Phrases evoke/define eras. I have been thinking a lot these days about how the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras in America differ. In a weird way it comes down to two phrases: one coined by Alan Greenspan during the Clinton era, the other commonly used by Bush and his supporters. The animation running below (which requires a high-speed Internet connection) offsets those two phrases against one another:
The two phrases are related. They are both propaganda. Greenspan's phrase is propaganda in that it is the function of the chairman of the Federal Reserve to heat up and cool down the economy. The phrase associated with the Bush administration is a propagandist attempt to shift economic burden for social programs from the public to the private sector. One phrase evokes a period of rampant economic growth, the other a far more Spartan time. It's easy to think of the Clinton era as entirely hedonistic, but this would be false. So-called New Age spirituality defined it as much as sex and extravagance. By the same token, it's also too simplistic to view the George W. Bush era solely in terms of the Christian Right. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, embodies practicality, not religiosity. Beyond the two presidential eras the phrases hark back to two powerful, yet divergent strains in the American psyche: virulent/violent/carnal expansionism and self-absorbed/self-reflective/anal Puritanism.
© 2006 Peter Schmideg