and reaching back into history.
It has recently been ascendent, as it was in the 1910’s and 1920’s.
Soon we shall see a cultural analog-return to the Chaplins, as well as descendants of the low-brow Three Stooges, all of whom regularly lampooned the rich.
It will be a relief, after watching pop culture of all stripes glorify the rich since at least the late 1970’s.
My memory is that the glorification of the rich in my lifetime had a very distinct beginning: the election of Ronald Reagan, followed by the first season of “Family Ties” in 1982.
The first year of the Reagan administration — 1980 — also marked the beginning of a propaganda effort to glorify war and the military, after several decades of societal disgust in the aftermath of Vietnam. It again had a distinct beginning with the resumption of the “Bob Hope Overseas Christmas Tour” (https://youtu.be/ce1UFrRMym8).
The celebration of war, the military, and the “glory days” of WWII has always been deeply wired into the DNA of the GOP.