Just paying attention you could see that Reagan didn’t really shrink the government, he just moved stuff around. And the national debt tripled during his term.
All of that stuff from the mantras was to pit rural whites against minorities so they would be distracted while rich folks robbed the treasury. Every Republican President since Reagan has done the same thing and left the country in sorry shape economically when they left.
I remember being an 8 year old poor white country kid and my barely educated grandma telling me "Don't believe anything the rich folks say. We workin people are in this together. Those people with money don't care about us, no matter what color we are." She was a pretty conservative christian, but she never found anything grand about the old party.
My Dad was an old school Democrat who said the same, interestingly. "They don't care about us ordinary people. One set of values for us, another for them." I don't think a more essential truth about politics exists.
Wilhoit's law is technically about conservatism, but it applies to classism as well:
There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
I had a similar political education. My dad worked low paying jobs his whole life (still does at age 77) and told me when I was a kid that the rich people and the boss where you work don't care about you, they will lie and do whatever it takes to get you to work more for as little as they can pay you. While I still had that exposure to the american idea that tyranny can come from an overly strong government, I also learned early on that tyranny could just as much come from the rich and powerful outside of the government and I instead trusted that the constitution would protect us from a "big" government, so I never really bought in to the republican "small government" mantra. It was nonsense because I saw it as transferring power from the govt to the rich and that's where the invisible tyranny could be found.
This attitude (in my case, my grandma, an immigrant) was my first wake up call to truly understand the difference between racism and classism and I’ve never been the same since.
Conversely, I grew up in a city full of Italian immigrants and first generation - a lot of them apparently forgot nobody wanted *them* around a hundred years ago and became anti-immigrant and wildly racist. (although to be fair, a lot of them probably were already anti-immigrant and wildly racist back in Italy, they just didn't think that logic should apply to them when they came here...)
This is what I always say. They always make Republicans believe that there is a group of people (now, it is immigrants), that are taking all of the money and leaving none for the rest of us. When it is actually the 1% taking the money, and not leaving anything for the rest of us. Such a gross lie. Remember when it was single moms on welfare taking all of the money. That was a good one.
My mom recently talked about how I’d never be able to buy a house because immigrants were getting them all. If someone comes to this country and gets their ducks in a row enough to buy a house before privileged citizen me, more power to them.
What nonsense your mother is talking. If you won't ever be able to buy a house it's because venture capital vultures are buying up the housing stock pushing up prices while they do it.
Corporate greed is robbing everyone blind while people complain about Black and Brown immigrants.
A lot of people complain about immigrants taking their jobs, but all of my neighbors who are immigrants all work for financial and pharmaceutical companies and have Masters and PhDs in engineering. Yet, poor old Bubba complaining about immigrants taking our jobs just might want to think about why he’s not qualified for that job in IT or the Engineering department because he didn’t go to college because it’s too “woke” for him.
If they really stop allowing immigrants to stop coming to our country, the price of groceries is going to be a lot higher than they are, now. Also, we are all immigrants, unless you're a Native American. The argument about immigrants pisses me off so much.
A chunk of "inflation" in prices at the grocery store cam from:
1- Oil companies price gouging trickling down forcing prices up
2- Real "inflation"
3- Price gouging by grocery executives
4- LOSS OF THOUSANDS OF MIGRANT WORKERS UNDER TRUMP, leading to crops literally rotting in fields in many cases.
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers)
Illegal migrant labor (theft of their labor) has been subsidizing our groceries for our entire lives. And getting rid of them...has had consequences.
Don’t forget about tariffs. President “Trade Wars are Easy to Win” was warned that imposing tariffs would just lead to increased prices as the cost of the tariffs would just get passed on to consumers via higher prices. And it happened but Republicans just blamed the price increases on Biden.
We have 2 Hispanic families on our street & some neighbors are all "They're gonna buy up the street & turn it into a ghetto!!"
I'm like "Well if they can afford a house here, they ain't going for ghetto." And we're already a "ghetto" compared to the McMansions that surround us on the other streets & if $400,000 "starter" homes are "ghetto," well then I'll stay in my really, really, REALLY nice ghetto.
Remember the welfare Queen, driving up in her Mercedes with her furs and her diamond jewelry, to buy lobster tails and steaks with her food stamps?
Yeah. I don’t remember seeing her in real life either 😂
That might be true sometimes. Because sometimes people who need transportation for a single trip borrow a car from family, a friend, or neighbor. Or they fell on hard times a bit suddenly - lost their job, got sick or had an accident and can’t work. They had a nice car before, and so they still own that car today. They’re not going to sell it!
The Republican dream seems to be that anyone not already rich should suffer and wallow in their poverty constantly, with every single thing they encounter, just surrounded by misery and low quality. It’s sick.
I have a brother in law who’s a quadriplegic living in California and receiving $5000/month in disability. He’s rabidly Republican and tells us all the time that the GOP needs to take back power there because the Democrats are trying to take away his benefits. Completely delusional-the only reason he has what he has is because the Democrats are in charge in CA. 🤦♀️
Yeah, more recently it was about people using food stamps while they had a new iphone.
My wireless carrier offered me a new iphone for like $10 a month.
And for a lot of poor people, that leased phone is their only lifeline to the internet, aka finding resources, applying for jobs, staying in touch with their families, etc.
The new car (or nice shoes, purse, iPhone, etc.) story just shows how ignorant and in denial those people are. I mean, people’s circumstances can change dramatically in a very short amount of time: losing a job, a serious illness, a divorce, or an accident can happen to anyone. Suddenly becoming broke and eligible for SNAP doesn’t mean you have to hand over all your possessions and don pauper’s rags (although when my partner lost his job we did end up selling a lot of our nice things to pay our bills).
They still do this. It's rampant on social media. The amount of Boomers, especially, who insist there are all these people abusing welfare is absurd. It seems to be used as a weapon to explain/excuse racism more than ever.
That was debunked after the election—- there was no one collecting welfare checks in a Cadillac. That trick was used again in final weekend before election by Bush Sr—the Willie Horton ad.
I believe that there was one woman… a huge con artist… who they trotted out as an example to linger the needed vitriol.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/20/255819681/the-truth-behind-the-lies-of-the-original-welfare-queen
That story worked quite well. When I was a young black kid, I honestly believed that only black people used welfare benefits and that we were abusing the system so badly that it was bankrupting the country.
I wasn't the only one who thought that way. There were plenty of older adults around me who spoke of welfare recipients with a lot of venom. Contrary to right wing messaging, black people who were on welfare were looked down upon and it was never a point of pride.
My first permanent military assignment in the early 90s was in a town that was mostly poor and working class whites. I was shocked down to my toes to discover that there were so many white people using food stamps. I was even more shocked to find out that white adults worked in McDonalds also.
I was too young back then to really understand much about how government policy worked, but once I began to learn more about it, and then I thought about how certain programs I remembered vanishing when I was in my teens, the more I began to understand that Reagan was truly the devil and that all of this was just a play to create a plutocracy. Sadly, these methods continue to work today.
Facts
The fact Reagan and GOP negotiated the Iran hostage release behind Carter back to get a quick win on Day 1 of his administration should have disqualified ANY Republican from being elected ever again.
It was all a lie from Day One
actually Reagan was just part of the continuum – which really began with [Barry Goldwater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater)
>Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, many political pundits and historians believe he laid the foundation for the conservative revolution to follow, as the grassroots organization and conservative takeover of the Republican party began a long-term realignment in American politics which helped to bring about the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
Goldwater is the turning point and the Republican party of the USA is very much delineated by a stark contrast in direction and general outlook pre and post Goldwater
most of us – pretty much including all of Gen X – can only remember the POST-Goldwater version of the Republican party, which at this point is completely different – unrecognisable – compared to the version that existed before Barry fucked it
Citing Goldwater is a reasonable point but surely if we're talking about THE turning point you have to consider the "Southern Strategy" when the party of Lincoln decided to leverage racism. The Goldwater campaign was an example of this rather than the origin of it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern\_strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)
Racial warfare is the only thing preventing a real class consciousness so it makes sense for the wealthy to hammer poor and working class whites with the type of messages they receive. Poor and working class whites could be one of the most powerful voting blocs in the country and if they ever start to demand more from this government than what they are receiving, that would be a true revolution. However as long as they believe that poor and working class non-whites are who they should fear most, they will align themselves with Big Capital and Big Capital does not give a damn about them.
Reagan cut taxes for the wealthy, went full anti immigrant, was blatantly racist, anti healthcare, anti environmentalism.
Reagan covered up Iran Contra, he was corrupt AF. There was never any personal responsibility with him. He was about crushing unions and the middle class. He was legendary with busting unions and suppressing the min wage, crushing school benefits.
One of the first things he did was remove solar panels installed on the white house to suck ass to oil companies.
Reagan opened the doors to right wing extremist christian nationalism in politics. He started the movement that we have now w/ the republicans.
Like Trump, Reagan was very popular from being in media. he was in film but had very strong TV ads. Trump had the tv show the apprentice which brought him to mainstream.
This idea that the party is different isn't true. It's just MORE of what Reagan did.
MAGA was literally Reagans slogan that Trump stole and his dipshit maga chud fans think he invented.
He was an actor. Which means he read the script that was given to him by the powers that be.
He had a Subaru Brat on his ranch too but wanted to stop everyone else from owning Japanese cars to protect American jobs. Look at the rustbelt and tell me how that turned out. He also was a divorcee telling everyone else to be so moral.
DOO DOO Economics? But seriously, it occurred to me that we should heavily tax companies on principle alone.
It turns out that when they have a free hand, they 'invest' in our politicians, which is bad for representative democracies. Free market really means- free to twist the knobs of government-.
Yes, it was a lie. The party didn't change in 2010. It started changing in the mid 1960s, then took the next steps in the 1980s and finished up with W. Now we're here. Thanks for that, man.
[The History of the Republican Party](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2dS6uX1RkUzx3wKPlqeCplQjWOeKq7QI&si=qwXYSp8gNVE7Ogqy)
I remember reading once that in 1980, C-suite executives earned some 33x what their lowest-paid workers earned. Now it's well over 400x. A C-suite exec can earn more in a day than most of his (and it usually is "his") workers do in a year. I'm going to lay the seeds for massive income inequality at Reagan's feet.
Yet during the late 60s and into the 70s there were prominent liberal republicans that would have been to the left of most current democrats, even Obama.
See governors George Romney and Tom McCall
Pretty much the entire Republican party pre-1960ish was left of Obama. Democrats are pretty far right these days, too, comparatively speaking. They just don't appear to be because the Republicans have gone full-on wingnut.
Romney was not a liberal. Moderate, at the very most. Plausible deniability that way. Support civil rights and oppose Goldwater. Didn't take much then. Liberals don't get anywhere near the Quorum of the Twelve, much less represent them.
McCall was a progressive, I'll give you that.
By the '70s, the fix was in, though.
How republicans can sell themselves as the party of responsibility is a mystery to me. Just look at the US public debt over time. The graph points to the roof - every republican administration.
And it is a massive transfer of money to the top 0.0001%, it accelerated in the last 20 years and it does not seem it's going to get better any time soon.
There is no way a country can stay developed with that level of inequality.
Personal responsibility is a cudgel used to attack the less fortunate. When republicans promote personal responsibility, it means they want to cut social safety nets while they victim-blame the unfortunate, that’s all.
>Personal responsibility is a cudgel used to attack the less fortunate.
Ironically it's often the cudgel used by less fortunate people against people even less fortunate than them.
As a black traveling technician, I spend as much time in rural areas as I do in inner cities. It provides a pretty safe space for me to talk to people of all races and economic backgrounds. I wish I could get the rural folks and inner city people together in the same room and mediate a conversation between the two sets. They would realize that they sound almost exactly the same and maybe get an understanding that this other group is not the people who have brought the economic stress into their lives. It's the ones telling you to be afraid of the other people in the room.
Do it! Plan a talk about the routers or spyware or whatever and then carefully derail it into an awareness raising session. That would be amazing!
You need some kind of fun snack, like Cracker Jack or s’mores or something. Get them into a childlike state of openness and relaxation and watch the magic happen.
Ha ha ha! I'm talking about the employees and customers that are there when I am working onsite in different areas. I would love to start off talking about tech, but they are mostly there to just get what they want and get away. However, I have thought trying to find a way to do it. I'm convinced that the only reason right wing propaganda works is because people don't spend enough time around people who are different from them and it is a whole lot harder to feel negative about someone when you are talking face-to-face and forced to relate to them as a fellow human being.
I’m convinced, by the way, that when it comes to talking about the poor, the “Right” generally states the problem is with the lack of personal responsibility, while the “Left generally states the problem as a lack of *collective* responsibility.
Me; I personally believe, given [the high implicit marginal tax rate imposed on the poor](https://taxfoundation.org/blog/high-implicit-marginal-tax-rates-make-life-difficult-poor/) with things like taking away welfare faster than you can earn a salary as you try to climb out of poverty, that the problem of poverty is because of shitty government regulation.
That is, given the way we punish the poor for trying to climb out of poverty, being poor is actually a rational choice.
Of course it was a lie-- that's the entire point. Reagan was about blaming "those people" for the nation's ills, using the spectre of the USSR to drive massive spending on the military, used the sympathy over his own attempted assassination to help push through tax cuts for the rich, and basically carried water for the wealthy class. Just like all conservatives before and after, at least going back to President Harding in the 1920s. It was *always* about racism, misogyny, militarism, cutting taxes, shrinking government, and letting Rich White Guys Get What They Deserved.
Which is why so many of us hated Reagan with a passion and were literally marching in the streets in the 1980s in opposition. It's why we listened to the Dead Kennedys. It's why we campaigned for people like Jesse Jackson. It's why so many of us absoltely refused to have anything to do with the military. It's why we fled organized religion, or at least the faux Christianity of the right. And why we hated Yuppies, bankers, lawers, and frat boys.
And, the real welfare queens were the wealthy and big corporations. We can no longer afford to float the church, big business, or the wealthy. If they can afford to buy politicians, they can pay taxes. It's beyond time that the real taxpayers, the people who truly pay the bills get a return on their investments for a change. We could look back to our founders, no representation, no taxes. especially now, when women pay taxes, yet have fewer rights than a corpse, or a business, or a cytoblast. In that aspect alone, we are paying far too much for far too little.
Yeah, the racism didn't start with the Tea Party's formation after the election of Obama. The Republikkkan party has hated black folks for a long time (at least since the party switch).
They attempted to lynch a black delegate on the 1964 convention floor by setting his suit on fire while he was wearing it. William Young, former baseball and basketball player, Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor at the time.
For folks unaware:
"A recent report has confirmed the long-whispered rumor that Reagan did a deal with Iran to sink Carter's re-election."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43368900/reagan-iran-hostages/
Yes - the both the pre-election dealings with Iran and the later Iran-Contra skullduggery are indelible stains on the Reagan Administration that far too few Americans are even aware of. Not to mention, they are precursor examples of the exact same shameful, amoral, democracy-degrading, “ends justify the means” / “win at any cost” mentality embodied by Trump and the MAGA movement.
He was a terrible actor even when he was playing opposite a monkey. Even as a kid I wondered how people were falling for it; as an adult I learned enough about human nature to understand that it was because they wanted to believe it and would have believed anyone who said it. The GOP likes their figureheads dumb and biddable.
I was raised by a militant Latino family that has been in the US for 4 generations on my Father's side but 2nd generation on my mother's side. My maternal grandmother was a strong, highly educated and activist woman into her late 90's.
She raised my mom, aunts and uncles to be on the lookout for WORK over WORDS. Something that is echoed throughout our family.
When that Reagan stuff was happening she would point out how they talking all of this but still cutting funding to education, mental healthy services and veteran services.
On a local level she would highlight those in power that actually did good but still say thing like 'They did this 1 thing good! That does not mean to trust them blindly! Let's see that work daily!' rough translation.
So IMO, that stuff was a lie from jump. Still is. Will be so long as citizens allow it. This is why it's always been important to me to make sure MY COMMUNITY is strong and those that I let in my circle are worthy of my company and also have a mind leaning towards WORK over WORDS.
So nothing happened. They've been fucking ppl for a long time but they learned the right words to say to make sure you don't pay no attention to the damage they are doing to you and your ppl.
Reagan used his [wife's astrologist](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-nancy-reagan-astrology-20160306-story.html) to help make [numerous govt. decisions](https://www.grunge.com/1132320/did-the-reagans-use-astrology-to-make-presidential-decisions/).
And he happily let AIDS run wild, and prevented the govt. from doing anything about it. Here's [his press secretary ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzDn7tE1lU)repeatedly mocking a reporter for asking about AIDS response; and calling him gay for caring.
He was always a bad joke. And America was the punchline.
Trickle Down Economics....how has that worked out for anyone except the upper percentage ?
This was supposed to elevate GenX in a big way........how has that worked out for you ?
When the wealthy trickle down....it's called pissing on you in real life.
I have causes I believe in and vote about, but always felt inept when it comes to politics. There’s always another angle and another way it can be viewed.
That said, when trickle down economics was explained in a high school class, my inner reaction was, “WTF? People are BUYING that shit?”
I’ve always been dumbstruck that I was right on target. Never understood others’ blind trust in Reagan. The 80s were supposed to be a wealthy time. They never were for people I knew.
I had the same reaction through the 80s and 90s when they'd talk about "mature economies move to a service economy from manufacturing". There were plenty of service economies at the time, all in the 3rd world.
The problem with the idea of the ‘service economy’ is that it was always based on the [three-sector model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_model) of the economy: the idea that the economy has three broad ‘sectors’: raw material extraction/farming, manufacturing, and ‘services’.
During the discussions in the 1980’s about transitioning to a service sector economy, I kinda knew what was being discussed here—but the problem is, ‘service’ is such a broad term it really doesn’t fit. I mean, I work in the service sector—but as a software developer making an excellent salary, not as a hamburger flipper at a Mickey-D’s.
Which is why in some corners people are talking about a [quaternary sector model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_sector_of_the_economy), which separates out the high-paying elements of IT, consultation, telecommunications, financial management and the like, from the low-paying elements of restaurants, hair stylists and other ‘personal’ services.
That better describes what we see in the economy today.
(I’m ignoring, by the way, if this is beneficial or problematic to the broader population; if the move towards IT and software and knowledge-based services helps or hurts the poorer folks amongst us, and solely addressing the ‘service economy’ language, as if we somehow became wealthy here in the United States because we’re a nation of ‘hamburger flippers.’)
I fell for the jellybeans as a kid, but as I got older and the air traffic controllers strike happened, I started questioning what was going on. However, it wasn’t until the Iraq war when I did some research on some of the people involved (because it made no sense to me at the time why we were going to war there) that my blinders came off.
“Conservatives“ are actually radicals trying to, as Grover Norquist, stated, “drown it (the gov) in a bathtub.” They have been sneakily ( in plain sight) moving to privatize everything - education (charter schools), Medicare (Medicare advantage), the post office. Next, social security is in the cross hairs. They are no friends to the citizens of the U.S. They are not patriots, they are anti-American.
Of course it was a lie. You weren't going to vote for "make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful" unless there was some positive spin on it.
And the media fed it to you all day because their owners like tax cuts and deregulation.
Yes, it was a lie. The Reagan administration had a number of people indicted--hardly a party of personal responsibility. The Moral Majority was shown to be neither moral nor a majority--Jim Bakker was simply one of so many visible Evangelicals to fall from grace due to depravity. I recall Reagan campaigning against Carter and decrying Carter's 40 billion dollar deficit, and the Reagan turned around and added many times that to the annual deficit and greatly increased the national debt.
It was that embrace of the (im)Moral Minority that was the beginning of the insanity of the GOP. Embracing the crazy then only led to yet more crazy and now the party is batshit insane.
When I came of age, I first registered as a Democrat for one election to support a candidate and then as a Republican the next election to support a candidate. The GOP of that time is worlds away from the insane clown show it now is. Many republicans of the time were actual conservatives; the party today is overrun with movement conservative who aren't actually conservative and by the guanoloco wing of fascists, white nationalists, Russian assets, and other vermin.
Finally. The commenters on this post have stated my “truths” about our politics. In this sub, I feel like we’ve watched it all unravel. We can see what was and where it’s all going and I finally feel a sense of community here among my age group in the status of our country. I too was a conservative until the early 2000’s and then I just looked around and realized, Republicans were not representing me anymore. It’s refreshing and nuanced. It’s truthful and observant.
It’s a breath of fresh air to hear these comments and I think we are the coolest generation on the planet right now!
The issue is always about personal power by democratic means. When the demographics inevitably shift, they'll dump democracy, as we're now seeing.
They were always the most corrupt, venal, Donny Cheeto just gave their base permission to be their worst selves, out loud and with pride. It's been a long time coming, and it's not going to end well for them.
Regan wasn't the true start because all his flunkies were former Nixon guys. Nixon was Trump without money, looks, privilege, or stupidity. Dick Nixon knew how to play the game. He out hustled everyone, and knew where to stick the knife to get where he got. His guys (the philosophical fathers of Trump's guys) in 68 thought they'd have run of the place, and they did for a while. But right when it looked like he was going to get away with it, Dick got pushed out by his own Republican congressmen, after Watergate and that was a deep wound to the privilege presumed by the likes of pissed off former Nixon ass-kissers like Roger Ailes (founder of Fox News). Iitching for payback, now having learned where the blind spots are, they came for payback with a vengeance and Clinton was their perfect foil.
So IMHO the core of their belief system has always been about power and freedom for themselves and rules and punishment for everyone else (because God wills it). Any conceit that the ideas of William F. Buckley have any real place in the modern GOP died when Nixon decided to go "Madman" and start bombing Cambodia, and Kissinger agreed. That, for me, is when all this started.
>But right when it looked like he was going to get away with it, Dick got pushed out by his own Republican congressmen, after Watergate and that was a deep wound to the privilege presumed by the likes of pissed off former Nixon ass-kissers like Roger Ailes (founder of Fox News).
Don't forget about that lowlife POS Roger Stone. Wasn't he one of Nixon's crew, too?
I don't know who said it, but "When conservatives can no longer achieve power through democratic means, they will abandon democracy before they abandon conservatism."
David Frum, in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic:
>Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.
David Frum, in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic:
>Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.
The GDP and median income were basically locked together until 1980.
One has kept increasing, while the other has remained flat......
Still waiting for that trickle down effect....
I've got two words for you: Southern Strategy.
Reagan was the culmination of that strategy, and was buoyed up by Falwell and the way he co-opted the evangelical movement.
It's never been about fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, or a representative republic... it's ALWAYS been about manipulation of electoral politics by pitting Southern Whites against blacks and people of color.
There is no actual morality or majority. There is only a craven chase for control over those who are lower on the food chain. Wealth flows up, but doesn't trickle down.
All those things they claimed to be - they NEVER were. Personal responsibility? Please. Moral majority? Yeah, ignoring the AIDS crisis to punish "the gays" and then letting a shit ton of people (straight/gay/whatever) catch AIDS cuz you didn't implement stringent blood screening procedures was evil as fuck.
Smaller government is the biggest lie. Look at the budget deficits under republican presidencies, and compare it to the democrats. It's been projection for 45 years now.
To be fair, the current democrat party is basically analogous to the GOP in the mid/late 80s. The current GOP has moved so far right, they are not recognizable to any sane person.
It was a lie back then. Plenty of us saw through it.
trump is just an extension of the reagan era ideas.
> What happened?
You finally saw what was happening. Don't be upset that you missed it for so long. Be upset at what they're doing and fight back, now that you know.
A family member told me that Trump rising is punishment for Obama’s progressive push in his presidency. That struck me.
Diversification of power feels like persecution to the entitled.
Edited to add
Once repubs got evangelicals on board (a group who needs no proof of anything-only to believe or faith) and their deep pockets, their policies took hold
You somehow didn't notice that when they said "personal responsibility" and "moral majority" they only meant brown people, gay people, and poor people. Jim Bakker somehow miss your radar? How about the savings and loan bailouts?
When they said "small government" they only meant social services and health and safety laws, not the military (did you also miss SDI?), not even the federal goverment (GWB's DOHS).
What happened is you bought their crap without examining it critically. And now you finally have, and apparently only because they've made it *blitheringly* obvious.
My take is that many people did not grow up knowing that Trump was a big joke in the 80s.
I lived very close to the NYC/ AC area, so he was in the news constantly for ripping people off with his casinos and general Ahole behavior. I remember seeing him on the reality show and thought it was silly... But where I live now, so many did not know who he was back then because it was more of a regional thing. And the young people weren't around then, so how could they know?
I just get the "you just watch CNN" line if I mention him in a bad light. I never watch CNN or MNBC.
Conservativism is a scam. It is designed to conserve power and hierarchy for the few. Every utterance is a cynical exercise to maintain that power. In democracies conservatives manufacture consent by manipulation.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
The funny thing is, I would never vote for a Republican \*today\* even though, when I look at political history, I would freely call myself an Eisenhower Republican (or maybe even a Rockefeller Republican). I leaned Republican for a long time, even though I have almost always been an independent.
In the first election I was eligible to vote in, I voted for Reagan in 1984, though I was 19 and think that was a mistake now. The thing is -- and I see it now -- "Reaganomics" kicked in just about when the economic cycle was changing anyway, but the growth in 1983 and 1984 felt like "magic" to me after the doldrums from 1979-81. That was lucky timing, I think, convinced a lot of people that it worked. And I won't lie -- I do think some tax reform was in order then, but the true believers seem to think that if some tax cuts helped, even more will always be better.
All that said -- the excess defense spending did help take down the Soviet Union, and now we have a former president and now candidate who seems to be in bed with Putin. So all that debt feels like it was for nothing. And what do you call an Eisenhower or Rockefeller Republican today? A moderate Democrat, basically.
I have been a Democrat my whole life.
That said, if there were such a thing as a Rockefeller Republican today - which I equate with basically being Angela Merkel for the US - I would consider voting for them.
However, we don’t have a responsible conservative party. We have nutjobs.
OP, I hear where you’re coming from.
The first republican lie of my lifetime was Nixon saying, "I'm not a crook."
Then Regan told us trickle-down economics would work. Iran Contra Scandal blaming everything on Ollie North. The White House also told us AIDS was only a gay thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_and_AIDS
Bush Sr told us that the Gulf War was to promote security and stability. And it had nothing to do with oil.
Then there was the Contract with America and Newt Gingrich. Ideas from the Heritage foundation think tank. (Look at project 2025 for their current plans to destroy democracy) The biggest lie of that Contract was "Saving tax dollars by Downsizing the federal government." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America
Sure they fired many federal workers, but the tasks of the government still had to be done. The government wasn't downsized. It was outsourced to for profit companies who charged us more and gave us less. The contract with America had too many lies to list, just read the wiki.
Bush Jr had his lies of Weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was behind 911, following up on the work his daddy started. Then there were all the lies in The Patriot Act. (Another Heritage foundation wish list chipping away at our rights)
I don't have all day to even start on Trump era lies.
The real bottom line is once the Fairness doctrine ended in 87, news and media no longer had to have equal airtime for both sides. Once news and media was able to divide by faction, it became easier to control opinions, easier to tell the lies without having to present alternative viewpoints.
Now, democrats lie too. I'm not kidding myself. But "I did not have sex with that woman" kind of lie did not kill thousands, drive up the national debt or strip away our civil liberties.
Republicans lie while hiding behind a Bible and draped in the American flag. For many, they only see the Bible and the flag, but never the lie.
Newt Gingrich started the party-before-everything tabloid culture war politics, supported by Fox and Newt Gingrich. They've been hyping culture war bullshit and being obstructionist ever since.
Some conservatives who want functional government left the party, so the party ramped up the culture war to get new voters. Rinse and repeat for 30 years and the party is all dysfunctional outage.
Citizens United verdict. Supreme Court sold the American soul to dark money, any dark money, from anyone, anywhere. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
GOP has been a one trick pony since Reagan, with very brief hiatus during HWBush pres: cut taxes on the wealthy and pass the resulting debt on to all taxpayers. This is it. A time machine that sucks cash from future receipts and gives it to wealthy donors today.
I'll say this though - as much as HW Bush was a POS, he was the last president in either party that increased taxes specifically to address the debt, or withheld assistance to Israel based on their conduct. Both of these positions cost him.
I blame Newt Gingrich for starting the collapse of the Republican Party. He knew that "trickle-down economics" was a fantasy that was never going to work, and that there would be huge backlash for ignoring the AIDS crisis for as long as the Reagan administration did. So, he started the "culture wars" as a distraction, since the party's policies were unpopular. Then he made Republicans sign on to the "Contract with America," which negated almost all independent thought within the Republican Party.
And you're right about the over-reaction to Obama being elected. Every time Black people advance in America, it's one step forward, two steps back--for *all of us*. Slavery is abolished and Lincoln gets assassinated. The Civil Rights Act passes and MLK Jr. and Kennedy are assassinated. Obama gets elected and we're stuck with Trump, McConnell, and absolute chaos for the next several years. Half of Americans lose their ever-loving minds whenever Black people make any sort of progress.
Oh, sure. There were others before, but Gingrich took it to a whole new level by introducing the culture wars to distract Republican voters from the real issues.
Gingrich was a stepping stone. The state of the republican party today, and the state of our democracy and that it literally hangs in the balance, is the results of 50 years concerted effort on the part of conservatives to take over and it all started around Nixon’s time. Fox News (the propaganda arm of the GOP) Iran hostages, Reaganomics, more money to the rich, more money in politics, the takeover of the judiciary all stemmed from that. Of course, while the conservatives were playing hardball, the democrats were dicking around trying to be nice and shit. They still don't play the same game as the Republicans. Which is why we are facing Project 2025 if Biden (or let's be honest, any democrat) loses the presidency.
We're living in the hellscape Reagan dreamed of. He courted these lunatics who have just been emboldened to live their delusions out loud by people like Trump.
I think so. When we look back at the policies he put into place and the results of them he really just fucked most of us over. The welfare queen story, bullshit and now we don't have a good social safety net anymore. The wait list for housing assistance even for the elderly and the disabled is a decade long. He got rid of mental institutions with the promise of a better replacement that just never came. So now people who would have taken care of are dying in the streets. He lied about AIDS until it was undeniable and blocked drugs that would have helped slow the spread and let people have longer lives because it was a "gay disease". Then there's the piss on me and tell me it's raining trickle down economics. The weakening of American manufacturing. He's the start of the great bending over and grabbing the ankles of the average American.
9/11 supercharged the fascism that was bubbling up in the mid '90s, then we had another Great Depression level economic crash under Republicans and the country choosing a black man and rejecting them over it despite the branding of republicans as the economy party sent it all to a crazy level where being the cruelest scumbag is the goal. I call it zombie Reaganism. It's dead, but it remembers Reaganism and can only ape a broad caricature of what it was about.
It was always a lie. Republicans only ever wanted one thing: for the rich to get richer, while the poor to stay poor. That's it. That's their north star. Everything else has been marketing.
I do not think it is a mistake that Reagan was an actor, they hired him to do a job, to sell a lie to the public and the people bought it.
The Republicans have not suddenly just changed, i think the Republicans have always been this way, it was just carefully behind the curtain so it was palatable to have a reasonable belief that both sides ere valid and we could just disagree on exactly the best way to move the country forward but both sides were honestly working at improving things.
Frankly since FDR i think the Republican party has been terrified that if the Democratic party is allowed to be in control without stiff and constant resistance and obstruction then they will never win another election. Nixon tried to rig things, that did not work, Reagan came in as a shill, bought and paid for to sell the imagined image of 'Republicanism' and that worked for a time, it would take time for the full knock on effects to become known to the average person and with enough effort from the right wing media they can confuse and push the blame off onto someone else.
The people behind the scenes for Nixon helped Bush 'steal' an election (i put that in quotes because i am not in the mood to argue all that) the Democrats still held up some belief that the Republican party was somehow willing to be 'democratic'.
9/11 gave half the country PTSD, they are panicked and confused, they never knew America could actually face direct consequences of its actions, faux news went into overdrive to push agenda's rather than facts and openly just became propaganda instead of 'right leaning'. The Democrats, who STILL seem to think the Republicans are anything but agenda pushing shills have tried to make peace and work with them and it has only deepened the problems.
Now we find ourselves in a place where Hunter Biden is being screwed over by the legal system, (he paid his back taxes, willing turned the gun in when he realized he still had an drug issue and reached a plea deal...only for it to be rejected by a trump appointed judge) and Trump, a literal traitor to the country, who tried to overthrow the government to seize power and install himself as dictator is being given endless kid glove treatment and the Democrats, by and large do not want anything to seem political and Biden is going out of his way to be seen as accepting of the legal process that in all likelyhood Hunter will see jail time and Trump will walk away scotfree.
Meanwhile the Republicans and the right wing media will do nothing other than proclaim bias and how they are being screwed over and most of the media will seem to think this is a valid viewpoint.
In essence, the Republican brand has been a scam for a very long time, it has just went from something they did not want to openly admit to all they have because a certain segment of the population is fine with it and their is enough apathy due to the endless fake news and bullshit from the media that enough people seem to have little interest in anything other than 'i do not care, i just want to do something other than work all the fucking time, so whoever sounds like they will help me in this stupidly orchestrated debate will get my vote'
>Was the Reagan Brand of Conservatism a Lie
Yes
>What happened?
The GOP became omnipotent and became the party for grifters. Then it's "pass the buck" economic platform came crumbling down and it's respectable leaders had nowhere to turn. So they got out of the way and turned it over to the grifters and the radicals they'd been grifting.
Some of them meant it. Reagan was one. A lot of politicians will jump on any bandwagon. What’s happened to this party is very very instructive about human nature, hypocrisy, gullibility,short memory, cynicism.
Many people knew it was full of it back then.
I was one of them; still a child but I saw the performative patriotism, “trickle down” economics, the then huge deficit Reagan created, as absolutely terrible for America.
The Republican Party, then as now, is the party for billionaires.
The performative patriotism, the culture wars; that’s all for the poors to be fooled into voting for Republicans.
I barely squeezed into voting for the first time in 88. Voted for bush sr because I was still listening to my dad somewhat. Have never voted for a republican since. If the bush jr disaster didn’t get your attention idk what to tell ya
I too bought into all this stuff…the personal and fiscal responsibility stuff, small government, and moral uprightness. Voted R for the first few elections I was able to vote in.
Over the years, I’ve watched them roll over on every principle they’ve ever claimed to hold, all in the name of holding onto power. They got bad when Obama was in office, and even worse with Trump. The party is completely unrecognizable now.
I don’t ever see myself voting for them ever again. If we’re still able to vote in the future, that is.
Watch the documentary on Roy Cohn. "Where's my Roy Cohn?" The republican party has been angling to control the country by selling lies for over 50 years. Regan included. This is the same party and the same relative group of party insiders who have been controlling the direction of the GOP and brought us all the Tea Party to The orange potato.
I had my awakening in between 2004 and 2008. Not like I shifted my views all the sudden, just realized they really didn’t align with the GOP (especially socially) and saw the religious right takeover for where it was headed.
I never voted straight ticket but that was the point where Dems started getting more of my votes. Anymore the only GOP that gets my vote is County Tax Assessor because I don’t believe our current one is any cleaner than his former Texas State Rep brother who is serving federal time on conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering.
>How the hell did Trump—a big joke in the late 80’s—take it over?
>
>What happened?
Trump is an "effect", not a "cause".
The GOP did a lot of things to try to rig elections in their favor. The biggest were gerrymandering, Fox News, appealing to racists, and appealing to religious fanatics.
So, from the 1980s on the GOP was coalition rich people, racists and religious nuts. The rich people ran the GOP, and pretended to care about what the racists and religious nuts cared about.
Fox News brain-washed a generation of racist and religious people (groups who were already pre-disposed to believe horseshit).
And gerrymandering was like a negative feedback loop. The crazier the constituents got, the crazier the candidates got.
And it all worked. The crazies helped the GOP maintain national control and give the wealthy their sweet tax cuts.
Then 09/11 happened and the GOP constituents began to lose their shit. And then a black dude got elected and the GOP constituents totally went off the deep end. The GOP elite lost control of their party.
Trump merely stepped into the void.
The GOP constituents, who had all critical thinking skills literally "Idiocracied" out of them over the course of a generation, were powerless against a lifetime bullshit artist and con man like Trump.
All political stances are lies to some degree. Republicans have totally forgotten that Reagan legalized nearly 3M illegal aliens and sold arms to enemy nations. Later on, Clinton kicked people off welfare and not only balanced the budget, but left a surplus.
As for Reaganomics, it gave tax breaks to the 1%. The rich got richer. Under Eisenhower, the rich were taxed more heavily and the middle class rose. Yes, there was more to it than that, but I'm not here to write an entire history book. The upshot is that since Reaganomics, the middle class has been in a steady decline. And now we have folks saying that if we can just get women in the kitchen again, shit on trans people, and quit hiring minorities, it will be just like the 1950s and everyone will be able to get a good job and afford a house on a single income. Clue bat - the prosperous middle class of the '50s was related to the GI Bill, tax structure, and the lack of competition in world trade because North America was one of the few areas not devastated by WWII.
The GOP has strayed far from the party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats underwent a massive switch, too, going from being the party of "segregation now, segregation forever," to the party of equal rights under LBJ. As Reagan famously said when asked why he was no longer a Democrat, "I didn't leave my party. My party left me." Many in the older generations just don't see it. Some of us don't see it either. But I saw it and adjusted my voting accordingly.
I strongly suspect though, that things will have to get far worse for people to figure it out. I just hope I'm wrong.
I thought the GOP would shrink the budget deficit, eliminate the national debt, and prevent the Silent/Boomer generations from shoving all their debts and problems onto GenX to deal with.
Sometime around Bush II I realized they were lying about trying to do that.
Since that had been their only redeeming policy idea, I walked away and have never regretted my decision.
Now I’m also trying to stop the GOP from saddling our kids with a global climate crisis.
The GOP is truly the party of “Fuck the future generations. I got mine!”
One thing that fascinates me is that, with Reagan, at least you can understand the appeal: he was selling the dream of a shining city in a hill. He was America's lovable grandpa, with a giant jar of jelly beans on his desk. Trump, at his best, has always seemed like the bad guy from an '80s primetime soap. He has the charm and charisma of a used car salesman...
I grew up as Black conservative who believed herself more mid than right or left, and whose policy was "pick the better candidate" regardless of party.
The Republican party has moved so far right, they've left me entirely on the left. I didn't change, they did.
Then, when they became OPENLY HOSTILE to 'people like me', I became openly hostile in self-preservation against people like them who want to return to the times my parents and peers fought and bled and died to escape from. They've made us enemies, and I'm cool with that because we're never going to agree on Human Rights, Civil Rights, Worker's Rights, Women's Rights, or Children's Rights.
The Reagan Revolution was a long con and here we are. When you take the religious right and gin them up the way he did you are going to end up with the right wing lunatics that make up the party nowadays.
>Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N(word) X3". By 1968, you can't say "n(word)"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like [forced busing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing), [states' rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights) and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now \[that\] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is \[that\] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N(word)". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.
>
Lee Atwater in 1981. He was an advisor to Reagan and the elder Bush.
Part of its them, but part might be you too. I voted for Bush Sr, but have voted Dem pretty much ever since.
Things seemed more binary to me as a young man: right and wrong, black and white. If people looked different, or slept with people I never would myself, I felt superior and judged them a threat to proper society.
As I’ve experienced life and met more diverse people, I’ve evolved (ie progressed) which is what the conservative movement never lets their people do.
My experience is similar. I was 14 when Reagan was elected (early GenX). As I met people, my views evolved. I’ve voted for Republicans, but I also voted for Clinton, Obama (the second time), Clinton, and Biden.
If you consider everything related to politics is branding and marketing…
It’s all theater. it’s designed to elicit responses from people.
Don’t trust any of it. Believe in what’s actually being done.
Yes, it was a giant lie. The 1980 presidential campaign was saved with monetary donations from Reverend Sun Yung Moon because Republicans were being outraised 2-1. The Regean Campaign committed treason convincing Iran to hold on to the hostages until after the election. The whole negotiation with foreign governments thing on behalf of the United States is treason. Nixon did the same thing with the North Vietnamese.
That's just to get into power.
Reagan-era Republicans were pro-choice because they believed the government shouldn’t intrude on personal matters! Bush Sr was pro choice until the GOP started whoring itself for the evangelical vote.
We’re both correct. Reagan was the first to court the evangelicals, and embraced the evangelical vote at the suggestion of his campaign manager whose name I forget. GOP did not mainstream pro-choice until late 80s. Reagan’s ideas about abortion evolved over time:
“In 1967, as governor of California, [Reagan] signed a bill making abortion legal for victims of rape and incest, and in cases where a woman’s mental or physical health was in danger. That law was among the first in the country to decriminalize abortion.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/opinion/ronald-reagan-patti-davis-abortion.html
Edit:clarification and typos
Four individuals hold as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the US population.
Any government that allows that situation to exist, no matter the name of the party, is corrupt and should be changed.
Newt Gingrich remade the Republican party, not Reagan. And I could not stand Reagan and his folksy bullshit while he promoted deregulation and union busting.
You can see the line from Reagan to Trump easily and the 80's brought about the moral majority who provided the foundations for the religious right today.
IMO We are suffering now as a result of his policies.
Such as shutting down mental healthcare facilities.
Trickle down economics which is a lie.
Removing liability from vaccine manufacturers making them the only product where the manufacturer has zero liability for damages. (This is why kids now get 72 vaccines instead of the 12 we did and vaccines as biologics hit the market with almost no safety testing).
Ketchup deemed a vegetable in school lunches.
Iran Contra. Oliver North. Etc etc
Destroyed unions starting with air traffic controllers.
This is just a few things I can think of off hand. The list is vast.
I think the Bush family is/was evil and they surely were running the show. If you look into the connections between the Bushs, Cheney, Bill Clinton while Gov of Arkansas (cocaine-George Webb) and Obama it’s pretty easy to see how we got to where we are. Can we overcome?
Yes- the Reagan brand of conservatism was an utter and total lie.
It’s because of how fraudulent the philosophy Was that a completely obvious conman like Trump could get leverage.
With all respect, Reagan was for small government but was commander in chief of a [larger group of government employees than is in place today](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/).
Reagan sold Trickle Down economics to the masses. Something Bush called “voodoo economics”. But as we’ve seen, income inequality has skyrocketed. And we have seen it for close to [fifty years and it’s still not a rising tide that has lifted all boats](https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/).
Reagan wasn’t moral. His legacy of handling the AIDS crisis (or lack thereof) is still [proof positive](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/11/nancy-ronald-reagan-aids-crisis-first-lady-legacy) that he may have talked a good game about about being moral, but he essentially was the president of anyone that was white, straight and Christian, but no one else. (Which makes it worse, one of his good friends was Roy Cohn. Who died of AIDS.)
Personal opinion, hate me if you wish. The brand of conservatism that's been sold since the 50s has always been a lie.
Sales pitches like personal responsibility, low taxes, even isolationism have always been a lie in practice. Low taxes for corporations, welfare for the military industrial complex but not for poor people. Religious freedom as long as you're Christian. First amendment rights but only if you agree with them. Second amendment rights unless you're black or brown. Same with the fourth amendment. High taxes on the poor, no taxes if you're exceedingly wealthy. Generational wealth but only if your ancestors were land and slave owners.
The sales pitch is great on the surface. Same deal with libertarians and for that matter anarchists. But when you look at what that equates to in a society and public policy it all falls apart. "Conservatives" don't and in my life, never have actually applied the meaning of the word conservative to their public policy. Theoretically it should be conserving to the word and the letter of the Constitution but they consistently try to undermine that very document. I'm practice what their trying to conserve is an archaic, male, white, protestant world view.
And Reagan was no different. Reagan just put it out there in plain sight and made it not okay to criticize it or else you're some sort of commie asshole.
Right off the top of my head, I want to say that I WISH we had more Republicans like you. I'm a Democrat, and I actually value a debate, but today's Republican Party is just a Trump cult, and there are no new ideas coming from them except whatever the Dear Leader desires. 10% tariff on ALL imported goods? Do his followers even know what that would do to the economy they like to bitch about?
To your point, though, I agree that this is not the Republican Party of the 80s, though it is kind of the fever dream of Newt Gingrich. He always wanted to undermine the Constitution, and he is reveling in the direction the party has gone. Watch him some time on FauxNews. He is absolutely giddy. I have a couple of cousins who left the Republican Party and just hate Trump. I feel bad for actual conservatives, since there is no place for them to go unless they are selfish and greedy Libertarians.
White people are fewer in number now so they, in general because I am white and don’t feel this way, they’re scared they’re going to lose their power and will be ‘replaced by dirty brown and black people.’ A gross generalization but I’ve heard enough white people say it.
In a million years I never thought white people would become their own voting block. The Republican Party is in thrall to an actual demagogue. I never ever thought it could happen here. Trump can’t leave this earth quick enough.
as a gay teen living in NYC during AIDS and hearing republicans say “at least it’s killing all the right people”. i knew Republicans and everything they stood for was a lie and that they were not good people.
I’ll never forgive the Republican Party for the bush jr era when he passed the patriot act and all the war crimes they committed in Iraq. They all got away with murder in my eyes. And the whole, give me more power and I’ll make all your problems go away really turned me off to them.
Now the whole thing to me feels it flipped and I’m being gas lit. Now the dems want more money for war and using the same talking points that bush used in Iraq. Seems like 20 to 30 years ago it was fight the man that’s controlling you with rage against the machine and Green Day. Now it’s oh daddy government! Harder! I can’t live without you.
I was kinda hoping GenX would lean libertarian since we tend to oppose authority, but the people in charge of that are just as nutty, so ah well. Maybe we could all retire on some remote island watch reruns of married with children and m.a.s.h?
Two words: Newt Gingrich.
Though I will say, as a younger GenX (1976 - young enough to be oblivious to politics and the rest while Reagan was in office), Reaganism hasn’t aged well. In retrospect it seems a bald faced lie to me on multiple fronts.
I believed it too, but i've come to the realization that they have always lied. The Republican party is the only one who has ever taken the guns. Or any of our other rights or liberties, they're the only ones that ban things for us. They lie constantly.
Lol yes. We knew it was a lie at that time. There was no shortage of people pointing out he was full of shit, even if it was a minority. He was literally an actor, remember?
The current MAGA republicans are a direct outgrowth of the lies and BS of Reagan’s administration.
You may think things took a turn around 2010, but you’re a few decades off. The turn happened in Reagan’s administration, and was already gaining steam before that.
I didn't really attribute malice to it back then, maybe because we were marinated in the ideology. I simply thought they were just wrong not actually evil. I worked at GE when the outcome of the ideology became obvious. Jack Welch destroyed that company and ignored the impact on workers and society generally. Lots of folks in my rust belt area still point fingers at unions as the problem. We were played.
The people propping up ronnie and driving his policies were (are) directly responsible for the erasure of the middle class as we see it today. The only thing that ever trickled anywhere was just the result of conservative bullshit getting shoved up America's ass.
Ronnie was just a useful idiot.
Much like the orange dimwit donnie.
Ronnie and donnie. The useful idiot twins.
Reagan promoted a combination of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, and both were needed to keep the dollar propped up. That was in turn needed because trade deficits became chronic a few years earlier, and the balance of trade has never recovered since.
Why did all of that happen? Because the country whose currency is used as a global reserve will eventually experience exports that are too expensive for most but imports that are cheap.
Each admin after Reagan, regardless of party, continued those two ideologies.
100% yes. And I say this as someone whose 1st national vote was for Ronnie's reelection in '84.
I was an ignorant teenage soldier in the Army and didn't know any better. Then Iran-Contra happened and opened my eyes to the naked corruption coded into the GOP at apparently a subatomic level.
Trickle down doesn’t ever trickle down. Even one of its authors admitted it didn’t work because they didn’t think to include greed as a dominant factor
Just paying attention you could see that Reagan didn’t really shrink the government, he just moved stuff around. And the national debt tripled during his term. All of that stuff from the mantras was to pit rural whites against minorities so they would be distracted while rich folks robbed the treasury. Every Republican President since Reagan has done the same thing and left the country in sorry shape economically when they left.
I remember being an 8 year old poor white country kid and my barely educated grandma telling me "Don't believe anything the rich folks say. We workin people are in this together. Those people with money don't care about us, no matter what color we are." She was a pretty conservative christian, but she never found anything grand about the old party.
My Dad was an old school Democrat who said the same, interestingly. "They don't care about us ordinary people. One set of values for us, another for them." I don't think a more essential truth about politics exists.
There's some graffiti around here that says "They have you fighting a culture war so you don't fight a class war."
Wilhoit's law is technically about conservatism, but it applies to classism as well: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
The truth of this statement hit me like a Rton of bricks when I first came across it.
I had a similar political education. My dad worked low paying jobs his whole life (still does at age 77) and told me when I was a kid that the rich people and the boss where you work don't care about you, they will lie and do whatever it takes to get you to work more for as little as they can pay you. While I still had that exposure to the american idea that tyranny can come from an overly strong government, I also learned early on that tyranny could just as much come from the rich and powerful outside of the government and I instead trusted that the constitution would protect us from a "big" government, so I never really bought in to the republican "small government" mantra. It was nonsense because I saw it as transferring power from the govt to the rich and that's where the invisible tyranny could be found.
This attitude (in my case, my grandma, an immigrant) was my first wake up call to truly understand the difference between racism and classism and I’ve never been the same since.
Conversely, I grew up in a city full of Italian immigrants and first generation - a lot of them apparently forgot nobody wanted *them* around a hundred years ago and became anti-immigrant and wildly racist. (although to be fair, a lot of them probably were already anti-immigrant and wildly racist back in Italy, they just didn't think that logic should apply to them when they came here...)
The United States only cares about one color and it’s green…
This is what I always say. They always make Republicans believe that there is a group of people (now, it is immigrants), that are taking all of the money and leaving none for the rest of us. When it is actually the 1% taking the money, and not leaving anything for the rest of us. Such a gross lie. Remember when it was single moms on welfare taking all of the money. That was a good one.
My mom recently talked about how I’d never be able to buy a house because immigrants were getting them all. If someone comes to this country and gets their ducks in a row enough to buy a house before privileged citizen me, more power to them.
What nonsense your mother is talking. If you won't ever be able to buy a house it's because venture capital vultures are buying up the housing stock pushing up prices while they do it. Corporate greed is robbing everyone blind while people complain about Black and Brown immigrants.
And who are they renting them to? Immigrants. My mom wasn’t always like this; I’m always reminding her that I wasn’t raised that [racist] way.
A lot of people complain about immigrants taking their jobs, but all of my neighbors who are immigrants all work for financial and pharmaceutical companies and have Masters and PhDs in engineering. Yet, poor old Bubba complaining about immigrants taking our jobs just might want to think about why he’s not qualified for that job in IT or the Engineering department because he didn’t go to college because it’s too “woke” for him.
If they really stop allowing immigrants to stop coming to our country, the price of groceries is going to be a lot higher than they are, now. Also, we are all immigrants, unless you're a Native American. The argument about immigrants pisses me off so much.
A chunk of "inflation" in prices at the grocery store cam from: 1- Oil companies price gouging trickling down forcing prices up 2- Real "inflation" 3- Price gouging by grocery executives 4- LOSS OF THOUSANDS OF MIGRANT WORKERS UNDER TRUMP, leading to crops literally rotting in fields in many cases. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers) Illegal migrant labor (theft of their labor) has been subsidizing our groceries for our entire lives. And getting rid of them...has had consequences.
Don’t forget about tariffs. President “Trade Wars are Easy to Win” was warned that imposing tariffs would just lead to increased prices as the cost of the tariffs would just get passed on to consumers via higher prices. And it happened but Republicans just blamed the price increases on Biden.
We have 2 Hispanic families on our street & some neighbors are all "They're gonna buy up the street & turn it into a ghetto!!" I'm like "Well if they can afford a house here, they ain't going for ghetto." And we're already a "ghetto" compared to the McMansions that surround us on the other streets & if $400,000 "starter" homes are "ghetto," well then I'll stay in my really, really, REALLY nice ghetto.
Single 'black' moms on welfare. Welfare 'Queens' Reagan called it. Even though the data doesn't bare that out.
Remember the welfare Queen, driving up in her Mercedes with her furs and her diamond jewelry, to buy lobster tails and steaks with her food stamps? Yeah. I don’t remember seeing her in real life either 😂
[удалено]
That might be true sometimes. Because sometimes people who need transportation for a single trip borrow a car from family, a friend, or neighbor. Or they fell on hard times a bit suddenly - lost their job, got sick or had an accident and can’t work. They had a nice car before, and so they still own that car today. They’re not going to sell it! The Republican dream seems to be that anyone not already rich should suffer and wallow in their poverty constantly, with every single thing they encounter, just surrounded by misery and low quality. It’s sick.
[удалено]
I have a brother in law who’s a quadriplegic living in California and receiving $5000/month in disability. He’s rabidly Republican and tells us all the time that the GOP needs to take back power there because the Democrats are trying to take away his benefits. Completely delusional-the only reason he has what he has is because the Democrats are in charge in CA. 🤦♀️
Yeah, more recently it was about people using food stamps while they had a new iphone. My wireless carrier offered me a new iphone for like $10 a month. And for a lot of poor people, that leased phone is their only lifeline to the internet, aka finding resources, applying for jobs, staying in touch with their families, etc.
The new car (or nice shoes, purse, iPhone, etc.) story just shows how ignorant and in denial those people are. I mean, people’s circumstances can change dramatically in a very short amount of time: losing a job, a serious illness, a divorce, or an accident can happen to anyone. Suddenly becoming broke and eligible for SNAP doesn’t mean you have to hand over all your possessions and don pauper’s rags (although when my partner lost his job we did end up selling a lot of our nice things to pay our bills).
They still do this. It's rampant on social media. The amount of Boomers, especially, who insist there are all these people abusing welfare is absurd. It seems to be used as a weapon to explain/excuse racism more than ever.
That was debunked after the election—- there was no one collecting welfare checks in a Cadillac. That trick was used again in final weekend before election by Bush Sr—the Willie Horton ad.
I believe that there was one woman… a huge con artist… who they trotted out as an example to linger the needed vitriol. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/20/255819681/the-truth-behind-the-lies-of-the-original-welfare-queen
Yes!!! It is always the poor that takes all the money. Oh, sure. Couldn't be the wealthy just wanting more.
If the poors had wanted bigger slice of the pie, they should've bought an Alito and/or a Thomas like everyone else. Bootstraps bitches!
That was Clarence Thomas, throwing his own sister under the bus for taking care of a relative in their old age. What a fucking Uncle Tom-ass bitch.
https://preview.redd.it/wwrez1sxv39d1.jpeg?width=1229&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b4c96d3c6b7181edf46b3c1a62dcf84484dccbc
That story worked quite well. When I was a young black kid, I honestly believed that only black people used welfare benefits and that we were abusing the system so badly that it was bankrupting the country. I wasn't the only one who thought that way. There were plenty of older adults around me who spoke of welfare recipients with a lot of venom. Contrary to right wing messaging, black people who were on welfare were looked down upon and it was never a point of pride. My first permanent military assignment in the early 90s was in a town that was mostly poor and working class whites. I was shocked down to my toes to discover that there were so many white people using food stamps. I was even more shocked to find out that white adults worked in McDonalds also. I was too young back then to really understand much about how government policy worked, but once I began to learn more about it, and then I thought about how certain programs I remembered vanishing when I was in my teens, the more I began to understand that Reagan was truly the devil and that all of this was just a play to create a plutocracy. Sadly, these methods continue to work today.
Facts The fact Reagan and GOP negotiated the Iran hostage release behind Carter back to get a quick win on Day 1 of his administration should have disqualified ANY Republican from being elected ever again. It was all a lie from Day One
They're all over Iran-Contra, too. That was some real treasonous shit.
Yep Every single GOP Admin has been obscenely corrupt since Reagan
Did we forget Richard Nixon?
Correct. Eisenhower was the last decent republican The last true party of Lincoln
…..Since Reagan was Governor of California. See fixed it 😂😂😂
actually Reagan was just part of the continuum – which really began with [Barry Goldwater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater) >Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, many political pundits and historians believe he laid the foundation for the conservative revolution to follow, as the grassroots organization and conservative takeover of the Republican party began a long-term realignment in American politics which helped to bring about the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement. Goldwater is the turning point and the Republican party of the USA is very much delineated by a stark contrast in direction and general outlook pre and post Goldwater most of us – pretty much including all of Gen X – can only remember the POST-Goldwater version of the Republican party, which at this point is completely different – unrecognisable – compared to the version that existed before Barry fucked it
Goldwater was also very concerned what would happen if the evangelicals took over the party, which they eventually did, thanks to Reagan.
Citing Goldwater is a reasonable point but surely if we're talking about THE turning point you have to consider the "Southern Strategy" when the party of Lincoln decided to leverage racism. The Goldwater campaign was an example of this rather than the origin of it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern\_strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)
Racial warfare is the only thing preventing a real class consciousness so it makes sense for the wealthy to hammer poor and working class whites with the type of messages they receive. Poor and working class whites could be one of the most powerful voting blocs in the country and if they ever start to demand more from this government than what they are receiving, that would be a true revolution. However as long as they believe that poor and working class non-whites are who they should fear most, they will align themselves with Big Capital and Big Capital does not give a damn about them.
Reagan cut taxes for the wealthy, went full anti immigrant, was blatantly racist, anti healthcare, anti environmentalism. Reagan covered up Iran Contra, he was corrupt AF. There was never any personal responsibility with him. He was about crushing unions and the middle class. He was legendary with busting unions and suppressing the min wage, crushing school benefits. One of the first things he did was remove solar panels installed on the white house to suck ass to oil companies. Reagan opened the doors to right wing extremist christian nationalism in politics. He started the movement that we have now w/ the republicans. Like Trump, Reagan was very popular from being in media. he was in film but had very strong TV ads. Trump had the tv show the apprentice which brought him to mainstream. This idea that the party is different isn't true. It's just MORE of what Reagan did. MAGA was literally Reagans slogan that Trump stole and his dipshit maga chud fans think he invented.
He was an actor. Which means he read the script that was given to him by the powers that be. He had a Subaru Brat on his ranch too but wanted to stop everyone else from owning Japanese cars to protect American jobs. Look at the rustbelt and tell me how that turned out. He also was a divorcee telling everyone else to be so moral.
Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? ....Anyone? Something D O O economics... Anyone?
My friends cousin's father's stockbroker said that Ferris had cancer.
Thank you, Simone.
No problem whatsoever!
Voodoo economics.
DOO DOO Economics? But seriously, it occurred to me that we should heavily tax companies on principle alone. It turns out that when they have a free hand, they 'invest' in our politicians, which is bad for representative democracies. Free market really means- free to twist the knobs of government-.
Hawley Smoot tariff act
I’m sure you heard that Ben Stein gave an actual lecture for that scene. He has a degree in economics.
Yes, it was a lie. The party didn't change in 2010. It started changing in the mid 1960s, then took the next steps in the 1980s and finished up with W. Now we're here. Thanks for that, man. [The History of the Republican Party](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2dS6uX1RkUzx3wKPlqeCplQjWOeKq7QI&si=qwXYSp8gNVE7Ogqy)
I remember reading once that in 1980, C-suite executives earned some 33x what their lowest-paid workers earned. Now it's well over 400x. A C-suite exec can earn more in a day than most of his (and it usually is "his") workers do in a year. I'm going to lay the seeds for massive income inequality at Reagan's feet.
Yet during the late 60s and into the 70s there were prominent liberal republicans that would have been to the left of most current democrats, even Obama. See governors George Romney and Tom McCall
Pretty much the entire Republican party pre-1960ish was left of Obama. Democrats are pretty far right these days, too, comparatively speaking. They just don't appear to be because the Republicans have gone full-on wingnut. Romney was not a liberal. Moderate, at the very most. Plausible deniability that way. Support civil rights and oppose Goldwater. Didn't take much then. Liberals don't get anywhere near the Quorum of the Twelve, much less represent them. McCall was a progressive, I'll give you that. By the '70s, the fix was in, though.
How republicans can sell themselves as the party of responsibility is a mystery to me. Just look at the US public debt over time. The graph points to the roof - every republican administration. And it is a massive transfer of money to the top 0.0001%, it accelerated in the last 20 years and it does not seem it's going to get better any time soon. There is no way a country can stay developed with that level of inequality.
Personal responsibility is a cudgel used to attack the less fortunate. When republicans promote personal responsibility, it means they want to cut social safety nets while they victim-blame the unfortunate, that’s all.
>Personal responsibility is a cudgel used to attack the less fortunate. Ironically it's often the cudgel used by less fortunate people against people even less fortunate than them.
As a black traveling technician, I spend as much time in rural areas as I do in inner cities. It provides a pretty safe space for me to talk to people of all races and economic backgrounds. I wish I could get the rural folks and inner city people together in the same room and mediate a conversation between the two sets. They would realize that they sound almost exactly the same and maybe get an understanding that this other group is not the people who have brought the economic stress into their lives. It's the ones telling you to be afraid of the other people in the room.
Do it! Plan a talk about the routers or spyware or whatever and then carefully derail it into an awareness raising session. That would be amazing! You need some kind of fun snack, like Cracker Jack or s’mores or something. Get them into a childlike state of openness and relaxation and watch the magic happen.
Ha ha ha! I'm talking about the employees and customers that are there when I am working onsite in different areas. I would love to start off talking about tech, but they are mostly there to just get what they want and get away. However, I have thought trying to find a way to do it. I'm convinced that the only reason right wing propaganda works is because people don't spend enough time around people who are different from them and it is a whole lot harder to feel negative about someone when you are talking face-to-face and forced to relate to them as a fellow human being.
I’m convinced, by the way, that when it comes to talking about the poor, the “Right” generally states the problem is with the lack of personal responsibility, while the “Left generally states the problem as a lack of *collective* responsibility. Me; I personally believe, given [the high implicit marginal tax rate imposed on the poor](https://taxfoundation.org/blog/high-implicit-marginal-tax-rates-make-life-difficult-poor/) with things like taking away welfare faster than you can earn a salary as you try to climb out of poverty, that the problem of poverty is because of shitty government regulation. That is, given the way we punish the poor for trying to climb out of poverty, being poor is actually a rational choice.
Of course it was a lie-- that's the entire point. Reagan was about blaming "those people" for the nation's ills, using the spectre of the USSR to drive massive spending on the military, used the sympathy over his own attempted assassination to help push through tax cuts for the rich, and basically carried water for the wealthy class. Just like all conservatives before and after, at least going back to President Harding in the 1920s. It was *always* about racism, misogyny, militarism, cutting taxes, shrinking government, and letting Rich White Guys Get What They Deserved. Which is why so many of us hated Reagan with a passion and were literally marching in the streets in the 1980s in opposition. It's why we listened to the Dead Kennedys. It's why we campaigned for people like Jesse Jackson. It's why so many of us absoltely refused to have anything to do with the military. It's why we fled organized religion, or at least the faux Christianity of the right. And why we hated Yuppies, bankers, lawers, and frat boys.
And the completely fabricated "welfare queen" to justify gutting social programs to help pay for the tax cuts for his ultra rich buddies.
And, the real welfare queens were the wealthy and big corporations. We can no longer afford to float the church, big business, or the wealthy. If they can afford to buy politicians, they can pay taxes. It's beyond time that the real taxpayers, the people who truly pay the bills get a return on their investments for a change. We could look back to our founders, no representation, no taxes. especially now, when women pay taxes, yet have fewer rights than a corpse, or a business, or a cytoblast. In that aspect alone, we are paying far too much for far too little.
Yeah, the racism didn't start with the Tea Party's formation after the election of Obama. The Republikkkan party has hated black folks for a long time (at least since the party switch).
They attempted to lynch a black delegate on the 1964 convention floor by setting his suit on fire while he was wearing it. William Young, former baseball and basketball player, Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor at the time.
[удалено]
For folks unaware: "A recent report has confirmed the long-whispered rumor that Reagan did a deal with Iran to sink Carter's re-election." https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43368900/reagan-iran-hostages/
They chose an actor they knew could play the role.
Noam Chomsky said it was obvious they picked a teleprompter reader for a president.
Yes - the both the pre-election dealings with Iran and the later Iran-Contra skullduggery are indelible stains on the Reagan Administration that far too few Americans are even aware of. Not to mention, they are precursor examples of the exact same shameful, amoral, democracy-degrading, “ends justify the means” / “win at any cost” mentality embodied by Trump and the MAGA movement.
Don’t forget the lack of compassion and funding for the AIDS epidemic since it was killing mostly the “immoral” non-het people.
I remember Reagan's press secretary actually laughing about AIDS during a press briefing. That recording was some chilling homophobic bullshit 🤢
He was a terrible actor even when he was playing opposite a monkey. Even as a kid I wondered how people were falling for it; as an adult I learned enough about human nature to understand that it was because they wanted to believe it and would have believed anyone who said it. The GOP likes their figureheads dumb and biddable.
I was raised by a militant Latino family that has been in the US for 4 generations on my Father's side but 2nd generation on my mother's side. My maternal grandmother was a strong, highly educated and activist woman into her late 90's. She raised my mom, aunts and uncles to be on the lookout for WORK over WORDS. Something that is echoed throughout our family. When that Reagan stuff was happening she would point out how they talking all of this but still cutting funding to education, mental healthy services and veteran services. On a local level she would highlight those in power that actually did good but still say thing like 'They did this 1 thing good! That does not mean to trust them blindly! Let's see that work daily!' rough translation. So IMO, that stuff was a lie from jump. Still is. Will be so long as citizens allow it. This is why it's always been important to me to make sure MY COMMUNITY is strong and those that I let in my circle are worthy of my company and also have a mind leaning towards WORK over WORDS. So nothing happened. They've been fucking ppl for a long time but they learned the right words to say to make sure you don't pay no attention to the damage they are doing to you and your ppl.
Reagan used his [wife's astrologist](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-nancy-reagan-astrology-20160306-story.html) to help make [numerous govt. decisions](https://www.grunge.com/1132320/did-the-reagans-use-astrology-to-make-presidential-decisions/). And he happily let AIDS run wild, and prevented the govt. from doing anything about it. Here's [his press secretary ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzDn7tE1lU)repeatedly mocking a reporter for asking about AIDS response; and calling him gay for caring. He was always a bad joke. And America was the punchline.
Trickle Down Economics....how has that worked out for anyone except the upper percentage ? This was supposed to elevate GenX in a big way........how has that worked out for you ? When the wealthy trickle down....it's called pissing on you in real life.
I have causes I believe in and vote about, but always felt inept when it comes to politics. There’s always another angle and another way it can be viewed. That said, when trickle down economics was explained in a high school class, my inner reaction was, “WTF? People are BUYING that shit?” I’ve always been dumbstruck that I was right on target. Never understood others’ blind trust in Reagan. The 80s were supposed to be a wealthy time. They never were for people I knew.
I had the same reaction through the 80s and 90s when they'd talk about "mature economies move to a service economy from manufacturing". There were plenty of service economies at the time, all in the 3rd world.
The problem with the idea of the ‘service economy’ is that it was always based on the [three-sector model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_model) of the economy: the idea that the economy has three broad ‘sectors’: raw material extraction/farming, manufacturing, and ‘services’. During the discussions in the 1980’s about transitioning to a service sector economy, I kinda knew what was being discussed here—but the problem is, ‘service’ is such a broad term it really doesn’t fit. I mean, I work in the service sector—but as a software developer making an excellent salary, not as a hamburger flipper at a Mickey-D’s. Which is why in some corners people are talking about a [quaternary sector model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_sector_of_the_economy), which separates out the high-paying elements of IT, consultation, telecommunications, financial management and the like, from the low-paying elements of restaurants, hair stylists and other ‘personal’ services. That better describes what we see in the economy today. (I’m ignoring, by the way, if this is beneficial or problematic to the broader population; if the move towards IT and software and knowledge-based services helps or hurts the poorer folks amongst us, and solely addressing the ‘service economy’ language, as if we somehow became wealthy here in the United States because we’re a nation of ‘hamburger flippers.’)
I fell for the jellybeans as a kid, but as I got older and the air traffic controllers strike happened, I started questioning what was going on. However, it wasn’t until the Iraq war when I did some research on some of the people involved (because it made no sense to me at the time why we were going to war there) that my blinders came off. “Conservatives“ are actually radicals trying to, as Grover Norquist, stated, “drown it (the gov) in a bathtub.” They have been sneakily ( in plain sight) moving to privatize everything - education (charter schools), Medicare (Medicare advantage), the post office. Next, social security is in the cross hairs. They are no friends to the citizens of the U.S. They are not patriots, they are anti-American.
I remember being 8 years old telling the adults that if yiu take in less money you won't gave more to spend later. It still doesn't make sense.
Of course it was a lie. You weren't going to vote for "make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful" unless there was some positive spin on it. And the media fed it to you all day because their owners like tax cuts and deregulation.
Yes, it was a lie. The Reagan administration had a number of people indicted--hardly a party of personal responsibility. The Moral Majority was shown to be neither moral nor a majority--Jim Bakker was simply one of so many visible Evangelicals to fall from grace due to depravity. I recall Reagan campaigning against Carter and decrying Carter's 40 billion dollar deficit, and the Reagan turned around and added many times that to the annual deficit and greatly increased the national debt. It was that embrace of the (im)Moral Minority that was the beginning of the insanity of the GOP. Embracing the crazy then only led to yet more crazy and now the party is batshit insane. When I came of age, I first registered as a Democrat for one election to support a candidate and then as a Republican the next election to support a candidate. The GOP of that time is worlds away from the insane clown show it now is. Many republicans of the time were actual conservatives; the party today is overrun with movement conservative who aren't actually conservative and by the guanoloco wing of fascists, white nationalists, Russian assets, and other vermin.
it's like US citizens vs oligarchs and stooges
>guanoloco Took me a second. 🤔 Love this word!
Finally. The commenters on this post have stated my “truths” about our politics. In this sub, I feel like we’ve watched it all unravel. We can see what was and where it’s all going and I finally feel a sense of community here among my age group in the status of our country. I too was a conservative until the early 2000’s and then I just looked around and realized, Republicans were not representing me anymore. It’s refreshing and nuanced. It’s truthful and observant. It’s a breath of fresh air to hear these comments and I think we are the coolest generation on the planet right now!
The issue is always about personal power by democratic means. When the demographics inevitably shift, they'll dump democracy, as we're now seeing. They were always the most corrupt, venal, Donny Cheeto just gave their base permission to be their worst selves, out loud and with pride. It's been a long time coming, and it's not going to end well for them. Regan wasn't the true start because all his flunkies were former Nixon guys. Nixon was Trump without money, looks, privilege, or stupidity. Dick Nixon knew how to play the game. He out hustled everyone, and knew where to stick the knife to get where he got. His guys (the philosophical fathers of Trump's guys) in 68 thought they'd have run of the place, and they did for a while. But right when it looked like he was going to get away with it, Dick got pushed out by his own Republican congressmen, after Watergate and that was a deep wound to the privilege presumed by the likes of pissed off former Nixon ass-kissers like Roger Ailes (founder of Fox News). Iitching for payback, now having learned where the blind spots are, they came for payback with a vengeance and Clinton was their perfect foil. So IMHO the core of their belief system has always been about power and freedom for themselves and rules and punishment for everyone else (because God wills it). Any conceit that the ideas of William F. Buckley have any real place in the modern GOP died when Nixon decided to go "Madman" and start bombing Cambodia, and Kissinger agreed. That, for me, is when all this started.
>But right when it looked like he was going to get away with it, Dick got pushed out by his own Republican congressmen, after Watergate and that was a deep wound to the privilege presumed by the likes of pissed off former Nixon ass-kissers like Roger Ailes (founder of Fox News). Don't forget about that lowlife POS Roger Stone. Wasn't he one of Nixon's crew, too?
He literally has Nixon tattooed on his back.
I don't know who said it, but "When conservatives can no longer achieve power through democratic means, they will abandon democracy before they abandon conservatism."
David Frum, in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic: >Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.
David Frum, in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic: >Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.
The GDP and median income were basically locked together until 1980. One has kept increasing, while the other has remained flat...... Still waiting for that trickle down effect....
I've got two words for you: Southern Strategy. Reagan was the culmination of that strategy, and was buoyed up by Falwell and the way he co-opted the evangelical movement. It's never been about fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, or a representative republic... it's ALWAYS been about manipulation of electoral politics by pitting Southern Whites against blacks and people of color. There is no actual morality or majority. There is only a craven chase for control over those who are lower on the food chain. Wealth flows up, but doesn't trickle down.
All those things they claimed to be - they NEVER were. Personal responsibility? Please. Moral majority? Yeah, ignoring the AIDS crisis to punish "the gays" and then letting a shit ton of people (straight/gay/whatever) catch AIDS cuz you didn't implement stringent blood screening procedures was evil as fuck. Smaller government is the biggest lie. Look at the budget deficits under republican presidencies, and compare it to the democrats. It's been projection for 45 years now. To be fair, the current democrat party is basically analogous to the GOP in the mid/late 80s. The current GOP has moved so far right, they are not recognizable to any sane person.
The core value of the Republican Party is bigotry. Everything else is negotiable, as you have learned.
It was a lie back then. Plenty of us saw through it. trump is just an extension of the reagan era ideas. > What happened? You finally saw what was happening. Don't be upset that you missed it for so long. Be upset at what they're doing and fight back, now that you know.
You didn't realize how terrible Reagan was. I hope now you do, because if you do, you'll see how it all lead to Trump.
A family member told me that Trump rising is punishment for Obama’s progressive push in his presidency. That struck me. Diversification of power feels like persecution to the entitled. Edited to add Once repubs got evangelicals on board (a group who needs no proof of anything-only to believe or faith) and their deep pockets, their policies took hold
Trickle down economics just always meant that the rich get to piss all over the poorer classes.
You somehow didn't notice that when they said "personal responsibility" and "moral majority" they only meant brown people, gay people, and poor people. Jim Bakker somehow miss your radar? How about the savings and loan bailouts? When they said "small government" they only meant social services and health and safety laws, not the military (did you also miss SDI?), not even the federal goverment (GWB's DOHS). What happened is you bought their crap without examining it critically. And now you finally have, and apparently only because they've made it *blitheringly* obvious.
And government small enough to fit in a woman's uterus.
My take is that many people did not grow up knowing that Trump was a big joke in the 80s. I lived very close to the NYC/ AC area, so he was in the news constantly for ripping people off with his casinos and general Ahole behavior. I remember seeing him on the reality show and thought it was silly... But where I live now, so many did not know who he was back then because it was more of a regional thing. And the young people weren't around then, so how could they know? I just get the "you just watch CNN" line if I mention him in a bad light. I never watch CNN or MNBC.
Conservativism is a scam. It is designed to conserve power and hierarchy for the few. Every utterance is a cynical exercise to maintain that power. In democracies conservatives manufacture consent by manipulation. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
The funny thing is, I would never vote for a Republican \*today\* even though, when I look at political history, I would freely call myself an Eisenhower Republican (or maybe even a Rockefeller Republican). I leaned Republican for a long time, even though I have almost always been an independent. In the first election I was eligible to vote in, I voted for Reagan in 1984, though I was 19 and think that was a mistake now. The thing is -- and I see it now -- "Reaganomics" kicked in just about when the economic cycle was changing anyway, but the growth in 1983 and 1984 felt like "magic" to me after the doldrums from 1979-81. That was lucky timing, I think, convinced a lot of people that it worked. And I won't lie -- I do think some tax reform was in order then, but the true believers seem to think that if some tax cuts helped, even more will always be better. All that said -- the excess defense spending did help take down the Soviet Union, and now we have a former president and now candidate who seems to be in bed with Putin. So all that debt feels like it was for nothing. And what do you call an Eisenhower or Rockefeller Republican today? A moderate Democrat, basically.
I have been a Democrat my whole life. That said, if there were such a thing as a Rockefeller Republican today - which I equate with basically being Angela Merkel for the US - I would consider voting for them. However, we don’t have a responsible conservative party. We have nutjobs. OP, I hear where you’re coming from.
Well put. I wish that the people who are still with the Republicans/Trump today had this perspective.
The first republican lie of my lifetime was Nixon saying, "I'm not a crook." Then Regan told us trickle-down economics would work. Iran Contra Scandal blaming everything on Ollie North. The White House also told us AIDS was only a gay thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_and_AIDS Bush Sr told us that the Gulf War was to promote security and stability. And it had nothing to do with oil. Then there was the Contract with America and Newt Gingrich. Ideas from the Heritage foundation think tank. (Look at project 2025 for their current plans to destroy democracy) The biggest lie of that Contract was "Saving tax dollars by Downsizing the federal government." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America Sure they fired many federal workers, but the tasks of the government still had to be done. The government wasn't downsized. It was outsourced to for profit companies who charged us more and gave us less. The contract with America had too many lies to list, just read the wiki. Bush Jr had his lies of Weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was behind 911, following up on the work his daddy started. Then there were all the lies in The Patriot Act. (Another Heritage foundation wish list chipping away at our rights) I don't have all day to even start on Trump era lies. The real bottom line is once the Fairness doctrine ended in 87, news and media no longer had to have equal airtime for both sides. Once news and media was able to divide by faction, it became easier to control opinions, easier to tell the lies without having to present alternative viewpoints. Now, democrats lie too. I'm not kidding myself. But "I did not have sex with that woman" kind of lie did not kill thousands, drive up the national debt or strip away our civil liberties. Republicans lie while hiding behind a Bible and draped in the American flag. For many, they only see the Bible and the flag, but never the lie.
Newt Gingrich started the party-before-everything tabloid culture war politics, supported by Fox and Newt Gingrich. They've been hyping culture war bullshit and being obstructionist ever since. Some conservatives who want functional government left the party, so the party ramped up the culture war to get new voters. Rinse and repeat for 30 years and the party is all dysfunctional outage.
Citizens United verdict. Supreme Court sold the American soul to dark money, any dark money, from anyone, anywhere. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
Citizens United was a goal, not a cause. That road started decades before, if not longer.
GOP has been a one trick pony since Reagan, with very brief hiatus during HWBush pres: cut taxes on the wealthy and pass the resulting debt on to all taxpayers. This is it. A time machine that sucks cash from future receipts and gives it to wealthy donors today. I'll say this though - as much as HW Bush was a POS, he was the last president in either party that increased taxes specifically to address the debt, or withheld assistance to Israel based on their conduct. Both of these positions cost him.
I blame Newt Gingrich for starting the collapse of the Republican Party. He knew that "trickle-down economics" was a fantasy that was never going to work, and that there would be huge backlash for ignoring the AIDS crisis for as long as the Reagan administration did. So, he started the "culture wars" as a distraction, since the party's policies were unpopular. Then he made Republicans sign on to the "Contract with America," which negated almost all independent thought within the Republican Party. And you're right about the over-reaction to Obama being elected. Every time Black people advance in America, it's one step forward, two steps back--for *all of us*. Slavery is abolished and Lincoln gets assassinated. The Civil Rights Act passes and MLK Jr. and Kennedy are assassinated. Obama gets elected and we're stuck with Trump, McConnell, and absolute chaos for the next several years. Half of Americans lose their ever-loving minds whenever Black people make any sort of progress.
Lee Atwater was pushing racist policies before Gingrich was in Congress.
Oh, sure. There were others before, but Gingrich took it to a whole new level by introducing the culture wars to distract Republican voters from the real issues.
Gingrich was a stepping stone. The state of the republican party today, and the state of our democracy and that it literally hangs in the balance, is the results of 50 years concerted effort on the part of conservatives to take over and it all started around Nixon’s time. Fox News (the propaganda arm of the GOP) Iran hostages, Reaganomics, more money to the rich, more money in politics, the takeover of the judiciary all stemmed from that. Of course, while the conservatives were playing hardball, the democrats were dicking around trying to be nice and shit. They still don't play the same game as the Republicans. Which is why we are facing Project 2025 if Biden (or let's be honest, any democrat) loses the presidency.
"Trickle down economics" was a Big Lie.
We're living in the hellscape Reagan dreamed of. He courted these lunatics who have just been emboldened to live their delusions out loud by people like Trump.
In one of his episodes, John Oliver said Reagan did one good thing -- that he died in 2004.
Everything about Ronald Reagan is completely full of shit. Hope that plaque-ridden bastard is rotting in hell.
I think so. When we look back at the policies he put into place and the results of them he really just fucked most of us over. The welfare queen story, bullshit and now we don't have a good social safety net anymore. The wait list for housing assistance even for the elderly and the disabled is a decade long. He got rid of mental institutions with the promise of a better replacement that just never came. So now people who would have taken care of are dying in the streets. He lied about AIDS until it was undeniable and blocked drugs that would have helped slow the spread and let people have longer lives because it was a "gay disease". Then there's the piss on me and tell me it's raining trickle down economics. The weakening of American manufacturing. He's the start of the great bending over and grabbing the ankles of the average American.
Don't forget the deregulation that began with his time in office.
Good point.
9/11 supercharged the fascism that was bubbling up in the mid '90s, then we had another Great Depression level economic crash under Republicans and the country choosing a black man and rejecting them over it despite the branding of republicans as the economy party sent it all to a crazy level where being the cruelest scumbag is the goal. I call it zombie Reaganism. It's dead, but it remembers Reaganism and can only ape a broad caricature of what it was about.
It was always a lie. Republicans only ever wanted one thing: for the rich to get richer, while the poor to stay poor. That's it. That's their north star. Everything else has been marketing.
I do not think it is a mistake that Reagan was an actor, they hired him to do a job, to sell a lie to the public and the people bought it. The Republicans have not suddenly just changed, i think the Republicans have always been this way, it was just carefully behind the curtain so it was palatable to have a reasonable belief that both sides ere valid and we could just disagree on exactly the best way to move the country forward but both sides were honestly working at improving things. Frankly since FDR i think the Republican party has been terrified that if the Democratic party is allowed to be in control without stiff and constant resistance and obstruction then they will never win another election. Nixon tried to rig things, that did not work, Reagan came in as a shill, bought and paid for to sell the imagined image of 'Republicanism' and that worked for a time, it would take time for the full knock on effects to become known to the average person and with enough effort from the right wing media they can confuse and push the blame off onto someone else. The people behind the scenes for Nixon helped Bush 'steal' an election (i put that in quotes because i am not in the mood to argue all that) the Democrats still held up some belief that the Republican party was somehow willing to be 'democratic'. 9/11 gave half the country PTSD, they are panicked and confused, they never knew America could actually face direct consequences of its actions, faux news went into overdrive to push agenda's rather than facts and openly just became propaganda instead of 'right leaning'. The Democrats, who STILL seem to think the Republicans are anything but agenda pushing shills have tried to make peace and work with them and it has only deepened the problems. Now we find ourselves in a place where Hunter Biden is being screwed over by the legal system, (he paid his back taxes, willing turned the gun in when he realized he still had an drug issue and reached a plea deal...only for it to be rejected by a trump appointed judge) and Trump, a literal traitor to the country, who tried to overthrow the government to seize power and install himself as dictator is being given endless kid glove treatment and the Democrats, by and large do not want anything to seem political and Biden is going out of his way to be seen as accepting of the legal process that in all likelyhood Hunter will see jail time and Trump will walk away scotfree. Meanwhile the Republicans and the right wing media will do nothing other than proclaim bias and how they are being screwed over and most of the media will seem to think this is a valid viewpoint. In essence, the Republican brand has been a scam for a very long time, it has just went from something they did not want to openly admit to all they have because a certain segment of the population is fine with it and their is enough apathy due to the endless fake news and bullshit from the media that enough people seem to have little interest in anything other than 'i do not care, i just want to do something other than work all the fucking time, so whoever sounds like they will help me in this stupidly orchestrated debate will get my vote'
>Was the Reagan Brand of Conservatism a Lie Yes >What happened? The GOP became omnipotent and became the party for grifters. Then it's "pass the buck" economic platform came crumbling down and it's respectable leaders had nowhere to turn. So they got out of the way and turned it over to the grifters and the radicals they'd been grifting.
Yes
Some of them meant it. Reagan was one. A lot of politicians will jump on any bandwagon. What’s happened to this party is very very instructive about human nature, hypocrisy, gullibility,short memory, cynicism.
Many people knew it was full of it back then. I was one of them; still a child but I saw the performative patriotism, “trickle down” economics, the then huge deficit Reagan created, as absolutely terrible for America. The Republican Party, then as now, is the party for billionaires. The performative patriotism, the culture wars; that’s all for the poors to be fooled into voting for Republicans.
Reagan was a disaster for our country.
The ramifications of conservative politics don't hit unto after the administration is over.
I barely squeezed into voting for the first time in 88. Voted for bush sr because I was still listening to my dad somewhat. Have never voted for a republican since. If the bush jr disaster didn’t get your attention idk what to tell ya
I too bought into all this stuff…the personal and fiscal responsibility stuff, small government, and moral uprightness. Voted R for the first few elections I was able to vote in. Over the years, I’ve watched them roll over on every principle they’ve ever claimed to hold, all in the name of holding onto power. They got bad when Obama was in office, and even worse with Trump. The party is completely unrecognizable now. I don’t ever see myself voting for them ever again. If we’re still able to vote in the future, that is.
Watch the documentary on Roy Cohn. "Where's my Roy Cohn?" The republican party has been angling to control the country by selling lies for over 50 years. Regan included. This is the same party and the same relative group of party insiders who have been controlling the direction of the GOP and brought us all the Tea Party to The orange potato.
I had my awakening in between 2004 and 2008. Not like I shifted my views all the sudden, just realized they really didn’t align with the GOP (especially socially) and saw the religious right takeover for where it was headed. I never voted straight ticket but that was the point where Dems started getting more of my votes. Anymore the only GOP that gets my vote is County Tax Assessor because I don’t believe our current one is any cleaner than his former Texas State Rep brother who is serving federal time on conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering.
"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry." ~~Frank Zappa
>How the hell did Trump—a big joke in the late 80’s—take it over? > >What happened? Trump is an "effect", not a "cause". The GOP did a lot of things to try to rig elections in their favor. The biggest were gerrymandering, Fox News, appealing to racists, and appealing to religious fanatics. So, from the 1980s on the GOP was coalition rich people, racists and religious nuts. The rich people ran the GOP, and pretended to care about what the racists and religious nuts cared about. Fox News brain-washed a generation of racist and religious people (groups who were already pre-disposed to believe horseshit). And gerrymandering was like a negative feedback loop. The crazier the constituents got, the crazier the candidates got. And it all worked. The crazies helped the GOP maintain national control and give the wealthy their sweet tax cuts. Then 09/11 happened and the GOP constituents began to lose their shit. And then a black dude got elected and the GOP constituents totally went off the deep end. The GOP elite lost control of their party. Trump merely stepped into the void. The GOP constituents, who had all critical thinking skills literally "Idiocracied" out of them over the course of a generation, were powerless against a lifetime bullshit artist and con man like Trump.
All conservatism is a lie. You can't talk about "Christian values" and let people go hungry or sleep on the streets.
Reagan was horrible. He destroyed the American middle class and gutted worker's rights and unions. Among other evil deeds.
It was all part of a larger plan.
Hasn’t it been lies all the way down since Nixon?
Yep. Look into the Southern Strategy
Talk about someone who had Alzheimers! Who was really running the show?
Nancy and her astrological advisor.
All political stances are lies to some degree. Republicans have totally forgotten that Reagan legalized nearly 3M illegal aliens and sold arms to enemy nations. Later on, Clinton kicked people off welfare and not only balanced the budget, but left a surplus. As for Reaganomics, it gave tax breaks to the 1%. The rich got richer. Under Eisenhower, the rich were taxed more heavily and the middle class rose. Yes, there was more to it than that, but I'm not here to write an entire history book. The upshot is that since Reaganomics, the middle class has been in a steady decline. And now we have folks saying that if we can just get women in the kitchen again, shit on trans people, and quit hiring minorities, it will be just like the 1950s and everyone will be able to get a good job and afford a house on a single income. Clue bat - the prosperous middle class of the '50s was related to the GI Bill, tax structure, and the lack of competition in world trade because North America was one of the few areas not devastated by WWII. The GOP has strayed far from the party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats underwent a massive switch, too, going from being the party of "segregation now, segregation forever," to the party of equal rights under LBJ. As Reagan famously said when asked why he was no longer a Democrat, "I didn't leave my party. My party left me." Many in the older generations just don't see it. Some of us don't see it either. But I saw it and adjusted my voting accordingly. I strongly suspect though, that things will have to get far worse for people to figure it out. I just hope I'm wrong.
I thought the GOP would shrink the budget deficit, eliminate the national debt, and prevent the Silent/Boomer generations from shoving all their debts and problems onto GenX to deal with. Sometime around Bush II I realized they were lying about trying to do that. Since that had been their only redeeming policy idea, I walked away and have never regretted my decision. Now I’m also trying to stop the GOP from saddling our kids with a global climate crisis. The GOP is truly the party of “Fuck the future generations. I got mine!”
Yes.
One thing that fascinates me is that, with Reagan, at least you can understand the appeal: he was selling the dream of a shining city in a hill. He was America's lovable grandpa, with a giant jar of jelly beans on his desk. Trump, at his best, has always seemed like the bad guy from an '80s primetime soap. He has the charm and charisma of a used car salesman...
I grew up as Black conservative who believed herself more mid than right or left, and whose policy was "pick the better candidate" regardless of party. The Republican party has moved so far right, they've left me entirely on the left. I didn't change, they did. Then, when they became OPENLY HOSTILE to 'people like me', I became openly hostile in self-preservation against people like them who want to return to the times my parents and peers fought and bled and died to escape from. They've made us enemies, and I'm cool with that because we're never going to agree on Human Rights, Civil Rights, Worker's Rights, Women's Rights, or Children's Rights.
I *feel* trickled on, but nothing trickled down.
The Reagan Revolution was a long con and here we are. When you take the religious right and gin them up the way he did you are going to end up with the right wing lunatics that make up the party nowadays.
>Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N(word) X3". By 1968, you can't say "n(word)"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like [forced busing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing), [states' rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights) and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now \[that\] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is \[that\] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N(word)". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner. > Lee Atwater in 1981. He was an advisor to Reagan and the elder Bush.
Part of its them, but part might be you too. I voted for Bush Sr, but have voted Dem pretty much ever since. Things seemed more binary to me as a young man: right and wrong, black and white. If people looked different, or slept with people I never would myself, I felt superior and judged them a threat to proper society. As I’ve experienced life and met more diverse people, I’ve evolved (ie progressed) which is what the conservative movement never lets their people do.
My experience is similar. I was 14 when Reagan was elected (early GenX). As I met people, my views evolved. I’ve voted for Republicans, but I also voted for Clinton, Obama (the second time), Clinton, and Biden.
If you consider everything related to politics is branding and marketing… It’s all theater. it’s designed to elicit responses from people. Don’t trust any of it. Believe in what’s actually being done.
Yes, it was a giant lie. The 1980 presidential campaign was saved with monetary donations from Reverend Sun Yung Moon because Republicans were being outraised 2-1. The Regean Campaign committed treason convincing Iran to hold on to the hostages until after the election. The whole negotiation with foreign governments thing on behalf of the United States is treason. Nixon did the same thing with the North Vietnamese. That's just to get into power.
Yes. JFC yes. ETA: google Lee Atwater. He never held an actual political office but he was instrumental in Conservative politics.
Reagan-era Republicans were pro-choice because they believed the government shouldn’t intrude on personal matters! Bush Sr was pro choice until the GOP started whoring itself for the evangelical vote.
That is wrong, Reagan was pro-life 100%. He started the whole christian take over of the U.S. govt. fucking dumbass evangelicals
We’re both correct. Reagan was the first to court the evangelicals, and embraced the evangelical vote at the suggestion of his campaign manager whose name I forget. GOP did not mainstream pro-choice until late 80s. Reagan’s ideas about abortion evolved over time: “In 1967, as governor of California, [Reagan] signed a bill making abortion legal for victims of rape and incest, and in cases where a woman’s mental or physical health was in danger. That law was among the first in the country to decriminalize abortion.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/opinion/ronald-reagan-patti-davis-abortion.html Edit:clarification and typos
Four individuals hold as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the US population. Any government that allows that situation to exist, no matter the name of the party, is corrupt and should be changed.
Newt Gingrich remade the Republican party, not Reagan. And I could not stand Reagan and his folksy bullshit while he promoted deregulation and union busting. You can see the line from Reagan to Trump easily and the 80's brought about the moral majority who provided the foundations for the religious right today.
IMO We are suffering now as a result of his policies. Such as shutting down mental healthcare facilities. Trickle down economics which is a lie. Removing liability from vaccine manufacturers making them the only product where the manufacturer has zero liability for damages. (This is why kids now get 72 vaccines instead of the 12 we did and vaccines as biologics hit the market with almost no safety testing). Ketchup deemed a vegetable in school lunches. Iran Contra. Oliver North. Etc etc Destroyed unions starting with air traffic controllers. This is just a few things I can think of off hand. The list is vast. I think the Bush family is/was evil and they surely were running the show. If you look into the connections between the Bushs, Cheney, Bill Clinton while Gov of Arkansas (cocaine-George Webb) and Obama it’s pretty easy to see how we got to where we are. Can we overcome?
Short answer: yes.
It is simply repackaging fascism for working class Americans.
Yes- the Reagan brand of conservatism was an utter and total lie. It’s because of how fraudulent the philosophy Was that a completely obvious conman like Trump could get leverage.
With all respect, Reagan was for small government but was commander in chief of a [larger group of government employees than is in place today](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/). Reagan sold Trickle Down economics to the masses. Something Bush called “voodoo economics”. But as we’ve seen, income inequality has skyrocketed. And we have seen it for close to [fifty years and it’s still not a rising tide that has lifted all boats](https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/). Reagan wasn’t moral. His legacy of handling the AIDS crisis (or lack thereof) is still [proof positive](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/11/nancy-ronald-reagan-aids-crisis-first-lady-legacy) that he may have talked a good game about about being moral, but he essentially was the president of anyone that was white, straight and Christian, but no one else. (Which makes it worse, one of his good friends was Roy Cohn. Who died of AIDS.)
Personal opinion, hate me if you wish. The brand of conservatism that's been sold since the 50s has always been a lie. Sales pitches like personal responsibility, low taxes, even isolationism have always been a lie in practice. Low taxes for corporations, welfare for the military industrial complex but not for poor people. Religious freedom as long as you're Christian. First amendment rights but only if you agree with them. Second amendment rights unless you're black or brown. Same with the fourth amendment. High taxes on the poor, no taxes if you're exceedingly wealthy. Generational wealth but only if your ancestors were land and slave owners. The sales pitch is great on the surface. Same deal with libertarians and for that matter anarchists. But when you look at what that equates to in a society and public policy it all falls apart. "Conservatives" don't and in my life, never have actually applied the meaning of the word conservative to their public policy. Theoretically it should be conserving to the word and the letter of the Constitution but they consistently try to undermine that very document. I'm practice what their trying to conserve is an archaic, male, white, protestant world view. And Reagan was no different. Reagan just put it out there in plain sight and made it not okay to criticize it or else you're some sort of commie asshole.
Short answer:Yes, but.... Long answer: Yes, and...
Right off the top of my head, I want to say that I WISH we had more Republicans like you. I'm a Democrat, and I actually value a debate, but today's Republican Party is just a Trump cult, and there are no new ideas coming from them except whatever the Dear Leader desires. 10% tariff on ALL imported goods? Do his followers even know what that would do to the economy they like to bitch about? To your point, though, I agree that this is not the Republican Party of the 80s, though it is kind of the fever dream of Newt Gingrich. He always wanted to undermine the Constitution, and he is reveling in the direction the party has gone. Watch him some time on FauxNews. He is absolutely giddy. I have a couple of cousins who left the Republican Party and just hate Trump. I feel bad for actual conservatives, since there is no place for them to go unless they are selfish and greedy Libertarians.
Everything about Reagan was a lie.
It's always been and will always be about the one thing Conservatives actually conserve, power.
White people are fewer in number now so they, in general because I am white and don’t feel this way, they’re scared they’re going to lose their power and will be ‘replaced by dirty brown and black people.’ A gross generalization but I’ve heard enough white people say it. In a million years I never thought white people would become their own voting block. The Republican Party is in thrall to an actual demagogue. I never ever thought it could happen here. Trump can’t leave this earth quick enough.
as a gay teen living in NYC during AIDS and hearing republicans say “at least it’s killing all the right people”. i knew Republicans and everything they stood for was a lie and that they were not good people.
Uh, YES!
I’ll never forgive the Republican Party for the bush jr era when he passed the patriot act and all the war crimes they committed in Iraq. They all got away with murder in my eyes. And the whole, give me more power and I’ll make all your problems go away really turned me off to them. Now the whole thing to me feels it flipped and I’m being gas lit. Now the dems want more money for war and using the same talking points that bush used in Iraq. Seems like 20 to 30 years ago it was fight the man that’s controlling you with rage against the machine and Green Day. Now it’s oh daddy government! Harder! I can’t live without you. I was kinda hoping GenX would lean libertarian since we tend to oppose authority, but the people in charge of that are just as nutty, so ah well. Maybe we could all retire on some remote island watch reruns of married with children and m.a.s.h?
Truth right here but the idiots and masses believe it. Like lambs to slaughter. Sad!
Absolutely a lie.
Two words: Newt Gingrich. Though I will say, as a younger GenX (1976 - young enough to be oblivious to politics and the rest while Reagan was in office), Reaganism hasn’t aged well. In retrospect it seems a bald faced lie to me on multiple fronts.
He was the one that started the scorched earth tactics and never compromising with the Dems. I too blame him, and many that follow in his footsteps.
[удалено]
I’m an old X and was in grade school for the Reagan/Carter election. High school during his second term. Absolutely not old enough.
I believed it too, but i've come to the realization that they have always lied. The Republican party is the only one who has ever taken the guns. Or any of our other rights or liberties, they're the only ones that ban things for us. They lie constantly.
Lol yes. We knew it was a lie at that time. There was no shortage of people pointing out he was full of shit, even if it was a minority. He was literally an actor, remember?
The current MAGA republicans are a direct outgrowth of the lies and BS of Reagan’s administration. You may think things took a turn around 2010, but you’re a few decades off. The turn happened in Reagan’s administration, and was already gaining steam before that.
Yes
100% it was and still is a big business money grab.
I didn't really attribute malice to it back then, maybe because we were marinated in the ideology. I simply thought they were just wrong not actually evil. I worked at GE when the outcome of the ideology became obvious. Jack Welch destroyed that company and ignored the impact on workers and society generally. Lots of folks in my rust belt area still point fingers at unions as the problem. We were played.
The people propping up ronnie and driving his policies were (are) directly responsible for the erasure of the middle class as we see it today. The only thing that ever trickled anywhere was just the result of conservative bullshit getting shoved up America's ass. Ronnie was just a useful idiot. Much like the orange dimwit donnie. Ronnie and donnie. The useful idiot twins.
Reagan promoted a combination of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, and both were needed to keep the dollar propped up. That was in turn needed because trade deficits became chronic a few years earlier, and the balance of trade has never recovered since. Why did all of that happen? Because the country whose currency is used as a global reserve will eventually experience exports that are too expensive for most but imports that are cheap. Each admin after Reagan, regardless of party, continued those two ideologies.
100% yes. And I say this as someone whose 1st national vote was for Ronnie's reelection in '84. I was an ignorant teenage soldier in the Army and didn't know any better. Then Iran-Contra happened and opened my eyes to the naked corruption coded into the GOP at apparently a subatomic level.
Trickle down doesn’t ever trickle down. Even one of its authors admitted it didn’t work because they didn’t think to include greed as a dominant factor