Abstract
Radio, television, and theme park–style spectacle were instrumental components in legitimizing a tripartite domestic configuration of rule that integrated state institutions, labor, and private industry as well as an international economic order based on the principles of free trade and finance. By 1965, however, tensions embedded in these configurations of power became apparent as increased outbursts of activism among African-Americans, students, and women took shape at home while struggles against American deployments of military force erupted overseas. Though not fully apparent at the time, these disruptions were harbingers of a dramatic change to global order. Newer and more potent socioeconomic forces were arriving on the scene that would soon trigger a collapse of the postwar consensus and threaten the viability of the American Empire.
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Notes
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3.
For more on the idea of knowledge-based economy and society, see Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 212–264.
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For more on how such cultural luminaries of the 1960s like Leonard Bernstein and Jean Seberg worked for radical causes like the Black Panthers, see Amy Abugo Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 58–87.
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See Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005), 133 and 80.
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See Willbanks, Tet Offensive, 111; and Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), 159.
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See Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969). This famous book best describes the changes in party alignment due to the shifts in social and geographical demographics taking place during the 1960s.
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See Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality (American Political Science Association, 2004). http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/taskforcereport.pdf.
Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974–2008 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 153.
Countless biographies of Ronald Reagan exist, however, the one that best sees his presidency through the lens of his experience as an actor and entertainer is Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 1991).
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Todd Gitlin called this phenomenon the “recombinant style,” in which past products or ideas are mixed together to create ostensibly new outputs, but are in reality mere “cultural givens reshuffled into pastiche.” See Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 78–79.
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For samples of these criticisms, see Mira Duric, The Strategic Defense Initiative: US Policy and the Soviet Union (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 37–39.
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Reagan’s willingness to entertain the possibility of eliminating the American nuclear arsenal put him at odds with his neoconservative backers. See Jim Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (New York: Viking, 2009).
For more on the idea that the entertainment output of American media companies now has a more internationalist orientation, see Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World (New York: Ballantine, 1996), 23–154.
See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon, 1992).
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© 2014 Eric M. Fattor
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Fattor, E.M. (2014). The Postindustrial Renewal: Guerillas, Partisans, and the Triumph of the American Empire (1965–1989). In: American Empire and the Arsenal of Entertainment. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137382238_5
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