8 thoughts on “Red California”

  1. I continue to fume at the legerdemain with which the media somehow designated conservatives as “red” and the commies as “blue.”

    Prior to 1984 (interesting year by coincidence) the Red vs Blue political framing was not frozen and the colors assigned to the parties alternated between national elections. For example, in the 1980 elections I remember CBS News put the Republicans in Blue and the Democrats in Red. Hence I remember tagging the Reagan landslide that year as “The Tidy Bowl Effect”. In 1976 it was the opposite as was 1972 I believe.

    In 1984 it was Republicans in Red and Democrats in Blue turn. And then every 4 years thereafter the colors never changed again.

    1. It’s easy to imagine the behind the scenes lefty journalists discussions.. “You know we can’t call ourselves “red”, it’s just too on the nose.”

  2. Agree 100%.
    Conservatives should repudiate the branding and take on gold as the new official color (if one must be had). They should make a point of it too, especially in election campaigns. “We’re not the reds in this race!”
    Along those same lines, I firmly assert without proof that the phrase “Red Scare” is itself the product of early 20th century communist propaganda. I’ve fruitlessly tried a couple times to determine the definitive first use of the phrase.

  3. Once Burroughs realized he was going to get rich of Tarzan, his main enemies were Russians, starting with Nicholas Rokoff and Alexis Paulvich, after WW1 usually referred to as “Reds.” In 1919, he wrote a novella called “Under the Red Flag,” famous for the line, “Here is one Jew who hates a Communist.” When it became clear the publishing industry was having none of it, he rewrote as “The Moon Men,” with the Kalkars standing in for Communism. It became the core of the Moon Maid trilogy, one of the most misunderstood things he ever wrote.

    About your question, here’s this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare

  4. On the other hand, if those Democrats hadn’t encouraged using red for the right, we’d have reached the point by now that Dems would be enjoying their association with Red. So, this bought us some time. For a little while, at least.

    We’ll know we’ve really lost when they take it back.

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