To expand, their policies were harmful and we’re still dealing with the consequences of them
“trickle-down” policies, which widened income inequality and increased national debt
initial inaction during the AIDS crisis made the epidemic and stigma a lot worse. It’s only recently that we’re starting to effectively deal with the illness
“War on Drugs” got worse under Reagan, with mass incarceration that disproportionately affected minority communities. Also the “Just Say No” campaign oversimplified the issue instead of addressing the underlying causes. Again, we’re only now starting to shift those policies into something that’s more productive
There are quite a number of good articles on the subject if you want a thorough answer, but some of the main things are:
He’s responsible for a massive deregulation of financial institutions that were a precursor to the Wall Street issues that led to the giant government bailout.
He pushed “trickle down economics,” which is the theory that if you cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, they’ll succeed more and create more jobs so that everyone wins. This is something conservatives always push and it’s always a horrible failure that results in a bigger and bigger income gap.
He funded his big tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy) by slashing federal assistance programs, including low income housing subsidies and mental health support, resulting in an unprecedented surge in homelessness that we’re still wrestling with today.
Nancy Reagan was the “Just say no to drugs” lady - the figurehead of the largely failed war on drugs which was like trying to prevent teen pregnancy with an abstinence only education program.
There’s a lot more, but those are some of the big ticket items.
Reagan was massively anti-labor and oversaw the air traffic controller strike and fired employees who were striking for better wages and conditions. It was a harbinger of things to come for labor unions, many of which were then so gutted by outsourcing and neoliberal Clinton passing NAFTA, the single most anti-union, anti-middle class piece of law ever. Reagan set the table against labor, Clinton and the Dems delivered the death blow. Organized labor now only accounts for less than 10% of jobs in the US, and only with Coronavirus-driven alignment and efforts is labor finally starting to regain its legs. 40 years Reagan helped kill the American middle class.
I almost added a bullet about killing unions, but it was hard to know where to stop. He also wasn’t great for the environment, but I think it’s generally accepted that he wasn’t the environmental train wreck that people thought he’d be.
Yes definitely “some”. One rather big one though that I’d like to add.
Reagan was a sponsor of international terror. Selling arms to iran. Circumventing a US embargo.To arm Nicaraguan rebels, trying to overthrow the government that had ended the American occupation. Training and arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Who were part of a group many might recognize al’queda. Run by some guy called Osama Bin’laden. I think I’ve heard of him maybe… All because “the commies” whom Regan and all Americans were pavlovianly trained to become apoplectic about at the mere mention. Marched into Afghanistan, failing and flailing much like the United States just finished doing. And that’s only two of the bigger ones.
Also it bares repeating but Reagan has a large part of the blame for the aids epidemic nationally like Mike Pence did in Indiana. Simply because they were both raging homophobic racist bigots.
The HUD rigging scandal was another good one. Did I mention Reagan was a hyper partisan dog whistling racist bigot yet? Either way it’s not repeated enough. Rewarding HUD contracts to Republican doners as quid pro quo.
Sooooooooo many scandals at the EPA.
Savings and loan scandal. A nice cancerous outcropping of Reagan’s deregulation that still harrows us to this day.
He’s literally a bottomless pit of harm and scandal.
Don’t forget destroying the budget of mental health facilities, causing people to be sent out on the streets in droves, without resources. That is the biggest reason for our homeless crisis to this day.
💯! Reagan was a modern Republican through and through. There was almost nothing he touched or even looked at that didn’t suffer for it. It says a lot that his biological son named after him, disassociated from him so much. And only his adopted son carried on dealing with the cults perpetuating the misplaced hero worship.
If you have Paramount+, don’t mind doing a free trial, or like to sail the seven seas, you can watch The Reagans documentary series. Another documentary that gives you some insight into the type of people they were is the Rock Hudson one. The TL;DR on that one is that they had been good friends for decades, especially Nancy, and the moment it came out that he had AIDS, they pretended he had never existed.
Ronald was basically an idiot but Nancy was a truly foul human being.
I think Iran (let’s leave the contra side out) was pretty bad. The US had been helping Sadam Hussein fight Iran by selling them weapons for years, only to discover they also started selling them to Iran too. Talk about hateful… Supplying weapons to both sides so they can go kill each other.
It’s why Sadam was so distrustful of the US, especially when Shrub (Bush Jr) came knocking a couple decades later.
Sabotaged Iran hostages being released during Carter’s administration. And the stuff others said. Check Hell of Presidents on the Chapo Traphouse patreon feed. I found it super interesting (I’m a history nerd).
Not since the days of the Roman emperors, and never in the history of the United States presidency, has an astrologer played such a significant role in the nation’s affairs of State.
The chief of staff dude who found out and got pissed:
Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco [Quigley] who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.
There’s a Behind the Bastards episode about it. Highly recommend.
He and Thatcher were instrumental in bringing neoliberalism into mainstream politics. Neoliberalism differs from classical liberalism in that its about freeing capital and not people. This directly led to all the problems we face today with a government that used to be by and for the people but now the only people the government serves are the corporations we gave out rights to.
The beast being the government itself. The idea is that the government is somehow overspending in comparison to the tasks carried out and it needs to be fixed by cutting funding.
The result is obviously that the government will function even worse, so it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
Bruh it’s a title to a social media post. It’s not an essay and this isn’t English class. I really don’t understand why we need perfect English for a god damn social media post.
Waiting for the asshat to come in and correct my grammar or something else I couldn’t give a fuck about since this isn’t English class.
My family and I did not know any english when we came here as refugees. I learned english from watching television, lots of television. I appreciate people maintaining a modern linguistic standard so we don’t revert back to shakespearean or god forbid Canadian. (I am Canadian, I’m sorry)
Pretty sure English class is for daily life, so we don’t revert to grunting cave people. This sentiment is what fuels poor Grammer, and it doesn’t really take too much brain power to write/say things correctly
Some people actually use social media to learn or practice another language, so some may appreciate the tip and the correction.
As well, it just looks better when content is written properly. If the questions here were all stuff like “how is babby formed wen women is pragnant”, it wouldn’t seem like the kind of community made for people who are genuinely trying to find answers to their questions.
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