Mayberry and the children of the Reagan Revolution

by | Sep 22, 2021 | Editor's Blog | 8 comments

CBS This Morning ran a segment on Mount Airy, Andy Griffith’s home town and the basis for the fictional Mayberry of the Andy Griffith Show. Ted Koppel explores why Mount Airy has become a booming tourist destination for people searching for Mayberry. The show, he points out, was an escape from the harsh reality of the 1960s and bore little resemblance to American society for many Americans.

At one point, Koppel interviews a group of visitors, almost all of whom are white, about their perceptions of Washington and the events today. All but two believe the 2020 election was fraudulent. He asks about the events of January 6 and a man explains that it was really just staged and that Black Lives Matter activists were the real culprits. They agree with Donald Trump that the press is the “enemy of the people.” A woman says they don’t watch the news but get their information elsewhere, though she declines to say where. The kicker is a woman who then says she hopes “when the segment airs, it won’t show Southerners as a bunch of dumb idiots like so many parts of the country do.” 

Almost all of these people are middle class, middle-aged white people, sharing a demographic profile with the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. They are the people who voted for Donald Trump and they are the people who watch Fox News. They are children of the Reagan Revolution. 

People between the ages of 50 and 64 grew up during or in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and came of age about the time Ronald Reagan took office. They may have been too young to form opinions about the integration that defined the period, but they heard the news and their parent’s thoughts. Over the course of their lifetimes, the changes in society would build distrust in government and deepen resentments that had lingered since the end of the Civil War.  

In the South, many went to segregationist academies to avoid newly integrated schools. They heard Reagan talk about welfare queens, Black women who abused government programs and wanted something for nothing. They heard about affirmative action giving African Americans an unfair advantage without acknowledging that laws and systemic racism had denied them access to jobs, education, capital, and even housing. They saw Willie Horton ads that reinforced the Jim Crow stereotypes of African American men as dangerous criminals. 

And they were told that the government was giving their money to lazy grifters. The government was forcing companies to give their jobs to minorities. The government was threatening their families by going soft on crime and tough on guns. By the end of the 1980s, they were primed for the rantings of Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing radio shows that said out loud what many people whispered among themselves.  

They were also the last generation that could leave high school with no special training and expect to live a solidly middle class life style. And then trade policies and technology changed the game. Right as they were building their families and careers, NAFTA sent their jobs overseas and the advent of the computer age altered the skills that businesses demanded. To add insult to injury, Hispanic immigrants began clambering across the border for both economic opportunities and to escape oppression and war. Not only were their jobs going to Mexico and Central America, those people were coming here to take what jobs were left. 

The leap from talk radio to Fox News in the late 1990s was easy. They gave up the broadcast journalists on the Big Three networks in favor of unabashedly partisan news that voiced their grievances. They had long distrusted the news shows like 60 Minutes and Face the Nation that often seemed to play gotcha with conservative leaders like Jerry Falwell and Oliver North while giving platforms to liberal ones like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. 

By 2008, the lives they had expected had never materialized. Instead, their society had been upended by the Civil Rights Movement, the loss of manufacturing, the influx of immigrants, and threats from foreign terrorists. And now a Black man was about to be president. During their lifetimes, the fortunes of African Americans had improved such that one of them could grow up to be president, while their situation in life had deteriorated so much that their children had to leave home to find work. 

Just eight years later, they would get their revenge. Donald Trump was the political embodiment of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. He said out loud what they said in private. He was unabashedly on their side against the diversity that had wreaked so much havoc in their lives. He was the first politician since Jesse Helms to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. 

After almost three decades of propaganda from Fox News and talk radio, they eagerly believed what they were now told on social media. Truth was no longer objective but subjective. Facts were largely whatever they chose to believe. They insulated themselves from the realities that other Americans lived and built bubbles to reinforce their world view. 

Today, they make up the backbone of the Republican vote. In 2020, they comprised about a third of the electorate and gave Trump a five point advantage over Biden, his largest margin among any age cohort. While younger voters make up a larger share of the population, those children of the Reagan Revolution turnout at a considerably higher rate

They are motivated to vote because they are angry. They saw Mayberry on television as kids and that’s the world they expected to inherit. Instead, they got a dystopian small town existence. The good jobs left and the shops and stores got boarded up. The only people moving to those towns spoke different languages and practiced different religions. Mayberry may have only existed on television but, in their minds, it would still be here if not for government interference giving unfair advantage to the Blacks and refuge to the Mexicans. 

So today, they rail against socialism when it was capitalism and the free market that crushed their dreams. They believe Reagan’s mantra, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m here from the government and I’m here to help,” but government support and infrastructure are key to restoring any of the prosperity they watched wither away. Ending all government programs from food stamps to social security would just hasten the demise of the small towns from which they hail and disproportionately harm rural America. They routinely vote against their own self-interests because it’s easier to blame immigrants, Black Lives Matter activists, or Democrats than the economic and societal forces that they largely don’t understand.

In 1980, Mayberry was still fresh on their minds when they reached adulthood, but they could see it slipping away. They rallied to Ronald Reagan who belittled the same people they resented and for forty years, they have taken William F. Buckley’s advice, standing “athwart history, yelling STOP.” Today, history is rolling over them. The Mayberry that they seek is little more than a tourist destination. In fact, that’s all it ever was. 

8 Comments

  1. Vicki Boyer

    I like your blog post.

  2. I M Freedman

    I keep hoping that the Democratic Party will come together to finally pass comprehensive reform that we really need, and will compromise a bit where we can afford to wait, but keep most of what is proposed basically intact. We learned nothing really from President Obama’s attempts to get legislation passed with bi-partisan consensus, as we saw with the Affordable Care Act, nor from the fact that as misguided as the viewpoint is the Republicans remain in lock step to thwart anything that is for the good of the majority of the electorate.

    Aside from that, I still cannot fathom how Ronald Regan remains, in the eyes of many of the Republicans, Democrats and Independents, as well as the media, as such a great example of a truly great president. I didn’t beleve it then and I don’t believe it now. The phrases he coined, the philosophy he eschewed that are sited in this article merely serves to further convince me of the damage he did, and that doesn’t even include the Trickly Down Economy that was and continues to be a failure for the majority of the electorate.

    We keep showing ourselves to be the Ugly Americans that Europeans described. We are undereducated in the positions of the people we vote for, and don’t comprehend just how bad the policies are for the vast majority of us.

    I live in fear for the future my grandchildren will endure. I’m a bit happy I won’t be around to see it all come to pass.

  3. adamclove

    I have to ask…you write a lot of blogs with this general theme as the thesis, but…who is the audience you’re writing for? If it’s just your NCDP base, well…they already believe this. You’re not convincing them of anything.

    If it’s the people who are the subject of this “analysis,” what is it that makes you think they’re at all interested in your assessment of them?

    Is it Unaffiliateds? Are they actually reading the blog? You may have access to metrics that tell you they are, which is why I’m asking.

    • Sylvia Ross

      Bill Clinton is the reason we have NAFTA. And Obama ran on promises like affordable healthcare for all. That’s why I voted for him. When he was inaugurated, the House & Senate had Dem. majorities, so he could’ve fulfilled all his campaign promises, but he didn’t. Dr. Cornel West called Obama “a Republican in black face,” & he nailed it. I voted for Obama twice, & he let us down. He later told an interviewer he was really a moderate Republican. By 2016, many people who, like me, voted for Obama twice, were sick of Dems. The DNC stole the 2016 & 2020 primaries from Bernie Sanders, who rolled over & did nothing about it. Yes, rednecks are partly to blame for Trump, but Hillary Clinton was DEEPLY unpopular & a terrible candidate. And if Biden doesn’t give us M4A, a living wage, free college tuition, legalize cannabis, & other very popular things with voters, I shutter to think who we get as our next president; in fact, this person will probably make Trump look like JFK. From now on, I’ll be voting third party. I’m through with the Corporate Party & its two wings: the RNC & DNC.

      • Rick High

        Bill Clinton was the best Republican President in my lifetime. NAFTA, as well as welfare reform, were Republican bills.

    • cocodog

      Your question, like most of your statements lack insight and comprehension.

      Of course, the folks (herein referred to as “the last generation that could leave high school with no special training”) who are the subject of this article would show little to no interest, they are devoid of the ability to comprehend reality. Like a one celled animal, they react not analyze. They are convinced their current situation can be laid at the feet of folks, who are not from around here. These, white, Black, or Latino easterners or westerners, and middle easterners were brought here by non-church going liberals.

      The notion their comfortable factory job was destroyed not by liberals, but wealthy businesspersons seeking a cheaper way to produce their product never entered their minds. It is easier to blame Democrats and their liberal non church going ideas. If they had been exposed to basic economics, rudimentary history, and dose of common sense, they would not be in their current situation. Rather than make an effort to enlighten themselves, adjust and move forward, they choose a want a be dictator and con artists who bears an uncanny resemblance to the boss man who sold their job to China or Mexico.

  4. Hew Fulton

    “They routinely vote against their own self-interests …” I live in southeastern NC and what you say is incomprehensible but unfortunately absolutely true.

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