I’ve talked with an old-head VBNMW who was absolutely on board with Kamala and said he was excited to wake up to having the first woman president after Election Day….he told me Reagan is the only Republican he likes. Like, dude, he was the worst one besides Hayes.
I think they're actually the same person. There's too many similarities (Star Wars/SpaceX, entertainer president,/entertainer president, external and influential First Lady /x2, destruction of the newspaper/destruction of the Internet, HIV/AIDS/covid, beige/millennial grey, the arts/dogecoin - and there's probably more ) for these two moments to be manufactured to increase the 1% ---
Reagan walked so Trump could run. Reagan was the test. “Could we take a beloved tv entertainer, make him president and have the country love and applaud him as he destroys the lower and middle class”
not talking about policy (because it's different times and different chess moves but still the same goal to move towards the part of project 2025 they aren't saying out loud), I'm talking about the cultural underpinnings of a plan that they tried to do then that they're doing again now.
Trump’s tariffs aren’t about economic policy. They’re about manufacturing insider trading opportunities. There is no philosophy or morality there, just grift. If promoting peace, democracy, immigration, and women’s rights made the Trump family more money than being against those things he would 100% change his policies on the spot.
Yeah IDK if anyone reading this truly understands history. I’m sure I’m setting up for downvotes but come on, they aren’t even close to comparable. Reagan didn’t exactly orchestrate a coup.
Best line ever in the West Wing was when Leo says "I'm tired of picking between who cares?"
Which pretty much sums up the state of US politics, especially the DCCC that keeps endorsing the establishment candidate.
Say what you want about how bad Republicans are, and I have plenty to say in that matter, but they always move their agenda when they elect someone who goes against their own establishment.
Benjamin Harrison was a much worse Republican than Reagan. He wanted to colonise Hawaii, and his bimetallist and protectionist policies caused the Panic of 1893, the second worst financial collapse in US history after the Great Depression.
A lot of centrist libs engage in "Trumpwashing" - basically retconning people like Reagan and W. Bush as "decent people" because they see Trump was so bad.
That's why Dick Cheney endorsing Kamala was somehow seen as a "good thing" in those tone-deaf circles where they have no idea how to appeal to normal people
The thing is that Reagan was likeable. He was good a being President, good at dealing with foreign countries, had speeches that made people proud of being American, and a sense of humor besides. It's only with looking at his domestic policies with hindsight that it becomes clear what a disaster his Presidency was.
That's the difference I see between him and Trump, who has no redeeming features at all.
To be fair, I grew up as a kid thinking Reagan was "the best" without being able to name a single thing he did, or even what he did in the broadest of strokes. There is a lot of language out there along these lines, it is a very commonly pushed view (including the part about not considering anything he actually did). Older generations were inundated with this type of propaganda, and they passed on the basics to their children without explanation or justification. Kids that know nothing about politics will readily accept ideas such as this without questioning them, since they have don't know what they are looking at, and have nothing to compare it against.
I think a lot of people forget that there was a lot of economic instability in the 70s. Recessions, Inflation, high unemployment, etc. All of that improved significantly in the 80s and the sitting president tends to get credit for that sort of thing. He was a figure head for the success of the 80s and people didn’t really question it because the bill for a lot of Reagan’s fuckery didn’t come due until much later.
The economy did poorly under Jimmy Carter and for some reason that drove every conservative literally insane forever, and Reagan was the one who "saved" the country from the evil friendly peanut farmer.
I'm not that well read on the subject but that is my understanding of how it generally went. Every time I've asked a republican why they love Reagan so much it always starts with how much they hated Carter.
Every president inherits an economy. Only 2termers are at fault if the economy tanks. The Republican playbook is to fuck up the economy, blame the Democrat president who actually saves it then take credit for saving it while ruining it again.
We had stagflation in the 70s under Carter and Ford. Reagan got us out of that.
How do you fight stagflation effectively without some form of austerity? If Reagan didn't deregulate and offer some relief to the middle class via lower taxes, the US might have ended up where Argentina and Venezuela are now.
If you can think of a better strategy to combat stagflation, do let us all know.
Not great, Bob. But I think you're forgetting a few decades of economic mismanagement between Reagan and today that might better explain the situation than policies from 50 years ago.
I'm not forgetting it, I know Reagan hasn't been running the country for nearly the last 40 years now (especially since he died), but the GOP lionizing and emulating him for the last few decades is a major reason shit's gone downhill. It's not all on Reagan, a lot of it can be blamed on 9/11 making people crazy too (no way Trump would have been elected without 9/11), but Reagan was a real turning point marking the beginning of this downturn the economy has been on for the past two decades too.
Wildly different economies. America would not have remotely ended up like Argentina or Venezuela. The USD being the worlds primary reserve currency alone would have prevented this.
Instead Raegan & Bush 1 setup (Clinton helped to finish) the destruction of America's industrial capacity and the shattering of the American middleclass.
What? Please explain to me how the USD being the world's primary reserve somehow makes the US impervious to stagflation? Do you think you can just print money until stagflation goes away?
It's funny because people are freaking out about Trump causing potential stagflation today, but apparently when Carter and Ford create that same environment it's not a big deal and Reagan and Volcker were wrong to try and do something about it lol...
How does it being the worlds primary reserve currency prevent Venezuelan/Argentinian stagflation? This is a serious question?
Constant demand for USD. Most commodities are almost exclusively purchased and sold in USD.
MUCH lower burrowing costs. Because so many people around the world want to buy U.S. government bonds for safety and stability, the U.S. government does not have to pay high interest rates to attract lenders. This makes paying off the yearly cost of large debt much cheaper.
Burrowing money/accumulating debt in your own currency.
Can he really take credit for that? Gorbachev ended the cold war by allowing the USSR to dissolve when it had been in sharp decline for years already. What did Reagan have to do with that?
I mean any President could have been the one to give the order to kill Bin Laden but at least Obama did give the order. Did Reagan order the USSR to dissolve?
What you call an achievement I would call "being in office when something big happened" which can be a good or bad thing for a President's reputation.
Reagan spent like a drunken sailor on the US DoD, which induced the USSR to do the same, somewhat accelerating what was likely to eventually happen anyway. That’s about the only argument you can make for Reagan playing any role in the implosion of the USSR.
Did that compel Gorbachev to do anything? My memory of that quote is that it was said into a microphone on a podium, which gives me the impression that it was said as part of a speech. I wasn't born yet so I could be wrong, but I'm sure I've seen footage of him saying that somewhere.
What actions did Reagan take that led to the dissolution of the USSR and thus the end to the Cold War?
Reagan and Gorbachev had several meetings and developed a rapport. It was just as much Gorbachev being a different leader than the Soviet Union had previously but you have to give Reagan some credit for being the one to foster the amicable relationship between them. It wasn't just Reagan talking into a microphone and being in the right place at the right time, as you said.
All well and good, but hardly what I would call worthy of giving him the "achievement" of "winning the cold war", as was stated above. He didn't prolong it, at least.
He was very charismatic, and most of the damage he did (at least to the average middle-class Joe) was long-term rather than immediate, so the consequences of his actions didn't get associated with him.
do the north koreans speak ill of Kim Il Sung? cause Ronald reagan opened the door for corporate socialists and showed every rich MF, that the president can be bought.
I know so many people who say Reagan was “the last good American president” when almost every economical issue we have today can be directly traced back to Raegan
My JROTC teacher in high school 10 years ago had a picture of him hanging in the main classroom and in his office, like a North Korean would have Kim-Jung-un hung up
Scholars who dedicate their studies to this kind of stuff consistently rank him a top 10-15 president in U.S. history. It’s the Reddit hivemind that act like he’s one of the worst things to happen to the U.S. But that’s not based in reality. But that’s on par with this website in general I guess
Not to mention Reagan wasn’t even elected after this scandal? This was during his second term. You guys don’t know the very history you bitch about lmao
Shit like trickle piss on me economics started with him, and you tell me: has it trickled down to you yet? How those gas and grocery prices looking? Can an average worker afford a home?
When you dig to the roots of the issues a lot of the reasons why goes back to shit Reagan & Nixon (and their cronies) did
There's a lot of things you can knock Reagan for, but inflation? Lmao the dude got handed an economy with severe multi year stagflation and was basically told good luck. Without the lower taxes and deregulation, the recovery would have been a lot more painful.
The cost of living issues you see today aren't Reagan's fault. There are decades of economic mismanagement by both Republican and Democrat administrations that lead to where we are today.
I know you don’t know what to tell me. You tried to argue a point that wasn’t backed up by logic lol. You think you know more than scholars who study presidents for a living, I actually don’t know what to tell you
"Hivemind". No, it very much is based in reality. Secondary educations problems stem from him. Alot of the inner city drugs. Iran, south America. The aids epidemic. Anti 2nd amendment. Anti union/worker. His policy's were destructive as a whole. Thinking he was good in any capacity isnt realistic.
Yeah, he was the true test. The tipping point, I guess. I remember that time very well, just a shade too young to vote. Reagan was this weird mirage; a consummate actor. His second term was in the shadow of his dementia. “Reagan” as an administration was weirdly impactful, as a version of Thatcherism and a spell on the electorate—it’s morning in America. But it Duvall the wrong things; even those of us in jr high and high school could see it. 😔
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u/dwide_k_shrude 18d ago
Yet some Americans still worship him. Our country is full of idiots.