White Fantasy Land
To be sure, Buchanan’s nostalgia for the Hollywood version of mid-20th century America shares equal billing with the themes of white resentment of modern-day realities. I’ve touched on this before, noting a growing body of social science that suggests a swelling contingent of white men who lament that life in the United States just isn’t as good as it was in, say, 1950 and who tend to blame people of color and immigrants.
Sam Fulwood III has nailed it on the head in this spot-on editorial in Newsweek.
The white right wing fantasy America has only existed in their minds, a manufactured 1950’s black and white Utopia bearing little if any resemblance to actual, real life America as a whole. And the current massive sense of entitlement amongst a large percentage of white men speaks to an infantile ideology where one is owed a certain privilege simply based on being a “Real American” with all that entails concerning whiteness, straightness, and adherence to fantastical tropes that have never been actual reality.
A spot-on editorial that also means this country is in for a rough near term future as the realization sinks in for our isolationists that there is a whole world out there, a world that is not part of their 2%.