For a while I’ve been thinking of history as cyclical rather than linear in either a Whiggish or dialectical sense

The 2010s are the 1970s which were the 20s-30s

Which explains why the ‘70s left saw the end of the era with the ascension of Reagan and Thatcher as so ominous over and above the entrenchment of a neoliberalism that predated them.

Boy can you see this in the British Invasion comics. I remember an issue of Swamp Thing that was basically like “yuppies are demons”. That was it, that was the entire issue, that one metaphor, and it was dripping with rage.

Then again the Brits had their own peculiar socialism, and with it certain expectations of how the stagflation crisis of capitalism would resolve. I honestly didn’t appreciate this fact until one or two years ago. I can kind of grok the NHS and even the fact that labor unions were kinda constitutive of the state. But the idea that for the past few decades there haven’t been enough houses because the government hasn’t been building them and the main public response has been to get kind of pissy about it still blows my mind.

We didn’t talk about that much here, we saw the UK in continuity with Merrie Olde England and ourselves in continuity with them. Partly because we, like everyone, refounded ourselves on WWII and we tried to avoid awkward questions like “why the hell did we just join with Communism to crush the apparatus of Institutional Anti-Communism only to rebuild it ourselves?”

Honestly the adoption of trans inclusion as the sine qua non project of the avant-garde absolutely shouts ＦＵＬＬ  ＷＥＩＭＡＲ