Sunday, March 13, 2016

Maintaining the Narrative

Hillary had to take back her comments about Nancy Reagan (and Ron) being rather good about AIDS in the 80's.  We can't let the Received Narrative get away from us, now can we? Our entire political framework is dependent on believing in the bad motives of our opponents after all. Take that away and there is often nothing left.  Not always, but often.

This is where Hillary is not the candidate that Bill was.  Bill knows what the narrative is supposed to be and adheres to it.  In fact, he is good enough that he is able to take occasional liberties with it, bending it and remaking it to his needs, in ways that few can.  She was there, and she still doesn't know.  Hell, even I know what standard wisdom is on Reagan and AIDS, and I was paying no particular attention to politics at the time. I was, however, employed at the psychiatric and dealing with some of the first few cases in the state and attending the trainings that contradicted each other from one year to the next. So I got to see what all the trial narratives were before we settled on one.

I got to hear medical professionals claim we have always been at war with Eastasia, too. I don't expect Hillary got to hear much of that - nor should she have been expected to - but if you are going to be a politician, you have to pick this stuff up and remember it.

12 comments:

Texan99 said...

I can't claim to have been paying close attention at the time. Here's my impression: I felt the Rs were minimizing the AIDS problem and were too inclined to dismiss it as something that happened only to people who deserved it. I remember being very impressed by a presentation at a national convention--1984? 1988?--by a woman of 30 or so who'd gotten it from her husband and who urged the crowd to pay attention to the issue.

This is entirely unscientific and unfair, just what I remember coming through my filters at the time.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I went looking for a good article that wasn't tied to the current controversy, and found one here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/06/01/ronald_reagan_and_aids_correcting_the_record_122806.html

The complaints against Reagan had little to do with substance and everything to do with optics. Gay activists want him to make AIDS a visible #1 cause that all of America should be involved in. They also wanted there to be no hint that anything about their behavior had anything to do with spreading the disease, because that was hateful and judging. This was not just Reagan, this was anyone with any authority who spoke on the issue. The focus was not on gay men refusing to wear condoms, but on Reagan refusing to say "condoms." The lack of research dollars spent was what was killing people, not Gaetan Dugas (and others). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ga%C3%ABtan_Dugas

I don't want to pain this as an opposite. It's not that the Reagans were actually fierce advocates for safe sex and AIDS research who got no credit because they were Republicans. They were reasonably sympathetic and moved at greater-than-average speed on getting money into research, for political or personal reasons. But health research dollars went mostly to diseases that killed more people - as they should.

Texan99 said...

I don't know. I agree there are good reasons to allocate scarce funds to diseases that killing in the greatest numbers, but on the other hand this was a dangerous infectious disease that was threatening to explode in numbers and would have been a far more horrible problem if they hadn't figured out some fairly good treatments and methods to minimize transmissivity. There did seem to be a slightly weird attitude that it was only affecting those awful gay men and intravenous drug users, so not really that urgent a problem. I remember at the time being a little frustrated by the use of this argument--or really attitude--to downplay the need to take some vigorous action to prevent the virus getting even more loose into the general population. I associated the Republican style with being too squeamish about sex to be able to deal effectively with a sexually transmitted disease.

The awful thing is that, while it's a bad idea to stigmatize everyone who gets a disease just because some people get it by engaging in risky behavior, it's also completely stupid to try to ignore people's obligation to minimize risky behavior once the risk has become crystal clear. There was a strange notion that gay people had a right to promiscuity, and that society was letting them down by not figuring out a way to remove a disease that was an obstacle to that lifestyle. As I gradually came around to a conservative way of thinking, I still had no interest in telling gays how to run their sex lives, but I had even less interest in bailing them out of the obvious consequences.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

There were people who deserved the criticism that went toward Reagan, and well more than half (though not as overwhelming as remembered) were Republicans.

Christopher B said...

Texan99 - To be blunt, the idea that AIDS was going to spread like typhoid through the general population was a myth based on extrapolating numbers from African AIDS cases which were a poor predictor of AIDS transmission in the US because of numerous cultural differences including general health and hygiene, sexual practices, and co-location with the disease reservoir in monkeys. A good discussion here. In short, if you weren't an IV drug user, receiving regular blood transfusions (prior to testing), in an ongoing sexual relationship with someone who was HIV-positive, and/or homosexual, you were at an extremely low risk of contracting AIDS even if you were (heterosexually) promiscuous.

Texan99 said...

I won't dispute you. I was just talking about how things seemed back in the 1980s to someone who hadn't yet joined the Republican party. We didn't know then how easily HIV would spread. It was very alarming that it had infected the blood supply; a friend's young son died of it way back then, after receiving a number of transfusions in the course of a (successful) leukemia treatment. The push for increased AIDS funding was highly politicized, but the way it seemed to me then was that the opposition was highly politicized, too.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The natural reticence of scientists to make encompassing statements was part of that. We learned pretty quickly that blood was the big carrier, semen close behind. But saliva? Ooh, we thought probably not so much, but no one dared say it was safe. Sweat and urine were known to be negligible at most, but were they absolutely safe? We didn't know. Mixed into that was the idea that politically, we wanted eveyone to think that shaking hands or hugging was fine, so that AIDS sufferers were not further isolated while dying. And the advocates wanted everyone to act as if it were safe whether it was or not.

I began to think that the behavior of the government was being put forward as a proxy for the parents of gay people. Sometimes this was heartbreakingly sad, of people dying and their parents refusing to visit them; sometimes it was simple rage, making society pay for one's own personal issues. It's exactly the sort of issue where libertarians make their best case: not judging, not rescuing. Do as you will.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The opposition was highly politicised. I knew people who wanted lots of gay men to die, just to show 'em. I knew gay men who rejoiced when some Christian's little girl got AIDS from a transfusion.

This is part of why I don't consider us to be especially divided now. I think we have been viciously divided since 1968. I have people I blame.

Donna B. said...

In 1983, my son was seriously injured in an accident. My memory of those days is sketchy at best, but a few years later after the news about AIDS spread, I went to the hospital and asked if he'd received a blood transfusion. At first, they said yes, he had. Further investigation showed he'd been typed, matched, etc., but ended up not needing the blood.

I was relieved, but always carried a tiny bit of doubt because of the first "yes" response. Though we lived in a large city, it was a conservative city where there was social and economic incentive to not be openly gay in most social circles.

It was not, however, conservative enough that I ever ran across anyone who wanted gay men to die, or any gay men who rejoiced at a Christian's death from a transfusion. And I did know more than a few openly gay men (through work, mostly). Frankly, it was lesbians who were ostracized then and there... more so by the gay men. Can someone explain that one to me? The only explanation I've come up with so far is that the lesbians were rather boring with (oddly enough) straight-laced personalities.

Texan99 said...

My sister, otherwise relentlessly liberal, always has hated gay women with an odd ferocity. She's fine with gay men.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

While most lesbians and gays have a general support for each other, under pressure the most bigoted statements about each that I have heard have come from the other. I don't fully understand that.

Texan99 said...

Undercurrent of hostility toward the opposite sex?