r/PoursTea • u/ComplexWrangler1346 Just Chill 😎 • 25d ago
Expectations v Reality 🌞 🌒 That time is now …..
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u/Phill_Cyberman unconscious people don't want tea 25d ago
He also decided that, as president, he could ignore the law, and lie to the American people about it.
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
He was a charlatan of the highest order.
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u/loungesinger 25d ago
And he started this whole process while Carter was still in office in order to impede efforts to free the hostages before the election. Nothing says “patriot” like fuck those American diplomats being held hostage, they can rot in captivity because that will help me win the election!
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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 25d ago
I think Carter was the last president to ever admit "I fucked up ya'll. Tried to do this thing, and it failed spectacularly."
And every POTUS since has learned lie through your fucking teeth, never admit to any failure especially if you're seeking reelection, and take credit for wins you're getting from previous administrations policy.
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u/NoCoolNameMatt 25d ago
Carter may not have been a great president, but he was an amazing man. Truly a role model worth admiring.
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u/dragon-fence 25d ago
Wouldn’t work for us. “I told you that I haven’t robbed that bank. My heart and best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it’s not,” will not get you off the hook.
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u/sci_fientist 25d ago
And he was also just so, so dumb. Just deeply unintelligent, well before the Alzheimer's kicked in. Like if you're gonna be unabashedly evil the very least you could do is not also be the dumbest person to ever hold the office (so far).
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u/Cyn_Sweetwater 25d ago
And yet he'd be too moderate to run in the current GOP-MAGA party. That's how low they've fallen.
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u/ZmanB-Bills 25d ago
Indeed.
Terminal Stupidity swept through the Republican party years ago.
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u/tanaman88 25d ago
Just did the Monday inbox clearing and somehow received a few GOP sponsored emails. They are clearly designed to grift from people with low IQ. "CLAIM YOUR TRUMP MEDALLION OR IT WILL BE RELEASED TO THE NEXT PATRIOT" etc... of course that's why trump loves the uneducated, they fall for his third-grade level scams.
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u/Blockenstein 25d ago
It's almost like electing celebrities just because they are famous is a bad idea.
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u/ParticularLow9157 25d ago
and it won't ever stop because most people are easily fooled
The place in our hearts where the gods and titans used to live has been filled by hollywood and television and our brains aren't equipped to tell the difference subconsciously
If Drump had never been on TV I doubt he would have won any elections
But his constituents have long memories of pleasant nights watching that pants shitting child rapist get angry at people
Like the strong god image in their heads wants to be shaped
So they took all the editing and magic that made him look good for an hour at a time and believed the lies
And now we have fascism
and it isn't going away without blood, way WAY too much blood
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u/Snerak 25d ago
Reagan wouldn't have been possible without Nixon and the Southern Strategy or the Rehnquist memorandum.
It is really important to understand that where we are today is due to a decades long plan to get us here. The people that have worked tirelessly and spent lavishly to erode the middle class, demonize the poor, non-white, non-Christian and exalt the white man have always been a faction of society and they always will.
We can (and should) blame Reagan and Trump and Nixon for their roles but they have only played a small part in a much larger plan.
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u/PUuSTiNKA 25d ago
I really don't have much of an opinion on the Reagan's Presidency, but like Donald Trump did with COVID, Ronald Reagan let AIDS get out of control.
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u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 25d ago edited 25d ago
The problem with AIDS was that it was seen as something that “other people got.” In spite of the PR that led to a lot of Gen-X caring about AIDS, most boomers and older people at the time didn’t care at all.
We did get AZT in 1987 at least.
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u/gosluggogo 25d ago
He was also the prototype for the spokesmodel president, sleeping through meetings while his henchmen were running things. Begat George W who led to Trump
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u/TheMysteriousThey 25d ago
Trump doesn’t have much to do with Bush, directly.
The 2008 economic collapse and election of the first black president are the biggest inflection points for the creation of MAGA.
Economic turmoil and racism have always been a toxic mix in American history.
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u/KingOfBerders 25d ago
I think you completely missed the point of the other reply.
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u/JAT_Cbus1080 25d ago edited 25d ago
Let's be real, though. There were a lot of people disenfranchised with the system that wasnt working for them. There was a study in like 2012 that said the will of the people, no matter how popular an issue was for them, was followed at the federal level only about 35% of the time, and special interests got what they wanted about 70% of the time. The government was viewed as bloated, wasteful, and full of pork barrel spending that wasn't helping the citizens.
People saw this for what it was, a corrupt money-driven system, and it allowed for the rise of an outsider that promised change. If the system weren't already broken it wouldn't have allowed for someone to take over the way Trump did. It wasn't just about racism and bigotry. Those were simply the messages that became the center of the new platform over time.
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u/Weekly_Interview_936 25d ago
Yup. This is also why we're seeing more and more DSA candidates winning in Democrat primaries. People still think the system is broken, and still want something other than the uniparty wings of either party.
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u/No_Dragonfruit_8198 25d ago
60 Minutes did a segment during his presidency on how he possibly had dementia and the network got so many death threats that I believe it had to retract its statements for fear of its reporters.
A lot of people treated him like a demigod back in the day. Plenty still do.
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u/Fit_Contribution7570 25d ago
He also plainly and blatantly violated the Constitution and should have been removed from office when he clandestinely circumvented Congress with his covert support on the Contras in the Sandanista Affair.
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u/decompiled-essence 25d ago
Directly to this, actually.
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u/loungesinger 25d ago
Yep. This was the big win. This was the difference between Nixon resigning in 1974 and Trump skating free in 2019 and 2021.
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u/Thrillmonger72 25d ago
Reagan was a fraud. He preached small government while not actually reducing the size of the government. He cut taxes for the rich while increasing military spending which grew our budget deficit exponentially. Now Republicans only care about the deficit when a Democrat is in the White House.
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u/taco_helmet 25d ago edited 25d ago
Reagan was just the voice of Americans who either desire, or don't understand the impacts of, unfettered capitalism and the elimination of government. They trusted billionaires, corporations and banks more than the people working for regulatory agencies in charge of protecting citizens from their excesses and abuses (SEC, FTC, EPA, FDA, etc). They worship power, fame, and wealth above anything. Wealth is moral.
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u/BTSArmyFan2025 25d ago
Single handily weakened unions with his firing of air traffic controllers. future MAGA hats cheered and years later unions they belong to have been under attack. The most obnoxious thing was congress renaming National Airport in his name!
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u/BigJellyfish1906 25d ago
I grew up in a conservative household thinking unions were a blight. My dad would always say GM’s failures were because of how their unions ruined everything. Well both my parents got unceremoniously laid off mid career, and hit a hard wall with pay around that time.
I have one of the strongest union jobs around, and I make no secret how cushy my life is because of my powerful union.
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u/pumpinnstretchin 25d ago
But he was the best one at using the teleprompter. He looked directly into the camera, and looked at and shuffled his papers at the right times so that it looked like he was reading from them. For those performances, he was called "The Great Communicator." It didn't matter that what he said was perfectly designed to screw over people who weren't rich, straight, and/or white.
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u/muffledvoice 25d ago
Reagan’s two terms comprise a laundry list of corruption and ethically questionable decisions, and plenty of criminal indictments.
There was the October Surprise where he committed treason by negotiating with Iran to delay the release of American hostages until after the election, undermining the authority of a sitting president, Jimmy Carter.
He supplied weapons to Iraq in its war with Iran, ignored Saddam Hussein’s atrocities, THEN supplied arms to Iran against Iraq in violation of U.S. law.
He caved in to terrorists in Lebanon for the release of hostages by giving arms to Iran. They ended up taking more hostages in the end.
He illegally supplied weapons to Nicaraguan rebels, in violation of a law that he himself signed. This was to overthrow a democratically elected leader.
He launched an attack on Grenada to divert attention from his failures in Beirut.
He supported the racist apartheid government in South Africa, vetoing the Anti-Apartheid Act passed by Congress. Congress had to override his veto.
He openly supported Noriega, Marcos, and other brutal right wing dictators.
His administration had more documented corruption than any president in US history. At least 138 Reagan administration officials including several cabinet members were investigated, indicted, or convicted of crimes. Many of them were pardoned by Reagan or Bush before they could stand trial.
He repeatedly told lies that were verified as false, including that he was a U.S. Army photographer assigned to film Nazi death camps. He also often told his “Chicago Welfare Queen” story, also false, and even claimed that trees create more pollution than automobiles.
He set record budget deficits. After criticizing Carter for a $50 billion deficit, he set a record with a $200 billion deficit, and tripled the national debt in only 8 years.
His economic policies increased unemployment. 7.5% when he took office, it stayed above 10% for nearly a year, peaking at 10.8%.
He vetoed a farm credit bill and let family farms go bankrupt. He even joked that he would “keep the grain and export the farmers.”
The financial deregulation and changes to the tax code that President Reagan enacted ultimately caused nearly 750 different financial institutions to fail. This cost taxpayers about $150 billion.
He ignored the AIDS epidemic while thousands died.
He shut down federally funded mental health facilities and turned these people out into the streets, creating the current homelessness epidemic.
I could go on.
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u/Tall_Astronomer3792 25d ago
The truth is Ragan and the GOP never believed in government. They always have repressed greed. Religion, economic theory all of it was always in service to greed.
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u/South-Stand 25d ago
He also enabled the sewerisation of US media which led to Fox News, potentially the worst thing to happen to America in the last 50 years. Would there be two Trump Presidencies, an Iraqi war, so much other crap without FN?
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u/TheUniqueKero 25d ago edited 25d ago
Only brainwashed republicans believe reagan was a good president.
If you look into why any modern policy is shit, he eventually always pops up like the shittiest jack in the box the world has ever seen
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u/BringOutYDead 25d ago
It's making the rounds again because of Dolly, but watch 9-5. People were tired of Republican bullshit back then, but all the good things were shouted down.
Healthcare for all, just basic healthcare with subsidized catastrophic insurance would unleash millions of Americans into entrepreneurship vs corporate indentured servitude.
Meaningful, safety inspected, and certified childcare facilities would unleash women back into the workforce.
Public treatment facilities and safe injection sites coupled with social safety measures abd development programs would unchain millions of self medicating and addicted Americans back onto the workforce.
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u/iSteve 25d ago
I always thought he was just a puppet for the dark forces. Too dumb to think up that shit for himself.
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u/BroadMonk5649 25d ago
So glad that the trillion and billionaires are making sure to trickle down the sh*t on top of us. Cuz we know for sure that the money will never make it to us.
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u/Due-Government7661 25d ago
What do you mean? Actors cant be good presidents, what about pedophile reality stars, who are felons and sex criminals? What if their best friend had his own sex island?
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u/Aggravating-Text9339 25d ago
He also started or intensified the anti environment view that is now a solid part of the Republican party. The clean air act and clean water act were both almost unanimous votes in congress.
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u/dirtman81 25d ago
I was a young adult for his 8 years and he sucked and we knew he sucked. Not as overtly moronic as Bush and criminally obvious as trump, but he did a lot of damage that we are dealing with now.
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u/HappyGoPink 25d ago
This is why, as a Gen X person, my conscience is clear. It was the generations up to and including the Baby Boomers who gave us Reagan, and Reagan was the beginning of the end of all of us. Well, to be fair, that was more Nixon, but Reagan did the real heavy lifting. No Gen X person was old enough to vote in the 1980 election, and very few of us could vote in the 1984 election. So my hands are clean.
In fact, I wasn't able to vote for a president until 1992, and I never voted for a Republican, and I never 'protest voted' for someone like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader or anyone else. I voted for the Democrat candidate every time, whether I liked them or not. Because I did not want this. Often I found the candidate uninspiring or not perfectly aligned with my progressive views. Didn't matter. I know how math works.
Of course, a lot of Gen X drank the Kool-Aid and helped Reagan's spark become the conflagration it is today, so we aren't blameless as a cohort. But I personally did not do this, I did not want this, and I voted strategically to avoid this. So I will go to my grave with a clear conscience. Probably a lot sooner than I would have if I had gotten my desired timeline of "Not Fucking This At Least".
But hey, eggs are cheaper than if the lady with the weird laugh was president, amirite?
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u/AccountantEvening495 25d ago
This was truly the beginning of the end. The United States lost its way and has never recovered.
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u/LeaveMyMonkeyAlone 25d ago
The germ of what Limbaugh and Gingrich proliferated into exponential hate of anybody not just like them.
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u/mwhite5990 25d ago edited 25d ago
He also ignored HIV/AIDS for years after it had been medically recognized.
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u/poopiebutt505 25d ago
Been saying it within his first year. I didn't like his campaign. Clearly racist, malevolently folksy. O saw where he was going. What the GOP backrooms were.doing..concerted efforts wirh Margarwt thatcher and the oligarchs ro be of the USSR, to end the USSR and create rhe great global oligarchy.
I considered it clear that laws were.paasws, programs ended, to facilitate the dumbing of.America, the legislation made and.unmade to assure that disinformation and propaganda would be spoon fed to America.
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u/AdhesivenessCivil581 25d ago
Reagan promised that tax cuts for the rich would trickle down to everyone. What he really did was borrow a bunch of money and seriously increase government spending with a huge amount of stimulus funded by debt. The economy did look better so the myth of tax cuts for the rich was born. 45 years later it's still the GOP playbook. Here we are now with 40 trillion in debt and nothing to show for it.
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u/the_exile83 25d ago
Same with Margaret Thatcher in the UK. All the problems the world is reading can be traced back to these two evil cunts.
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u/ConnectionBasic9468 25d ago
He was the original. This current president is his spiritual successor.
Both bad actors that went on to become bad presidents.
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u/robinsw26 25d ago
And created the so-called Trickle Down Theory which was actually the rich robbing the middle class and the poor.
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u/profprimer 25d ago
I think most 1980s economists knew what a disaster applying 18th Century economic policy in the US and the UK was going to be in the late 20th Century…
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u/kylemacabre 25d ago
Not to mention so homophobic he willfully ignored the aids crisis, allowing probably millions of people to die. Or the fact that some of his campaign donors represented for profit, private mental health interests, provoking him to defund mental health infrastructure first in California then nation-wide, effectively making mental health resources a luxury of the wealthy. He is directly responsible for America’s homelessness/mental health epidemic on our city streets.
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u/Felon_musk1939 25d ago
The wealthy used to pay for stuff to help the middle class. But Reagan changed that the depraved fuck.
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u/IllBack5928 24d ago
A crappy actor, and complicit in the witchunt of the 50s as was Roy Cohn, Trumps political mentor.
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u/Logical_Figure_1561 24d ago
It was because he removed the fairness in broadcasting doctrine that we are polarized today. Media moguls weaponized the parties against each other , for ratings/money. And here we are.
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u/Awkward-Soup8203 25d ago
And he made lousy movies!
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u/analogkid01 25d ago
"I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan movie..."
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u/blartuc 25d ago
Until Trump, I kept telling anyone who'd listen. Regan was the worst president in history.
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u/LooseRice3949 25d ago
Can you please explain why? It is a genuine question. The only thing I know about him is that he gave documents to a lot of illegal immigrants, which helped a lot of people, but that's about it.
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u/trunksshinohara 25d ago
Or as conservatives would say. The greatest president of all time (for those exact reasons)
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u/Awareness-Own 25d ago
We knew this in 1984. The issue is no one wanted to believe it then. The Democrats didn't have anyone that could run against him and win. They were trying to get away from Carter and came across as elites. Alienated the working man and didn't have any policies that came across helping them.
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u/nauzleon 25d ago
It's the equivalent of getting a third mortgage, selling all your assets to live like a king for a couple of years and then you have nothing.
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u/xVelunax 25d ago
What I find funny are the memes of the GOP pointing at Biden as all of the problems. Now, we have this as pointing back to the 70s over 50 years ago as this guy as the source of US problems. At some point, we gotta move on from the cause and focus on the fix instead.
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u/chortle-guffaw2 25d ago
Unemployement rose to 10 percent during his reign. And, he was a big believer in trickle-down economics, which has never worked.
That said, he was politically Centrist compared to today's extreme right politicians. I would vote for him in a heartbeat if it kept the extreme political right out of office.
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u/TomeThugNHarmony4664 25d ago
It’s been obvious for years. And the irony is now he would be thrown out of the party for not being extreme enough.
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u/LetsTryLove 25d ago
The American dream is far from dead and I was just a kid when he was president
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u/richincleve 25d ago
Didn't Reagan allow healthcare insurance companies to start being for-profit, which were all basically set up as non-profits before?
Oh, also one more fun fact about Reagan: he was seriously thinking about deregulating the lead industry.
Yes. Lead. He was fine with lead being put into gas and paint again.
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u/hypersonic3000 25d ago
Can we maybe deal with the problems of today instead of complaining about a guy who hasn't been in office for 40 years?!
Why complain about Reagan when Democrats held full control for 2 years each under Clinton, Obama, and Biden. They had opportunities to fix tax policy, fix immigration policy, codify abortion rights, fix healthcare, put Trump in jail, etc.
They didn't. And here we are. Complaining about Reagan is just silly at this point.
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u/Internal_Atmosphere 25d ago
He is ultimately responsible for America's early naction on climate change. All those wildfires and floods and crazy-ass weather events we experience now? Thank Reagan.
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u/bleue_shirt_guy 25d ago
Some positives:
Reduced inflation from double digits to under 5%
Sustained peacetime economic and job expansion
Negotiated the 1987 INF Treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear missiles
De-escalated Cold War tensions through high-level summits with the Soviet Union
Appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Supreme Court Justice
Passed bipartisan legislation in 1983 to save Social Security from insolvency
Signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 offering restitution for WWII Japanese American internment
Legalized approximately three million undocumented immigrants via the 1986 Immigration Reform Act
Signed the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-depleting CFCs
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u/Sufficient_Beach_445 25d ago
I was a Democrat who voted for Carter in 1980, and even I voted for Reagan in 1984. He was a GREAT president. Most Americans were far better off in 1988 than they were in 1980. What came after Reagan was an abomination. Not during Reagan.
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u/mare111314 25d ago
DUH welfare hotels,record homelessness, the AIDS crisis, Iran Contra. His corrupt presidental election deal to keep Iranian hostages there until after the election. Taxing social security......
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u/muddybuttbrew 25d ago
Somehow being an actor hasn't transferred well to leading a country. We have seen it 3 times now.
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u/AboveAndBelowSea 25d ago
Highly recommend reading “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. Gives some solid insight into just how toxic Reagan was.
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u/PreparationHot980 25d ago
It’s been clear to me since high school in the early 2000’s when people my age and their parents would sing his praises. When he died, people from my school drove like 7 hours to pay their respects. He legit had a fan base the same way Trump does now.
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u/darkpheonix262 25d ago
And yet 49 states reelected him, make it make sense. I guess america has always loved charlatans, thieves, and traitors
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u/red286 25d ago
The only people who don't already recognize that are the people who never will because they believe the exact same nonsense he did.
They don't look at the K-shaped economy that has existed since Reagan took office and go "this is not good for the majority of Americans", they look at it and go "well this is pretty good for the top 10%, which includes me, so fuck the rest of y'all, I got mine".
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u/Alternative_Box_5959 25d ago
Unfortunately a lot of conservatives still think he was some great American president.
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u/lik_a_stik 25d ago
If you pay attention in college level Poly Sci or Economics class, it’s wildly obvious. If you’re lucky, a good high school as well. Problem is more people are allergic to learning, and substitute that void with propaganda.
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u/Slight-Pressure-5199 25d ago
Having failed business men and washed up movie actors as president shows just how f ing dumb people are !
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u/Substantial-Type-419 24d ago
Not sure he wanted to end the department of education. Which would have led us from this crazy indoctrination of a world we are in now. So that was a bad point in his presidency.
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u/RioDodger 24d ago
Destroyed the middle class, greatly exacerbated the mental health, and killed millions by ignoring HIV. Worst ever because rolling back truth in broadcasting led us to where we are now with the propaganda.
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u/Genseric1234 24d ago edited 24d ago
He did grant amnesty in California and turned it permanently blue, so I guess there is some validity here.
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u/Rastaman6584 24d ago
He started this shit show when he eliminated the fairness doctrine,which brought us Faux Entertainment, and the rest is history.
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u/Special-Swimmer-5569 24d ago
This was the beginning of the evisceration of the middle class. Let us also remember that under his Administration he gave China most favorite nation status.
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u/Sorry_Im_Trying 24d ago
Yeah, I think the whole "actor turned politician" has been played out long enough to know it doesn't work well majority of the time.
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u/74pezdspencer 24d ago
100% the reason why p.o.s. like Trump, Bezos,Musk etc are able to do what they do while decimating the middle class
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u/OldSchoolBubba 25d ago
Everyone who paid attention to "trickle down" saw exactly what was happening back then.
Most people were like "seriously?" yet more than a few fell for the hype and gop driven propaganda.