And if it wasn't Reagan, you have pretty good odds it was Nixon.
And if it wasn't Nixon just choose literally any other (former) Republican president.
* Former in parentheses for future reference
btwn the two of them (correct me if I'm wrong, just going from memory): raised housing costs, stopped social benefits, criminalized drugs, were against worker's rights & minimum wage, against universal healthcare, overall made life harder for everyone except the upper class
Casual reminder that Nixon set his federal minimum wage at something he considered unreasonably, insultingly low, and that was $12 per hour adjusted for inflation.
My father was kind of a low level fixer in California politics.
He tended to vote Republican but regarded Reagan as a marginally literate moron.
After Reagantard reached the presidency in 1980, part of his obscene transfer of wealth to the rich brought on taxation of some of social security income.
One day I was talking to my father and kind out of nowhere he said, "Fuck Ronald Reagan."
I don't think anyone in the family voted RepubliKKKlan after that. For a lot of reasons. One of those reasons was his refusal to treat the rise of AIDS seriously.
Smart family. If only more in this country were capable of seeing the slow-motion disaster happening in front of our eyes.
I get that we are both if a certain age but can you please consider not using terms related to retardation when you mean stupid?
At least under Reagan, many of these policies had never been tested.
Republicans of today are several orders of magnitude worse. We've now witnessed the damage of trickle-down economics, of vilifying "pinko commies", of ignoring a global pandemic... And yet they do it anyway.
It may be tempting to think that, but those policies all had precedent. Trickle-down just used to be called 'Horse-and-sparrow' economics. We had red scares before, and each of them were just as stupid, if not moreso (the one time we actually should have been wary, in the early-mid 40s, we were blithely complacent - go figure). And prior influenza epidemics and the spread of longer-term diseases had shown the danger of taking a lackadaisical approach to public health.
Reagan wasn't the birth of these policies - he was just the one most successful in lodging them long-term into the rotting craw of American politics.
Reagan figured out that if you tell people what they want to hear, you can get away with anything.
Thank you for providing more historical context. It just shows how much worse it was / is.
Fuck... Politics just sucks in the US
Only good thing Reagan did (just because I believe in credit where due) was to speed GPS availability for civilian use in response to Korean Air Lines Flight 007 being shot down by the Soviets after it went off course. Everything else he did was complete shit.
Kind of like Nixon starting the EPA, but also being a treasonous, corrupt, criminal piece of shit.
Not a fan of Nixon but how was he treasonous? Opening trade with China?
Edit: In 1968 he contacted South Vietnam prior to being president to push back a peace agreement until he was president. He promised more favorable outcomes for the South Vietnamese. The Paris peace talks that Nixon attempted to influence ended up failing, but it is unknown if Nixon was the catalyst or if they were destined to fail regardless.
A man who ran a Tae Kwon Do studio in my hometown was on that plane, going home to visit family.
And the majority of the times you'd be wrong is because it was Nixon.
Agree, but I'll say that Clinton and Bush had their fair share of fucking up the US.
Clinton's Neo-liberal politics weakened public support in favor of privatization and bush accelerated that while helping to advance christian nationalism and eroding personal freedoms.
We've, no joke, not had a great president since Jimmy Carter and he was canned because of economic circumstances outside of his control.
As a democrat, Clinton was lucky with a lot of economical stuff going his way, which overshadowed the absolute piece of shit he was, and how much he hurt the middle class. He was an absolute corporate hack.
Sadly, with the 2 party system... He was the progressive choice, because as per usual the GOP was fielding full on religious lunatics.
I'd take it a step further than Reagan, and point the finger directly at Jerry Falwell. A lot of his money paid Reagan.
Wrong with society: Regan
Wrong with me: Mum and Dad
More importantly.... one political party in this country continues to try to push those awful polices onto us no matter how much Reaganomics has hurt this nation. And yet election after election people decide to just sit it out because they can't be bothered.
"The Republicans are good for the economy. I'm an independent thinker." - words I never want to hear from American voters again, but am certain that I will.
To be fair you can't blame them. (let me explain)
Republicans repeat that time and time and time again. They stick to that messaging all the time. Republicans are good for business. They are good for jobs. They support American workers. They repeat these slogans all the time. It is all a lie, but they repeat them so much that people do indeed believe them.
On the flip side Democrats have no idea how to communicate with the general public and tell them otherwise. Right after I posted in this thread, I read another story posted on Lemmy about how the economy is doing great, but Americans don't believe it. That's a Democrat problem because they are never able to explain to the American people WHY they are better than Republicans. For most of the last 50 years, a Democrat in the White House has meant a stronger economy. They are better for the workers, the environment, consumers. Yet they are terrible at sending a positive message to those groups and get them excited.
And a major case of fuckyouigotmineitis.
Trump was a big dumb animal.
Reagan knew how to fuck shit up. Competent malice.
Reagan was a dumb animal too. He just was less hostile towards his handlers.
I'd argue that incompetent malice has been pretty effective at fucking shit up too.
Trump made the culture worse with his rhetoric, but was thankfully a legislative failure. He passed all of 1 piece of meaningful legislation, a hand out to the rich. His SCOTUS appointments were McConnell's achievement.
Reagan got his grotesque agenda passed, and succeeded in getting his "opposition" party to take the corporate bribe money, abandon unions in all but rhetoric, and go full neoliberal into today.
We haven't had an anti reaganomics, trickle down, rigged capitalist economic President from either party since. Now our 2 party's largely align on the economic issues that exacerbate the social issues and fight over those.
That is Reagans legacy, setting the table for the owner class to siphon every last crumb from the peasants in perpetuity, both in legislative framework, and cultural acceptance.
Because in "turning the bull loose," you just became a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, amirite?
To name another specific problem, "closing mental institutions and turning the afflicted out onto the streets" was a neat one-two punch perpetrated by both Kennedy and Reagan. Kennedy's last major thing before taking the plane to Dallas was to sign CMHA and step towards deinstitutionalization. Reagan further exacerbated the problem by closing some of the local facilities that supposedly replaced the system closed by Kennedy.
90% of the current homelessness crisis in major cities is attributable to these policies. The result was generations of mentally ill and addicts traipsing the streets instead of being corralled towards mental healthcare away from general populace.
One good thing. Was recently homeless for several years, lost everything, off meds, suicidal, etc. Since then, been grateful for the programs, help meant for people like me. When you 5150 into psych ward, homeless, I got connected with case manager, helped me get on ssi, Medicare, free psych care, free meds. Most all the shelters in my area work in concert with mental health agencies. They're aware that untreated mental health issues can result in addiction, abuse, and it's a long slow road, you have to put the work in. But generally they know providing temp income, meds, and safe housing is 1st step to help their clients get back on feet. It's a flawed system, not enough money or resources. But the people who've been helping me really are amazing at navigating complex system. Maybe things changed, or I just got lucky with where I live.
was a neat one-two punch perpetrated by both Kennedy and Reagan
Could you elaborate more on the connection between with what Kennedy did and what Reagan did?
I had always thought it was just a Reagan thing.
CMHA apparently means the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, which apparently was an attempt to remove many patients from long term psychiatric hospitals, and have them taken care of in community centers.
From a little checking, looks like it didn't provide enough funding, and kicked the responsibility to states, which largely didn't bother to create the community centers, so it seems like it was essentially the first half of what Reagan finished, and just dumped all the crazies on the streets with no actual support.
So... when are we going to start building the guillotines?
Right about the time they start cutting social security. Mass impoverishment tends to have mass reactions.
Or Milton Friedman. And if not him, then the guy who put lead into gasoline.
RIP fairness doctrine.
I had a drive fail on my RAID5 this morning.
Thanks, Reagan.
You can blame that on Nancy actually
Reagan and Bush Jr. If it wasn't for Bush Jr. then we'd have started on climate change, and stem cells would be much farther along in research
Climate change inaction is actually pretty firmly in the laps of corporations. ExxonMobil knew climate change was being caused by human use of fossil fuels, but instead of continuing their research on biofuels during the oil crisis, they fired all the researchers and hid their scientific research.
Yes but their propaganda campaign worked a lot better when the VP was an oil executive and the President was spreading it for them.
Don't know why you got down voted though. You're right.
Noooooo . . . . it is definitely hate.
Average Republican voter will reject a policy that would unequivocally help them, if that policy also helped (or even could potentially help) some group they are supposed to hate.
Nebulous "strength" doesn't mean shit (sorry, you're speaking absolute nonsense). Hate is the only kicker.
No coz Im european.
uhm... Thanks Reagan?
On the other hand you'll be left way more often than you'll be right
I can't fault this logic.
This was a much more confusing statement when I misread it as "Ronald McDonald".
It's Thatcher here in the UK, but the same thing applies
Same demon, different skin-suit.
Not wrong. I searched up if he had any connections with the Marcoses and it turns out they were best fucking friends.
Ronald Reagan was the devil, Jesus was black and the government did 9/11
Underrated show
I'm more pissed at Nixon and Kaiser Permanente.
The dog shat on the rug, much that we'd both love to that'll be a bit of a challenge to pin on Ronnie boy.
I don't think Reagan had much effect all in my life
As a European, I'll just assume that's true, and vote for the next nazi politician in the hope that they'll fix things.
^^Is UScentrism a real thing or is it just me? (also I don't vote for nazis, (without apostrophes) even if it means voting for assholes).^^ :-/
I don't know about anything else, but I stubbed my toe last week and I'm going to blame it on Ronald Reagan instead of me not looking where I was going. From now on, anything bad in my life- Reagan did it. Like she said, that's probably more likely true anyway.
But seriously... It's all Reagan's fault. Everything from now on. No more Trump's fault, Reagan's fault.
If it wasn't for Reagan, anti-toe-stubbing technology would be much further along than it is today.
He was going to invest in American anti-toe stubbing infrastructure, but he was too busy killing gay men.
I mean he does have a time machine and never died so he may have moved that object just to mess with you.
I knew it!
ClEvEr
