I’m seeing more parallels to Reagan lately.

Remember Reagan took shit on the campaign trail for conspicuously not condemning reactionary domestic terrorism, honoring its victims, or feeling the least bit ashamed for pressing the terrorists’ causes.

(Remember further in office he did rechannel economic and generalized despair into nationalist sentiment (as vs. Japan), encouraging a climate that could shade into lethal, ethnic violence with a degree of tacit official indulgence.)

Remember that Reagan played fast and loose with his claims and anecdotes on the campaign trail and got derided as a buffoon and compulsive liar when it turns out he was a genius charismatic who understood that a President’s role is to generate legitimacy for his allies to spend.

Recall Reagan’s “Teflon” nickname, reflecting that no matter what offense the media connected to him, it had no impact whatsoever.

Remember that the media/govt/etc. institutional class that currently slots Reagan as “beloved patriarch and refounder of the national order” started with “joke candidate” before passing through “can’t win”, “won’t win”, “mustn’t win” and “fascist”.

Now one thing definitely WAS true of both the interwar period and the Reagan/Thatcher neoliberal ‘80s: the rightward shifts were so shocking, and their opponents so backfooted, not just because of their magnitude or severity but because the mainstream intellectual consensus had been that society was working up to a major leftward shift and everyone had positioned themselves accordingly.