Name: When the Clock Broke
ISBN: 9780374605445

John Ganz

Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked up in the Early 1990s

When the Clock Broke

Greg Talbot

A New Yorker Political Scene podcast recently highlighted how the 1992 presidential political campaign, the first modern campaign in regards to media coverage, has lessons for our current moment.(<a target="_blank" href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/what-the-harris-campaign-needs-to-win-with-james-carville-and-paul-begala" rel="nofollow noopener">https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/pol...</a>). An electorate hungry for change, widespread dissatisfaction with the economy, gloomy forecasts for the future, and an abiding sense that the American dream isn’t viable. It’s also a time when we are far away from a moment of national unity that could occur from war or shared economic abundance. Certainly presidents have challenged us to believe in hope, patriotism, and the shiny city upon the hill, but our time, just as with the 1992 campaign reveals a country divided, fraying and deeply hurting. Rife with the language of decline, “When the Clock Broke” (Ganz) confronts the “negative solidarity” that is largely entrenched in our sense of a lost shared identity. As he states, the glitter of city skylines belies the bank failures (some 500 in 12 months). The glow of bubblegum police lights a reminder of unprecedented crime waves in major U.S. cities. The weirdness (p.4) is that the moment should have triumphant, victorious, maybe even vainglorious. The cold war ends on a whimper as the U.S.S.R. collapsed financially and politically. As Ganz begins in his book, “history is written by the winners, but this is the history of the losers”. The loss of trust in institutions, epidemic of loneliness, tribalism of politics, and fears of violence stems from the early decade of the 1990s. There are many times when reading, I anticipated Ganz’s call out to today’s politics. Sometimes it is called out directly, such as the line“Donald Trump, represents the crystallization of elements that were still inchoate in the period of this book (p.22). Often though he trusts the reader to make those ties, and largely keeps the context to the social issues during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. The neoconservative and paleo conservative wedge, apparent in the playbooks of President Bush and competitor Pat Buchanan have largely animated the turf war of the party. The “America first” and isolationism, a call back to the 1950s mythology of America, are the ideas that govern the party today, and their rollout from Buchanan during this time is fascinating. Certainly the role of media, right wing punditry, talk shows, cable news, impacted the way these conversations occurred. The faceless impetulant men of talk radio (Limbaugh, Stern, Imus) amassed a dramatic amount of power, largely setting parameters in the culture war. Taking an aggrieved or rebellious posture, and echoing largely conservative/reactionary views, the template for the “Middle American Radicals” was built. There is also a recognition that youth culture bought into the rebelliousness of grunge and gangsta rap. “Growing nihilism among the young wasn’t just the halluicnation of grouch conservatives ([16) A monoculture would be broken by the ungovernable disruptions of the late 90s internet era/consumption of file consumption, podcasts and blogs. In the 90s though, the broadcaster was sovereign. Given the discussion of police reform, and recognition by mainstream culture of police brutality, reading about the Rodney King riots was truly revealing. The fallout of the police brutality and melee in Los Angeles as a result of acquittal of the four white officers was shocking, and and it almost impossible to imagine those events occurring today. Nevertheless fears of police, and fears of loss of order permeate our baseline ideas about security and freedoms. It’s always interesting to read about times in the past, especially when you lived through a child’s eyes. There is absolutely room for a sequel here, coverage of the Clinton years and the calendar roll to the new century. History, just like our times, is always in flux. Outside our control yet influenced by us. Years far from us now, moved through, but somehow stuck with us. Too close to see, within it’s own time, but with a distance a mosaic documenting who we were or could have been.

When the Clock Broke Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked up in the Early 1990s

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