The Reaganite Sublime:

The Reagan era, a black hole of consumerist excess and evangelical fervor, sucked in the nation with a force that rivals a supernova. At its core, a spiritual singularity, a Reaganite void, a Lacanian lacuna, where the Real of the market met the Imaginary of the blessed. These were the spiritual Reaganites, the true believers in the gospel of greed and God, their minds a labyrinth of desire and deficit.

To invoke Reagan, that spectral behemoth of American mythos, is to summon a phantasmagoria of excess, a carnivalesque delirium where the sublime and the ridiculous entwine in a grotesque pas de deux. Consider the Reaganite, that peculiar subspecies of homo sapiens, a creature of paradox, a being at once hyper-individualistic and deeply enmeshed in a collective dream of prosperity and power.In the labyrinthine depths of the Reaganite psyche, where the logic of the market meets the metaphysics of the divine, we find a peculiar breed of spiritual seeker.

They were the children of the suburbs, raised on a diet of television and fast food, their minds a blank slate upon which the cultural script was written. They were taught to desire, to consume, to believe. But deep down, they yearned for something more, a sense of purpose, a connection to something larger than themselves.

The Reaganite sublime is a curious phenomenon, a distillation of the American Dream into a quasi-religious experience. It is a vision of a nation as Eden, a place where material abundance and moral rectitude are inextricably linked. It is the sublime of the shopping mall, the fast food joint, the endless highway. It is a sublime of consumption, of excess, of the insatiable desire for more. Yet, curiously, it is also a sublime of the spirit, of a return to a mythic America, a land of apple pie and picket fences, where God and country are synonymous.

The prosperity gospel, a theological doctrine that equates wealth with divine favor, finds fertile ground in this cultural milieu. In the Reaganite imagination, economic success is not merely a measure of personal achievement but a sign of election, a testament to one’s alignment with a cosmic order. The entrepreneur becomes a prophet, the stock market a sacred text.

Consider the televangelist, a figure of spectral authority, their voice a carrier wave for the commodity fetish. Their sermons, a carnival of signification, where the cross was a branding iron and the Holy Spirit a marketing consultant. The congregation, a flock of desiring machines, their wallets open like sacrificial lambs, their souls traded for the promise of prosperity. This is the Real of the market, the cold logic of capital, cloaked in the soft drapery of the sacred.

Yet, beneath the surface of this triumphalist narrative lurks a deep-seated anxiety, a fear of falling from grace, of being cast out of the promised land. The Reaganite’s embrace of individualism is a defense against this primordial terror, a desperate attempt to control one’s destiny in a world perceived as increasingly chaotic. The self becomes a fortress, a bastion against the encroaching tides of uncertainty. This is the underside of the Reaganite sublime, a dark mirror image of the sunny optimism that defines the movement.

Lacan might suggest that the Reaganite is a subject in perpetual pursuit of a lost object, a primordial unity that has been fragmented by the exigencies of the symbolic order.

The Reaganite subject, a fractured entity, split between the demands of the ego and the allure of the Other. The Other, in this case, a phantasmic America, a land of milk and honey, where everyone owned a Cadillac and a Bible. This is the Imaginary, a world of illusion, where desire is endlessly deferred, a mirage shimmering on the horizon of the American Dream.

The material wealth and power so coveted by the Reaganite are, in this view, desperate attempts to suture the wound of separation, to restore a sense of wholeness. The spiritual dimension of Reaganism can be seen as a parallel quest, a search for meaning and purpose in a world that often seems devoid of both.

The Real, the raw, traumatic core of existence, is perhaps glimpsed in the shadows of the Reagan era: the crack epidemic, the rise of AIDS, the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The Symbolic, the order imposed on chaos, is the Reagan myth itself, a grand narrative of American exceptionalism and renewal. And the Imaginary, the world of images and desires, is the glossy facade of Reagan-era prosperity, a world of big hair, shoulder pads, and material excess.

The Reaganite, then, is a subject caught in a perpetual oscillation between these three orders. They yearn for the return of a mythical past, a lost Imaginary, while simultaneously being complicit in the construction of a Symbolic order that is increasingly at odds with the realities of the Real. This tension, this internal contradiction, is the engine that drives the Reaganite psyche.

It is in this liminal space, between dream and reality, between the sacred and the profane, that the Reaganite finds a peculiar form of spiritual fulfillment. The shopping mall becomes a sacred space, a place of pilgrimage where the faithful can consume and be consumed. The television, that oracular device, becomes a portal to a higher reality, a realm where problems are solved with a quip and the world is always sunny.

The Reaganite’s faith is a faith in the spectacle, in the image, in the illusion. It is a faith that demands nothing of its adherents except a willingness to believe. And yet, perhaps, this is a faith for our time, a faith that acknowledges the absurdity of the human condition while offering a comforting narrative to make sense of it all.

In the end, the Reaganite sublime is a chimera, a phantom of desire. It is a world that never was and never will be, yet it continues to haunt the American psyche, a spectral presence that refuses to die. And so, we are left to wander through this postmodern wasteland, searching for meaning in the ruins of the Reagan era, haunted by the ghosts of a past that refuses to be laid to rest.

In the end, the Reaganite sublime is a complex and contradictory phenomenon, a cultural formation that both reflects and reinforces the contradictions of American society. It is a testament to the human capacity for hope and despair, for creation and destruction. To understand the Reaganite is to confront the dark heart of the American Dream, to acknowledge the ways in which our desires for individual fulfillment and collective salvation are inextricably intertwined.