How did anyone ever think that going along with Reagan's insanity would lead to something good?

[omega minimo]

All the writing has been on the wall. A story about a $12 box of tissues given a bullshit name on a medical bill is nothing new.

Now that the ship of state has capsized, anyone learned anything that will change their awareness/attitudes/behavior in the FUTURE?

:hi:

[Jenny_92808]

1. Reagan was worst prez ever, until bush2 came along, imo

I agree with you, the writing was on the wall and that trickle down carp to make the super rich, super duper rich and deregulation so greed of the rich would rule. Reagan and his like has done great harm to our country and the world. I do not understand how anyone with any brain cells can defend it. I just do not get it. Their party is shrinking out of existence, thank g-d. The rw purification thing will just shrink it faster.

[mwb970]

2. Most overrated president ever!

St. Ronaldus was a disaster for America, and his malign influence continues to hold us back.

[EFerrari]

3. They're going to try to have a yearlong Reagasm in 2011.

[butterfly77]

4. What about the 3 hundred dollar screwdrivers...

when I hear about the budget cutting that is where is should begin..

[old mark]

5. It still amazes me how many people think he was just wonderful.

Still do, in fact.

mark

[Tesha]

7. Well he cut taxes!

(On somebody.)

Cutting taxes is always good, isn't it???

Tesha

[old mark]

16. T, that "trickle down" didn't trickle down far enough to affect me.

He made a lot of rich people very happy, though.....

mark

[OnionPatch]

6. Because he made it acceptable to be selfish, that's why.

[Tesha]

8. Bingo! (NT)

[Hekate]

28. That may be a major key to his popularity. He acted the part of a good natured fella...

... and he made being out for Number One socially acceptable. He was kind to Big Business and appointed a woman who believed that crippled children did something wrong in a past life to a federal agency in charge of health care. The guy could act way more folksy than Shrub and he appointed an End-Timer to the Dept of the Interior.

And he accomplished all this before he even became senile!

Saint Ronnie: an *hole for the ages.

Hekate

[mascarax]

9. Reagan was most damaging President; Dubya worst

IMO.

It's amazing (and disguting) to me how they still cling to Reagan. That man did an astounding amount of damage, which of course we're dealing with now. I think some have gotten it (including posters here), but so many have not and never will.

[mdmc]

10. I thought it would be the end of the world

[glitch]

11. It was - in slow mo. nt

[gratefultobelib]

12. My mother used to quickly change the channel whenever he appeared on TV hoping someone somewhere

would notice the small "blip" of the channel change! Oh well, made her feel better.

[Hidden Stillness]

13. It Takes a Long Time to Learn, and Many Examples to Find a Pattern

Hi, omega. The only good thing about the extremely advanced state of this disaster is that people are able to analyze and recognize things clearly, where during the early days it was very hard to even understand what was being done and how far from democracy it already was. I actually remember from the 1980 campaign (when my family supported Ted Kennedy against the conservative, deregulating, tax-cutting agribusiness-owning Carter who had caused so much unemployment and inflation), that there were bumper-stickers reading "Reagan for Jobs" (can you believe it--they promoted themselves that way!), and polls showing that people did not know if Reagan was a liberal or a conservative, which they did nothing to clear up; as Obama does now.

When many of these things now recognized as horrors first started, people had never heard of them and weren't threatened because of the "comforting" or "laughing/joky" way they were presented: commercializing ("privatizing") Government services; cutting taxes on business, presented as "getting rid of obstacles to innovation and creativity," or cutting taxes on very rich people, presented as "alleviating a great unfair burden": killing affirmative-action laws, presented as "no longer needed" or "can't you make it on your own?"; deregulating commercial business, again always presented as a "terrible burden," "driving them to move to other countries," etc. Couple that with a non-stop droning of "Government is so horrible that..." blah blah, and they could hardly stop laughing; liberals hate America and the middle class, feminists destoying families (I don't know where they think we come from), killing unions and calling them "greedy"; etc., and you have an invented wave of half-told stories, ignorance, and everything told from the corporate perspective--"regulations! we don't need these!"--on and on, unopposed now because Reagan changed FCC rules such as the amount of content that networks had to buy from independant producers; now it was none (my Mom recognized the threat of this as soon as it was done).

Reagan had a sickening, grinning, waving persona that the male corporate media did not challenge because they worried they would not be popular--outrageous at the time, but now easily recognizable from many examples since; slogans were used for the first time obsessively, rather than answering questions, and people did not recognize that they were being lied to, they thought these were "descriptions of things." All of the multitudes of criminal Reagan Admin. people indicted, charged, jailed, who paid fines, etc., were all painted as "victims of a liberal, partisan 'Democrat' Congress," etc. The examples go on forever, but I think the pattern is clear: this was the beginning of corporate-consultant/think-tank operated dismantling of Government--laws, services, everything--and the first examples of lying on this horrifically complete level; people were not used to it, they did not know yet what it was.

Like the first pains that are too small to do anything about until they get, much later, to be unbearable, because you don't even notice it at first, this was like that--we had been taken over by a group of global corporate traitors, but at first, the signs were not yet developed, (they hadn't killed Glass-Steagall or other laws that really caused the crash, yet), so they were not clear enough, for what it was, until later. This is also why they now do it differently every time--no longer a conmservative Republican prick (Reagan) delivering the message, then it was a pseudo-liberal, "friendly" "D"LC (Bill Clinton, Al Gore); then now it is the "historical" "community organizer" "radical--kinda! not!" Obama. They have to flip it around a different way every time, so it will trick you. People know what it is and where it all came from, now.

Also, just to mention it, Gallup (which was still a good polling organization then, not the Republican hack group they are now) showed year after year during the 1980s that Reagan was not actually popular, and Reagan's approval ratings dropped the more people understood how conservative Reagan was--the last popular Republican President was Dwight Eisenhower--but was popular with the wealthy interests that owned everything. (Reagan a total approval rating of 51%, as opposed to Eisenhower's 78%, and Reagan slid over the eight years from 57 to 51%. There was also no increase of popularity on conservative issues; book "The Illusion of a Conservative Reagan Revolution" by Larry M. Schwab.) Of course, now that they are not a Government anymore but a global corporate arm, they don't care what we think, and if we change it won't matter anymore because they don't respond--think of the chilling meaning of the fact that Americans by 90%+ opposed the Wall St. bailout and millions called, sent messages, and yelled at them on the streets. They lied and said we "changed our minds" after a flurry of traced lobbyist-office calls supporting it--not from us, from them--and they passed it, against our will. This will be harder to solve.

[Hannah Bell]

14. "Reagan was not actually popular," - not so popular, but for the cheering of

the media...

reagan admin = smoke mirrors

[omega minimo]

19. +1,000,000,000

Apt as ever, HS. Spot on. Our recent history with the Banksters? Nice touch. So easily overlooked on the recent lists of complaints against the O Admin. that DU has been tussling over.... Um HeLLOo!?! They just gave the foxes dominion over the chicken coop AFTER they had done their damage ....

That's the sort of IN YER FACE thing that people need to be able to percieve, recall and respond to -- GEE WHILIKERS, WHY LOOK AT THE BIG. RED. FLAG. :bounce:

There were enough of those for some us when Reagan came along, to spot him very early on for what he and his policies were and where they would head us, which they did.

"The examples go on forever, but I think the pattern is clear: this was the beginning of corporate-consultant/think-tank operated dismantling of Government--laws, services, everything--and the first examples of lying on this horrifically complete level; people were not used to it, they did not know yet what it was."

The mystery is why more people were so willing to be lulled to sleep again, after the lies of Watergate and Viet Nam. It's called "Vietnam Fatique ...." But what kind of Americans are we, who allow this to happen to our nation?

[Hidden Stillness]

27. A Few More Thoughts on this "Joky Slogans so They Won't Answer" Problem

Just a few more thoughts on this important point, that started with Reagan and has only gotten worse, that goes along with the recent thread on DU about Naomi Klein and Obama's phony use of marketing slogans; that, as with Reagan, people thought were real. The big threat is that everything--every point of discussion--has been poisoned this way, turned over to slogans and "spin," and NOTHING is ever answered anymore, as if we are the American people, and we deserve answers as citizens. It is so advanced, that now it is not only that things are dressed up with slogans or that people don't fulfill the promises they make--obviously, that has always gone on--but that now, they are at the level where the people themselves are not anything they pretend to be, they are always lying and covering up, and the lies are about much worse things--such as who even runs the Government and what things are going for at all. Soldiers increasingly are not U.S. Armed Forces but are commercial corporations who want to make a profit; Federal Reserve chair Bernancke refuses to answer the questions of Congress as to where all the bailout money is going, to whom. It is slogan and spin not only to pretty-up the truth, but to obfuscate the whole operation of the world, and cover up what groups are even there, behind it. Now, it is not legislators resorting to the occasional slogan-lie, but a completely fake front, like the joke David Steinberg used to tell about Reagan, that like the aspirin commercials where they say, "I'm not really a doctor, but I play one on TV," Reagan was like, "I'm not really a President, I just play one on TV." The fake had become real. Then, where is the real?

There is no intelligent political discussion anymore, no explanations, as everyone has noticed. When people can fuck around with these joky/slick "framing" slogans whose only purpose is to deflect you and get you to quit, and it works, believe me, you will never get another real answer (with its consequences, as now people will understand issues) again. Question: Unemployment is rising, you have no jobs programs and no increases or direct cash payments for the suffering unemployed, yet you give trillions to criminal investment cartels who made the economy collapse by their greed, and you arrest no one, have re-regulated nothing--why? Answer: "Fired up and ready to go! Yeah! Win-win!" You will actually never get an answer, only this slap across the face, as if you are an outsider, and don't deserve it anymore.

Whole issues are horrifyingly censored completely by this seemingly "fun/joky" slogan way. Republican stealing of the 2000 election by tampered-with electronic vote counting machines owned by Republican-connected corporations giving false vote counts, bags and bags of thrown-out Democratic votes later found in Republican vans in Florida, and an outrageous, illegally encroaching decision by a Republican-packed Supreme Court, etc., and the media did not deal with the issue and try to explain it, but covered it all up with the kind of pre-packaged sloganeering they do all the time now--it all became "hanging chads," "pregnant chads" ha ha ha! No actual news coverage of the issue. The discovery that most of the greenhouse gases so dangerous to the environment comes actually from methane gases produced by huge, corporate-factory agribusiness (not ordinary family farms, but only from the horrific practices of huge, concentrated agribusiness), much more than even what is produced by cars and trucks--agribusiness--is not covered by media raising the threatening questions a straightforward presentation of the facts would do--no, now all of a sudden, all media on cue, it is a bizarre, neverending "joke" routine about "farting cows" (like a stupid Jay Leno routine) and other distracting asininity.

We are being joked to death as a way of cutting us out of the workings of our own democracy, tyrannically, and this is now the permanent, consultant/lobbyist purpose of it. This total dislocation of the Presidency and the Federal Government from our servants and protectors, who do as we tell them to do and who have an obligation to us as we have an obligation to each other, all as an organized society, from that to an act on TV (and now computer--no difference) who spins, "frames," grins, waves, gives slogans--and will not answer or make itself accountable to us, yet all the while pretending to be "friendly" while ripping our laws and regulations apart--that maddening combination. from then to now--all that was the poisonous legacy of Ronald "Grinning/Waving/Slash Social Programs for the Poor and Cut Taxes for Corporations and the Wealthy" Reagan, that evil prick who was allowed to pretend not to be, with a slick act protected by the media. This is what the Presidency itself now is, only a shadow and a game, for totally other purposes.

[onenote]

36. "90% plus opposed the Wall Street bailout" Link?

[Skittles]

15. it makes me sick to this day, how many people Reagan fooled

[Overseas]

17. But geez, Jimmy Carter wanted us to wear sweaters and try recycling.

What a downer! He was talking about sustainable development and wanting to fund all those ugly solar panels. And trying to push for alternative energy sources that could have given Americans freedom from dependence on Big Oil. We couldn't have decentralized power, now could we?

So Jimmy was characterized as a Gloomy Downer, when Reagan said it could be Morning In America. We could be free to get rich quick, full speed ahead.

Hey and that dorky Al Gore with his Lock Box for Social Security and annoying eco-talk was presented as a pompous geek, sure to be overcome by the folksy Kennebunkport Cowboy. That worked out really well for large polluters and war profiteers.

So here we are with dangerously accelerating climatic destabilization from atmospheric deterioration through industrialization and still suffering from millions in PR designed to stop people from making the tough but exciting changes we really need.



:crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[omega minimo]

18. "So here we are" wearing sweaters and recycling

:hi:

[Overseas]

26. At long last.

:fistbump:

And maybe we'll even eat more fresh vegetables because they're cheaper than fancy fiber tabs and come with built-in enzyme tabs too. :9

[Warren DeMontague]

20. Hey, wait a minute.. he gave us Scalia, didn't he?

The gift that keeps on giving.

[pitohui]

21. no one intelligent believed reagan would lead to anything good

it was actually well known that he was fucking dumb as a post, and i remember saying to friends in 1980, this man has alzheimer's, you may bet on it

the problem is that there is a growing population of people who are themselves stupid and incapable of logical thought, and those people vote too

i'm not sure what to suggest, i think we should have laws that prevent the media from spreading lies and propaganda, either that, or we would have to give up on democracy, because we can't allow the free exchange of lies and then also allow a stupid person's vote to count as much as an educated person -- i would prefer to see some controls on the media lying and the intentional spread of rightwing horseshit

no one who thought the bumbling, rambling reagan was "the great communicator" has learned anything or can learn anything

[omega minimo]

24. Great post, great call

I didn't spot the Alzheimer's (aside from the nonsensical speech patterns and braindead behavior and blood curdling zombie persona) that early but I had clocked the media lying and TELLING US REAGAN WAS GOING TO WIN THE ELECTION by June of 1980 and I'm STILL pissed off about it.

MEDIA is a HUGE part of the problem/solution.

[baldguy]

22. Just like Bush - it's not that they thought he would be "good" necessarily.

They thought they'd get rich, or be able to punish those they saw as sinners, or get to drop bombs on brown people. All positive things, to be sure - but not really "good".

[omega minimo]

23. Or as OnionPatch said in post #6

"Because he made it acceptable to be selfish, that's why."

It's that "acceptable" that is sticky, just as your post's moral ambivalence .... "acceptable" to be lemmings, methinks, "acceptable" to be a slimeball and cheat and steal "because everyone else is doing it."

[baldguy]

25. Yep, Gordon Gecko was definatly a Republican.

[Octafish]

29. Pruneface made it OK to be in the KKK.

Worse president ever, until George Herbert Walker Bush, who was the worst president ever until his dim son took office.



Hey, Obama! Put the turd on the dime, sure.

[EFerrari]

30. I'm seriously thinking of putting up a website just to plan a counter

to the celebration of this bastard's birth in 2011.

Because I can see Obama and our party in general being "gracious" when what we really need is a good reality check.

[omega minimo]

31. By that time, if RR's being enshrined and Dems are being "gracious" about it

it will be time for some of the "good Germans" to provide that reality check, oh yes.

[Octafish]

34. If progress is done by Liberals, why must We the People worship Conservatives?

Where We the People to employ a Truth Commission followed by a Grand Jury,
there wouldn't be enough prisons to hold all the NAZIs, warmongers and traitors.

[EFerrari]

35. Even a blog post or article a day for a year wouldn't be enough

to run down the damage that bastard did.

[Odin2005]

32. Anyone who still beleives in Trickle-Down and Free Market Fundamentalism is either rich or stupid.

Or a teen boy who jerks off to Ayn Rand.

[Hannah Bell]

33. cause they were pissed about gas prices & hostages & weren't paying attention.

one of my country-club college friends, dad big-shot lawyer, told me her dad (R) was voting his pocketbook:

"No one cares about 'Morning in america' - that's just for stupid people."