It doesn’t make sense to start at Reagan.
Reagan happened because conservatives realized people don’t like conservatives.
So they invented Faux News (memo in Nixon’s presidential library) so that voters would never hold Republicans accountable again, and then started running charismatic figureheads to eventually take the fall years after leaving office.
Blaming Reagan (who is undoubtedly a piece of shit) is letting the real problem off the hook.
I don’t remember Reagan, but I remember GW, and it was the same thing. When we’re finally rid of trump, the next will be even worse, and still taking orders from the same conservative machine that was feeding Reagan his talking points.
So hate Reagan all you want, but don’t forget to hate the other people who were actually the ones in control. Because that machine is still running, it’s the one behind project 2025, not trump’s dumbass.
Reagan is the one that started defining the government as evil. He said "The scariest words you can hear is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ " From then on anything the government did was bad and evil by definition. He’s very much the start of this major problem of “drown the government in the bathtub” people. He launched the whole wave of them. You can’t negotiate with people that think that kind of thing because to them it’s all bad and evil. We haven’t even touched on his Reaganomics. Nixon was corrupt but at least he thought government had a role (he even started the EPA).
Yes we can blame Fox News too.
John Birch society predates Regan by decades. Perhaps Regan mainstreamed it. But even that’s debatable.
All sorts of things exist. It doesn’t really matter until someone makes it mainstream.
Considering it was mainstream and prescient enough for that lunatic Barry Goldwater and others to address it specifically. Many decades before Reagan was President. I think it’s very unlikely he did anything other than harness them. That particular Cult of stupidness had been cultivated for nearly half a century at that point.
The Heritage Foundation, thats their name.
They’re not the only one
https://newrepublic.com/article/154763/familys-big-secret-hiding-plain-sight
The heritage family just influences republicans, “the family” gets both parties, even Jimmy Carter.
And both groups want the same thing.
That is… haunting. We should probably do something as civilians with collective action, but their propaganda has made that really hard.
Ignorance is bliss, but it doesn’t solve shit.
Just mentioning that The Family isnt solely focused on republicans got me a down vote almost immediately.
Before we can fix this, we have to get people to acknowledge the problem. Otherwise we never truly win, just lose less sometimes
Its one of those obstacles that appears insurmountable. They have all the money, influence, and power that they could ever ask for. What are we to do?
For now everyone still gets one vote.
It’s too late to get anything going for 2024, maybe even 2028.
But at some point we really need someone outside the two parties while we still have one vote each. We can’t just keep blindly voting our “team” no matter what, especially when our “team” doesn’t represent us.
It’s going to suck, and it’s going to be turbulent. But if we don’t do it, we’ll keep sliding right till there’s no more elections. I don’t think progressives are going to be able to take over the Dem party, I think there’s going to have to be an actual party split for a real solution.
I just hope people start planning more than one election ahead before it’s too late.
We’re fighting people that plan decades ahead. We’ll never win unless we do the same.
we really need someone outside the two parties
I love when it comes around to this part of the cycle, right after “one party is cruel and the other is stupid” and before “but if we split the vote we could lose our right to vote”.
Shawn Fain is planning a general strike in 2028.
And then there are nefarious groups like ALEC or COR (Coalition on Revival)…
don’t forget to hate the other people who were actually the ones in control. Because that machine is still running, it’s the one behind project 2025, not trump’s dumbass.
These words should be inscribed on a monument somewhere.
Ronnie helped set in motion so many things…including Faux “News”.
Let’s try to make a list of where America went wrong
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The Louisiana Purchase: turned the nation into an expansionist empire.
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Andrew Jackson ignoring the rule of law so he could genocide the natives
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Lincoln keeping Johnson as his VP while at war with the south.
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Ending reconstruction early
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FDR not hanging the conspirators in the business plot
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Nixon using the Southern Strategy to win his election
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Ford pardoning Nixon
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Everything Ronald Reagan did
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Ruby Ridge, Waco, and NAFTA radicalization of rural Americans
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Supreme Court awards GWB the presidency
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The Iraq War
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Unregulated banks allowed to crash the global economy
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Limited US involvement in the Arab Spring fails to capitalize on popular movement, Syrian refugee crisis sends far right into overdrive
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Allowing the host of celebrity apprentice to be President
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Ignoring the COVID pandemic until it’s too late then not locking down hard enough.
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Supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza
You forgot repealing the fairness doctrine.
Covered under #8!
Right you are, Ken.
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Clinton’s telecom act did more damage to public knowledge and information than the fairness doctrine
Congress passing the Taft-Hartley act and then overriding Truman’s veto of it to enact laws to cripple unions (which made important union activities illegal, like solidarity strikes, jurisdictional strikes, and mass picketing) and basically completely fucked up unions, before Reagan went ahead and fucked them up even more than previously thought possible again
McCarthyism
Citizens United v. FEC
*Not jailing all politicians involved in January 6th attempted coup
15 could ultimately end up giving Biden the presidency, because it likely ended up killing more conservative voters.
You missed Wilson.
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Created Wilsonian doctrine that led to forever wars
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Segregated the federal government.
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Wrote Southern Revisionism
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Fostered the second founding of the KKK
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Erected a bunch of statues of traitors that specifically said to never erect statues of them.
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Probably caused Lenin, and Stalin thereby causing Hitler and WWII plus a host of downstream knock-on effects such as The Cold War and the demonization of socialism and communism in the US.
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Robbed us of Teddy’s third and fourth terms in office.
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Really, the Louisiana Purchase is the first thing you believe the US did wrong 😂.
Yes.
Louisiana purchase was 1803, In 1619 ish slaves arrive in Virginia. Read a book you fucking absolute clown.
Good thing we have this expert history book reader to tell us that the first thing the UNITED STATES did wrong was import slaves into the ENGLISH COLONY of Virginia in 1619
Yes it predates the country and continues from day 1. You win such a big skull you must have 1776 brain cells.
Yes it predates the country
It seems you have read a book in the last 2 hours, I’m glad we’re in agreement that it doesn’t involve the US then
I’m not in the business of arguing with dumb fucks. Clearly when they declared indepence from England they could have freed the slaves or you know sent them back to England, because you think it was the king who owned the slaves. Do you understand or should I draw you a picture with crayon?
That’s the British!
And what did the “Americans” do in 1776? Did they send all the slaves back to England? Did they Declare them free men? Oh ok, Shut the fuck up.
Listen here, seat-sniffer. The list is regarding pro-active decisions that went wrong. Otherwise you could sit here all day listing off everything from not immediately allowing women’s suffrage to banning child marriages.
If you would take a break from huffing paint thinner and think it over, you would see my point about the Louisiana Purchase being a mistake is also because it was about the expansion of slavery. No longer could they say it was something existing already that they were burdened with, but an active choice they decided to lean into.
Now, please don’t take my words too harshly. I know people like you will spiral into months long depression when they realize their mothers drank while they were in the womb and their dad’s dropped them on their heads while reaching for another handful stale Doritos. It’s a tough one-two combo to overcome, but you’re doing your best and we all appreciate that 🙏 💪
I’m not reading all your Canadian syrup mush brain words. Go watch a hockey game, it is clear to me you have taken a few pucks to the head. Your wrong and your just using cunt logic.
So, when are you getting involved into politics and changing things? I swear, some of you make it sound like you know better than all of our political leaders throughout history… it makes you wonder, with all these leaders making these “horrible” decisions, why is the US still one of the strongest countries in the world, and people are risking their lives to get here?
I’m Canadian
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Anyone not bothering enough to travel back to The Southern Strategy in 1964 as response to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 isn’t seeing the complete picture or who Republicans have been for the last 60 years, what their end goals were, and how they believe Trump’s MAGA is going to get them there while destroying American egalitarian secular Democracy that until now has thwarted their Christofascist dreams
Let us not forget that Republicans opposed Social Security in the early 1930s.
They also love to hate FDR in general.
Yep. The racist and anti-intellectual undertow goes back a long way. It is not just Ronnie Raygun (or donnie, for that matter), it’s a very long tradition of this nasty stuff.
Democracy in Chains details efforts underway long before Ronnie Raygun slithered into office.
People would do well to remember just how much Ronnie Raygun ruined this country and set us on the path to the loser that is donnie.
Even now, you’ll see gaslighting from Enlightened Centrists and people on the supposed left that Iran/Contra was not really that bad, even if it is arguably far, far worse than Watergate. But Ronnie and Bush I were given a pass on it, since America was “exhausted” or some such bullshit the “liberal media” spun at the time.
Of course, the right are utterly unhinged when it comes to ronnie, possibly only surpassed by donnie in their worship.
People would do well to remember just how much Ronnie Raygun ruined this country and set us on the path to the loser that is donnie.
Long before this article came out I was thinking about far the GOP has come between Ronald Reagan’s time and the sheer decadence and depravity of today’s GOP. Then I realized that the seeds of today’s GOP corruption went all the way back to Reagan. I remember Reagan defending Chief Justice Renquest’s daughter from a corruption scandal at the very opening of an otherwise legitimate nationwide TV address about a crisis. Reagan himself had appointed William Renquest to be Chief Justice. Janet Renquest later went on to have a bunch of other scandals.
As long as they don’t fix the big mistakes Reagan did, that ghost is going to haunt you forever.
What I find most surprising about this election is all the people talking shit about how old Trump or Biden is. Ronnie literally had advanced Alzheimer’s for the last two years of his presidency. Full stop, his mind was gone.
The fact that our country allowed this to happen speaks volumes about what our President actually means.
Still capitalism that is to blame.
“Only two people hate America. Those who have never been here, and those who have never left…”
