Infographic is correct, though it left out how he destroyed labor unions and a bunch of other stuff, but you can only fit so much in there. Reagan and his despicable cohorts like Gingrich were the beginning of the end for not just the ability to reach the middle class, but indeed for the middle class itself in this country (as his contemporary partner in crime, Thatcher was for the UK).
It was an absolute tragedy. If Trump wasn’t coming back in, Reagan would still hold the top rank in amount of devastation caused, but I’m pretty sure Trump will manage to surpass him on that front in his second term.
Jimmy Carter lost to him, and while looking back from fifty years later Carter looks progressive…
At the time there was a fracture of the Dem party from the left because they considered Carter too moderate.
The most important part of learning about our political history is understanding what we’ve lost over time. Like the existence of a party even remotely leftwing.
Quick edit:
A big reason for Carter’s loss was the inability to solve the Iranian hostage crisis right before the election. Which we later found out Republicans colluded with Iran to not resolve it while Carter was in office, then the whole Iran-Contra shit.
Also reminiscent of how Nixon prolonged the Vietnam war for the same reason…
And I won’t be surprised to find out in a decade Trump did the same with Israel.
Like, people kept acting shocked about current events just don’t know we’re watching reruns. It’s like when people got excited about Game of thrones and waited years between seasons for cliffhangers. The books already existed and they could have just found out what happened.
But just like they wouldn’t read the books, nobody wants to read a history book anymore.s
There was this one time a painter couldn’t hack it
I know he was really bad, but Trump promised he will do everything in his power to be worse.
No offense, but mental institutions were/are horror farms. Could have been better, should have been better, never was.
Among the highest, if not the foremost rate of undeclared abuse. Dumping grounds for the unwanted, unrestricted experimentations for sadistic monsters, no-man’s-land for the so-called human rights.
Whatever other evil might have been done, putting an end to those mental institutions can only be a kindness.
I’m lucky (unlucky?) enough to have worked at a day program for special needs and some of our clients were old enough to have been in institutions, released “to the wild” and then reintegrated into the modern system.
The ones capable of remembering and verbalizing their experiences had some wild stories, and while instutuons were often hell, being kicked out on the streets with no options was worse.
Like, it would be if Biden announced he was fixing the issues with our healthcare system by outlawing medical care.
Sure, the existing system sucks and in a lot of ways it’s good it’s gone…
But for fucks sake it was better than literally nothing.
That’s not even getting into how it demonized mental illness and led to people in rural areas still refusing to get children diagnosed because the label is what they’re afraid of. Because all they know about mental illness is all the desperate homeless people Reagan released and they passed those biases down to their children
There were always options. People didn’t take them due to lack of knowledge or of care. And as easy as it is to blame one person for it, truth is we’re all at fault. We as the populace lack the unity and desire to help one another as we should.
You say something was better than nothing. Well, nothing stopped us/them from building a better something else. That was always an option.
I don’t think it is mental illness causing the homeless crisis. Homelessness is up 20% from 2023 and I’m pretty sure the high cost of living is to blame.
A lot of homeless people are mentally sound, but are struggling with sky high prices, or dont have the motivation to work 60 or 80 hours, facing, constant exhaustion to live in a hole in the wall.
The number of people that died of AIDS each year under his watch was in the millions. Not 90k.
As non American I was ready to just move on and let them suffer in their own cycle of nonsense. But we can’t even do that. Since jokes about invasions are increasing at an alarming rate. Jokes about countries sovereignty became completely unfunny after Feb 2022.
If this next administration isn’t the actual downfall of democracy and just another blip in history I wonder if trump will have the same sort of vibe to his legacy that Regan has.
He was re-elected in a landslide because America is and has been–for at least my entire lifetime–all about aesthetics.
Reelected in 1984 when the national unemployment rate was 10%
Ronnie was a senile racist POS and he pushed the deregulation for the financial sector.
He was only acting!
President is an unnecessary position and draws the eye of narcissists and fascists. Give veto power to the Senate President & drop the VP title, move civilian oversight of the military to a bipartisan court, and pick someone from the majority party house or senate to be your figurehead.
