Reagan was one of the worst things to happen to the US. Maybe we should just stop electing shitty actors to do a difficult job.
Reagan (or more specifically Michael Deaver) taught us that propaganda works incredibly well, almost every time.
Most of us didn’t learn it though. And here we are.
Reagan (or more specifically Michael Deaver) taught us that propaganda works incredibly well, almost every time.
Hitler (and many mfers before him) already taught that lesson, people fall for it every, single, time.
That’d require learning a lesson. And we’re collectively far too stupid to do that.
Reagan was one of the worst things to happen to the US.
100% agree
Maybe we should just stop electing shitty actors to do a difficult job.
I'd argue the opposite on that tho.
We kept hearing with Biden that a president can't do much, it's all Congress.
So why are we running career politicians when the majority of America hates politicians? Why did we just one an ex-prosecuter when most Dem voters hate our justice system?
Like, we can at least halfway it with someone like Al Franken, someone that started out somewhere else then switched to politics. But why not just say fuck it and run Taylor Swift for president? Count on her carrying the entire down ballot and getting dual majorities and she just has to not veto what lands on her desk.
Either the president doesn't really do anything and is just a figurehead or it has to be someone with decades of government experience.
It can't be both.
But there's certainly no reason to keep picking people with zero charisma for what's basically a convoluted popularity contest. Even foreign relations, I guarantee foreign leaders would give Brad Pitt a better deal than Joe Biden. They're not getting down into the nitty gritty, the drones work out the details anyways.
Obama and Bill won off their charisma above all. Biden as well was incredibly charismatic back in the day, it's just as came out recently, his health had been an issue basically the entire term. I'm not saying this as a dig, but he is a shell of his former self. 40 years ago he was considered the best public speaker of his generation.
As much as I want a progressive and think they'd win on policy, what matters before the platform is charisma and we need to admit that.
It's insane we didn't learn it after Al Gore, but clearly the DNC didnt.
We kept hearing with Biden that a president can't do much, it's all Congress.
Keep in mind that while the president can't do a lot of things unilaterally, there are a lot of things he can do to block, delay, and disrupt. Biden's plans were mostly creating new things, which takes Congress. Trump just wants to destroy. It's always easier to destroy than build.
Either the president doesn’t really do anything and is just a figurehead or it has to be someone with decades of government experience. It can't be both.
The lack of understanding is simply astounding, all for mental gymnastics.
The president has to do a ton to navigate the political mess, negotiate with others, and press the issues they want with both their party and with the other party. That takes skill, knowledge, and experience.
But they are NOT a king that gives orders. That's where you are twisting the presidents limited power to "doesn't really do anything". Ultimately the bill has to be written and passed by Congress, to be signed by the president. The President has to use their words (not their power, because that's not how it works) to convince others to do it. Again, because they are not a king.
I don't always agree with you but I appreciate the effort you put into your posts. Thank you for contributing
This guy's cooking.
You're an interesting person. Sometimes I outright despise the things you say and other times I think you're on the right track.
Worst thing so far.
I genuinely wish we were in the timeline where the worst thing he ever did was Bedtime for Bonzo. The fact that people worship this ass clown... it tears the heart...
OTOH, some actors have done pretty good jobs as politicians. Schwarzenegger--a GOP governor that actually listened to people!--Jesse Ventura (not a great governor, TBH, but decent), and Al Franken are examples of actors that ended up being pretty solid politicians. Ideally, a good politician is someone that has connections to people that understand good public policy, and can then communicate that effectively to the public in order to lead well.
The problem with Reagan isn't the acting per se, but that he was an awful person, and so good at connecting with people that a lot of people couldn't see his rotten core.
When he was younger maybe but as he got older reagen needed teleprompter for virtually everything. He had lost his ability to speak off the cuff as his alzheimers progressed
The continued idolization of Reaganomics is a huge reason why the US continues to enshittify.
Maybe there shouldn't be such a focus on cults of personality and electing celebrities. Imagine qualified people being in office.
I did. I was told I was transphobic and pro-genocide by some totally not russian trolls.
And if we have to have a cult of personality dictator, why is it they always have such shitty policies?
The most prosperous decade of the 20th century was the 1950s.
The top tier tax rate in 1950 was 84%, and that was the lowest it would be until 1964. The rest of the 1950s were at 91%-92%.
The important thing to remember is that nobody ever paid the top-tier tax rate. Instead, they spent their income. When they found themselves $10,000 over the line in 1955, and about to pay $9100 to Uncle Sam, they said "Hold up. Let's spend $10000 on something useful and deduct it as a business expense".
That spending turned into paychecks for the workers who produced the purchased item.
$10,000 over the line in 1988 meant they got to put $7,200 into their stock portfolio, send $2,800 to Uncle Sam, and the worker is laid off because they had no incentive to actually spend their excess income.
Infographic is correct, though it left out how he destroyed labor unions and a bunch of other stuff, but you can only fit so much in there. Reagan and his despicable cohorts like Gingrich were the beginning of the end for not just the ability to reach the middle class, but indeed for the middle class itself in this country (as his contemporary partner in crime, Thatcher was for the UK).
It was an absolute tragedy. If Trump wasn't coming back in, Reagan would still hold the top rank in amount of devastation caused, but I'm pretty sure Trump will manage to surpass him on that front in his second term.
The good news is Trump will be the architect of his own downfall, just like Hitler and Nero
The bad news is Ronnie was also senile and the people surrounding him still managed to cause generational harm.
This man is responsible for the nightmare that is my life.
Fuck going back in time to kill Hitler, if I ever get into a DeLorean or a phone booth, I'm coming for that ass Reagan! THIS ONE'S GONNA BE FOR FREDDIE MERCURY!
Edit: Just got back, I think I got the wrong year or something, missed my shot too. Feds tried to stop me from getting back to the car, I got them to go bother some dickhead who wouldn't shut up about some Crazy Taxi movie or whatever the hell he was talking about. Can't try again for awhile, DeLorean's out of plutonium.
If I could go back in time and kill three people from history, I'd kill Reagan three times.
Come on. You wouldn't use one of those tokens to stop by east Germany and wax Putin in the KGB? You wouldn't even need to change years to get Reagan and Putin in the same trip
Also kill Nancy Reagan. Pretty sure that succubus would have had a negative impact on people with HIV even if she wasn’t First Lady. The blowjob queen probably would have used her influence on Hollywood elites to create a hate campaign against the people with HIV
Jimmy Carter lost to him, and while looking back from fifty years later Carter looks progressive...
At the time there was a fracture of the Dem party from the left because they considered Carter too moderate.
The most important part of learning about our political history is understanding what we've lost over time. Like the existence of a party even remotely leftwing.
Quick edit:
A big reason for Carter's loss was the inability to solve the Iranian hostage crisis right before the election. Which we later found out Republicans colluded with Iran to not resolve it while Carter was in office, then the whole Iran-Contra shit.
Also reminiscent of how Nixon prolonged the Vietnam war for the same reason...
And I won't be surprised to find out in a decade Trump did the same with Israel.
Like, people kept acting shocked about current events just don't know we're watching reruns. It's like when people got excited about Game of thrones and waited years between seasons for cliffhangers. The books already existed and they could have just found out what happened.
But just like they wouldn't read the books, nobody wants to read a history book anymore.s
There was this one time a painter couldn't hack it
Sold 500 missiles to Iran is such a hilarious understatement of the shit show that actually was Iran Contra.
The whole situation was very complex, and only a mastermind would be able to comprehend the whole thing.
I know he was really bad, but Trump promised he will do everything in his power to be worse.
No offense, but mental institutions were/are horror farms. Could have been better, should have been better, never was.
Among the highest, if not the foremost rate of undeclared abuse. Dumping grounds for the unwanted, unrestricted experimentations for sadistic monsters, no-man's-land for the so-called human rights.
Whatever other evil might have been done, putting an end to those mental institutions can only be a kindness.
I'm lucky (unlucky?) enough to have worked at a day program for special needs and some of our clients were old enough to have been in institutions, released "to the wild" and then reintegrated into the modern system.
The ones capable of remembering and verbalizing their experiences had some wild stories, and while instutuons were often hell, being kicked out on the streets with no options was worse.
Like, it would be if Biden announced he was fixing the issues with our healthcare system by outlawing medical care.
Sure, the existing system sucks and in a lot of ways it's good it's gone....
But for fucks sake it was better than literally nothing.
That's not even getting into how it demonized mental illness and led to people in rural areas still refusing to get children diagnosed because the label is what they're afraid of. Because all they know about mental illness is all the desperate homeless people Reagan released and they passed those biases down to their children
There were always options. People didn't take them due to lack of knowledge or of care. And as easy as it is to blame one person for it, truth is we're all at fault. We as the populace lack the unity and desire to help one another as we should.
You say something was better than nothing. Well, nothing stopped us/them from building a better something else. That was always an option.
Most of their funding was state/local too and in decline well before Reagan due to the effect of the book (and later, movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The mental institution thing... That's maybe not entirely fair. Prior to Reagan, most residential mental institutions were terrible places, worse than some of the worst prisons in the US. Closing them seemed better for the residents than keeping them open and attempting to reform. But it's certainly had a lot of unintended consequences.
the caption of a political cartoon i remember from back then:
"ronald reagan did for this country what pantyhose did for finger-fucking"
I don't think it is mental illness causing the homeless crisis. Homelessness is up 20% from 2023 and I'm pretty sure the high cost of living is to blame.
Libs prefer blaming the victims of capitalism rather than capitalism itself.
A lot of homeless people are mentally sound, but are struggling with sky high prices, or dont have the motivation to work 60 or 80 hours, facing, constant exhaustion to live in a hole in the wall.
If you ever happen to visit Berlin in Germany, make sure to spit on his memorial plaque, as he is worshiped as a freedom fighter in Germany.
I (german) know of nobody that does that
https://withberlinlove.com/2012/10/01/ronald-reagan-memorials-in-berlin/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_honorary_citizens_of_Berlin
https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/2024/pressemitteilung.1452879.php
https://www.parlament-berlin.de/Das-Haus/Berliner-Ehrenbuerger/ronald-w-reagan
Maybe nobody of the normal people, but in the political elites they love to praise Reagan.
Same shit in Poland. What’s crazy is that we are suffering from his incompetence here as well.
The working class and thus the creation of the middle class was subsidized by our government from FDR up until Reagan. The 1950s wealth and family focus BOOM was a result of this subsidization that began with FDR. It is why everyone (white and male) owned a house, a car, and had a job.
We are living the end result of the Reagan experiment, the flip from subsidizing the working class and thus subsidizing the creation of a middle class, which does not happen organically in capitalism, to the subsidization of corporate and the top 1% instead. The claim was it would be more efficient to subsidize corporate and simply have the wealth trickle down through the rest of the economy.
This, right now, is how trickle down pans out after the 40yr experiment. We’ve equalized woman and non white people under the law, great, but did it in a time without subsidy. So now we are all equally shit upon, barring some holdover family accumulations dating back to the 50s.
And now, drum roll, we’ve elected President Musk, the grand winner of said 40yr subsidization experiment, the ultimate welfare queen, to decide our working class government efficiency going forward.
I wonder how that will work for working class going forward?
Fascists don't actually care about anything other than attacking the poor, minorities, women, etc.
Reagan was "great" for that.
The number of people that died of AIDS each year under his watch was in the millions. Not 90k.
He was re-elected in a landslide because America is and has been--for at least my entire lifetime--all about aesthetics.
And it's a damn good looking Guici belt.
First president I ever became aware of. Fuck him and everything to do with him.
As non American I was ready to just move on and let them suffer in their own cycle of nonsense. But we can't even do that. Since jokes about invasions are increasing at an alarming rate. Jokes about countries sovereignty became completely unfunny after Feb 2022.
If this next administration isn't the actual downfall of democracy and just another blip in history I wonder if trump will have the same sort of vibe to his legacy that Regan has.
and now he is burning in hell with Tatcher and Pinochet ❤
Yes, ofc, it's not like we remember him for his acting career.
Reelected in 1984 when the national unemployment rate was 10%
He’s the shining poster child of the GOP!
Ronnie was a senile racist POS and he pushed the deregulation for the financial sector.
Thanks Obama.
He was only acting!
President is an unnecessary position and draws the eye of narcissists and fascists. Give veto power to the Senate President & drop the VP title, move civilian oversight of the military to a bipartisan court, and pick someone from the majority party house or senate to be your figurehead.
This seems like an awful lot of work to get to a system that is only slightly less shitty than before. At that rate, America should become a parliamentary system, with RCV.
And even after 25 years, the Democrats have done shit to undo the damage Reagan started, they are either complicit or impotent.
Republicans have controlled the budget through the house of representatives for 18 of the last 25 years. Can't pass any kind of programs if the branch in charge of funding anything doesn't fund the programs.
I know, but.... remember last month how basically the entire country agreed that the health industry was terrible and needed to be reformed? And remember how the Democrats did absolutely nothing, despite still controlling the presidency and the senate?
Even if they couldn't pass a program, they still could have controlled the narrative and set expectations and made demands for the start of the upcoming Trump presidency. Instead they just let the opportunity pass.
Both things can be true. Democrats did themselves no favors by abandoning unions for this long.
And the only party in politics!
I think a lot of those criticisms are fair. But blame for aids as if the president is some god whose fault it is that nature exists says a lot about the role presidents take in our mind. It isn't healthy.
The issue is more that his administration didn't give a shit about 'gay cancer' because it was almost exclusively affecting gay people at the time, so they did absolutely nothing about it.
I'd rather be homeless than in a government run mental institution.
He didn’t let those 90000 people die all by himself. He appointed Anthony Fauci to help him.
Oh my, the same Fauci with enough conflict of interest in regards to COVID to fill a conspiracy thriller?? What an ... interesting person!
Conflicts of interest are like his specialty. Here’s a long letter written by a person who survived his AiDS tenure laying out his various money making ventures with private drug manufacturers to produce worthless, expensive AIDS drugs. Nobody will read it though because the same media that insisted Biden’s brain worked fine and then paid out bribes to Trump’s inaugural fund also insists Fauci is some kind of hero
