My wife was watching Family Ties on one of those streaming rerun channels on Pluto or whatever. She commented that Alex would be a Trump supporter if the show were made today. That got me to thinking…
Family Ties ran from 1982 to 1989. This coincides with my teenage years (I was born in 1967, graduated from high school in 1986 and college in 1991). Michael J. Fox, the actor who played Alex, was born in 1961, so he was a few years older than the teenager he was playing. The show’s conflict comes from the fact that Alex’s parents are liberal hippies who grew up to have responsible jobs and a family. Alex, on the other hand, is an arch conservative who admires Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Hijinks ensues.
So, would Alex be a Trumpist today? Could a show with the premise of Family Ties be made today? If Alex were a teenager today, I think he would be attracted to Trump’s cult of personality and his supposed conservative fiscal policies. However, being rather bright, I think Alex would struggle with believing Trump’s “alternative facts”. For example, Alex would understand who actually pays tariffs while Trump clearly does not (or hopes his followers don’t). I would also think that Alex would have problems with Trump’s overt and unabashed racism. Alex favored supply-side economics and he would recognize that rounding up brown people and sending them to some foreign gulag would not be good for the economy.
But what if Alex were a real teenager from the 1980s and grew up to today. Like me, he would be between 55 and 60 years old. Would he be a Never Trumper conservative? His dad was the station manager at a PBS TV station. How would he feel about his dad’s life’s work being trashed?
As I remember the show, Alex P. Keaton idolized Ronald Reagan. For that reason, I think he would be repulsed by Trump and his friendliness towards Putin and other authoritarians.
I think he wouldn’t be since it would be bad entertainment. Trumpists are vicious, unsympathetic (in both senses of the term), blatantly evil, and unpleasant enough that they drive away their own family members. In a soap opera that might work for a villain character, but in a sitcom it would just ruin the “comedy” aspect. At best it would work for a antagonistic punching bag of a character (think Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons), not a recurring member of the family.
I think Alex would be too smart to be a Trumpist, even though he would have probably voted for him the first time. Alex’s politics were largely driven by his economic beliefs, and I think he’d be horrified at Trump’s attack on the US (and world) economies and trade. Alex Keaton was many things, but he was not a culture warrior. Then again, who knows what the writers/producers would have Alex do or believe in the pursuit of ratings?
Alex P. Keaton was a “Reagan Republican”. He would be absolutely horrified by Trump, especially by Trump’s friendly attitudes towards Putin and Russia.
Like other modern Reagan Republicans, he would be fairly critical of Trump, at least around other Republicans, but he definitely would not switch to the Democratic Party. Alex would still be a Republican at his core. And while he might very much disagree with Trump and might express this disagreement in private, he would publicly support Trump just for the good of the party.
Mundane and pointless coincidence time: yesterday I had on the BTTF1 page over at TVT posted an Actor Allusion when Marty expresses pride in RR to Doc Brown, who of course was rather skeptical (“So who is Secretary of State, Jerry Lewis?”). Someone then edited my entry today to make it even more pointed.
There is a lot of cognitive dissonance here in terms of what “Reagan Republicans” actually stood for, how fungible their beliefs actually were, and how much they would be alienated by the “anti-intellectualism of the MAGA cult”. The parallels between the politics and leadership philosophies of Reagan and Trump are actually quite striking even though as persons they could scarcely be more different. Both were formerly celebrities who then ran for political office (although Reagan had previously served as the two term governor of California) and both started as more liberal-ish Democrats and then transitioned to the Republican Party (albeit in different eras). Both were previously divorced (Reagan once, Trump twice before) which was historic at the time of their candidacy, and both rose in national prominence primarily based upon a cult-ish personal appeal above more experienced candidates. Neither has attained high professional education (i.e. a degree in law or a PhD in a liberal arts field), and both primarily campaigned on their pragmatic and business-oriented approach to governance, emphasizing the broad-scale cutting of government ‘waste’ in the forms of who departments and agencies that they philosophically opposed while actually increasing the total amount of government spending on often highly questionable programs. Both opposed environmental protection and resource conservation even when it wasn’t in conflict with business interests just on the principle that natural resources exist to be exploited. Both championed the elimination of corruption and a return to a more simple time with basic values (Reagan’s slogan of “Make American Great” was directly and obviously aped by MAGA), and yet were associated with major scandals and breaches of political ethics including lying to the public and (at least initially) ignoring or minimized epidemic health threats. Both came about in a time of backlash against progressive action and in the wake of failure of international wars consisting of unpopular and internationally unsanctioned invasions, ineffectually fighting against a somewhat nebulous and implacable opponent and both engaged in bombast about the fiscal, moral, and military superiority of the United States against all nations, even long-standing allies, that speak against it. Both also advocated fiscal policies based upon facile and demonstrably unsupported economic theses that led directly into economic turndowns. Both distracted the conventional intelligence establishment and sought to put into place personal devotees to perform covert pseudo-intelligence operations outside the scope of executive authority, and both were investigated by special/independent counsel for doing so. There are many of the things which haunt modern ‘Conservatism’ which lead directly back to the Reagan era and his presidential administration.
The differences are also stark; while Ronald Reagan would often speak harshly (although not crudely) about political opponents, he also reached across the aisle and made reasonable compromises to achieve his goals, often through developing convivial personal relationships versus Donald Trump viewing every conflict through the lens of a zero sum game that he must win at all costs. Reagan did listen to reason (at times) and moderated his political agenda to satisfy pragmatic needs instead of ranting and surrounding himself with ‘Yes Men’ flunkies. Reagan did have actual compassion for people and allowed himself to be persuaded of the need to respond to social and epidemic threats (albeit not as quickly or fully as devotees would like to believe). And most importantly, Reagan actually won re-election by a verificable landslide and didn’t need to lie about it or cajole people into finding him “11,780 votes” or instigate an insurrection.
Alex P. Keaton (the character, not Michael J. Fox), who was a dogmatic, mantra-repeating dyed-in-the-wool 'Eighties Reaganite would almost certainly be a Fox News-watching, Putin-talking-points-repeating, crypto-promoting, won’t-shut-the-fuck-up-about-Israel’s-‘right to exist’-at-all-costs MAGA champion who would question why we are wasting money on NATO or supporting Ukraine, and all in on annexing Greenland and Panama. He’d regard the Reagan era as just being a more simple time with the obvious specter of Communism, and would regard Putin as being a valuable ally in preventing the ‘socialism’ of the European Union to infect American society. He’d also be opposed to slavery or any overt racism but would opine that all of those things are in the past and are not pertinent to the economic and social well-being of Americans today, all of whom can chose to raise themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Marty McFly would get his friend ‘Doc’ Brown to take him back to 1985 and punch Biff Tannen>Donald Trump right into a waiting dump truck horse manure right in front of a conveniently staged photographer who would capture the image of Trump spitting out horseshit for posterity, fundamentally humiliating him and ending his career as a casino magnate, real estate developer, money launderer for Russian mafia interests, and any hope at a political career. He’d then go back and marry Elizabeth Shue and probably get involved in some kind of shitty cover band in his spare time from being a corporate advertising shill for household cleaning products and incredibly dangerous childrens’ toys based upon levitation technology that ‘Doc’ envisioned one night in a dream.
This isn’t entirely hypothetical. There’s a lot of Reagan Republicans of that age right now. Even some bright ones.
What did they do in real life?
They shut their mouths and voted for him. Maybe they aren’t all hardcore supporters but, for the most part and with vanishingly few exceptions, they fell in line telling themselves they were really voting for tax cuts and smaller government and all the other stuff was mostly blather and that things didn’t fall apart in the first term.
A real life Alex P Keaton would be right in there with them. The ones still watching Fox News and thinking of themselves as “independent thinkers” while never actively voting for anybody but a Republican.
It’s not at all hypothetical. I know people who not only lived through the Cold War in their adult life but actively worked to develop the means and/or worked to end the Soviet Union’s criminal regime and domination of Eastern Europe. Many of them are at least moderately approving of Putin and in opposition to NATO, which they view as an alliance that has somehow ‘taken advantage’ of American largess and caused the entire Ukraine conflict by ‘threatening’ Putin through expanding membership. The shocking dissonance of people who stridently opposed the USSR (for very good reasons) but now warmly embrace former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and his ambitions is surprising until you realize that people aren’t governed by logic or hold themselves to intellectual consistency but instead are driven by whatever ideology they have been force-fed by whatever news and politics they follow, and anti-liberalism (in both the social and more classic sense) and pro-Putinism has been essentially force-fed by intravenous drip to self-identified Conservatives gratis of Newt Gingrich, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Peter Thiel, and the Heritage Foundation fucks and all associated with them for more than three decades.
Exactly right. Republicans didn’t support Trump because they thought he was smart or ethical. They expected him to be cruel and wreak vengeance on their political enemies (aka the “abberant” types and the traitors who protect them).
My response is based on public comments by other Reagan-era Republicans. Many have expressed their dissatisfaction with Trump, but they have remained loyal to the Republican Party and have pledged their support along party lines when necessary.
While there are certainly some parallels between Reagan and Trump, many Reagan Republicans have expressed horror at Trump’s recent interactions with Putin, and have expressed overall disagreement with how Trump is (in their words) alienating our allies and making things easier for our enemies.
That said, many Reagan Republicans have also expressed the idea that while Trump clearly has his flaws, at least he’s not a Democrat. I think Alex would have shared their disagreements with Obama and Biden’s policies. Alex would probably not be happy about the GOP’s current direction, but he would also think that even a very much flawed Trump was a lot better than the Democratic presidents in recent years.
He remains in the right-wing media ecosystem and gets his brain cooked like everyone else who immerses themselves in that ecosystem, whether they’re profoundly ignorant or highly-educated.
He remains well-read and well-informed, so he hates Trump, but as a movement conservative he prioritizes blaming liberals for Trump. He’ll never get over the failiure of Bork’s nomination, and he’ll point to this moment as the point where liberals made polics a terrible cutthroat game, and that maybe things could’ve been salvaged if liberals hadn’t been so mean to a nice guy like Mitt Romney in order to elect a cough cough DEI hire like Obama. (And yes, he’d throw around the term “DEI” comfortably, since that type of guy sees everything as merit-based, with himself at the top of the merit pyramid, so he’d be right in the middle of that backlash).
So either he becomes a brain-cooked nutter, or one of those people who blames the Trump-Republican party on everybody except Trump or Republicans. And the odds seem like a 50/50 coin flip to me, as it’s common for intelligent people to fall into the Fox News rabbit-hole.
