56 replies on “Reagan, Objectively, Ruined This Country…”

  3. Problem is, if you’re a rich white male or heavily invested in multi-national corporations, Reagan is, and always will be, a hero.

    Just because he effectively screwed 98% of the US. population, doesn’t mean the 2% with almost all the money and power are necessarily going to see things the way the rest of us do.

  4. Interesting that “every measure” doesn’t include obvious ones like GDP growth and unemployment. Also interesting that the “badness” of every measure you quote continued to increase, and in many cases accelerated, under Clinton.

    I’m sure it’s all directly attributable to Reagan, though.

  5. @4: GDP and employment data are there, at the source link.

    And yes, Reagan and his policies have been unconstrained since approximately 1982–a policy framework framed by deregulation, constrained governmental science and regulation, unconstrained corporate power, unconstrained defense spending, constrained social spending and tax cuts regardless of budgetary consequences. Clinton (and to a lesser extent Obama) are “Democrats” who have essentially followed this same framework.

    Since implementing Reaganomics–unblemished cornerstone of US policy since 1982–our country has become poorer, stupider, weaker, more indebted, less healthy and incapable of solving any problem. This is a direct consequence of that–not just by correlation, but by causation of his policies. One would have to be willfully obtuse to ignore the obviousness of the situation by now.

  6. Also negotiated with terrorists. Repeatedly. And gave them money and weapons. And didn’t retaliate after they killed 241 Marines. Who had orders to ask permission before they could shoot to defend themselves. In the middle of a civil war. In Beirut.

    Worst Commander in Chief ever.

  7. Jon Stewart, last night, posted a clip of Nixon promising universal, subsidized, affordable health care to the American people. Didn’t pan out, exactly, but it illustrates an important point: Reagan has pushed the “center” of the conversation to a place where the right-wing American exceptionalists of the 1970s are basically the Nancy Pelosis of today.

    The left in this country pretty much sucks.

  8. So like, I was hanging out with this guy and we see a Regan shirt, obviously satire, and he’s like “but dude, Regan’s awesome he defeated communism”. He was totally serious, and I had to explain to him that Regan did no such thing, and the debt and drug war he left behind as a legacy was unforgivable. He was stunned.

  9. Golob @ 5:

    The GDP data at your link is nominal growth, which no one uses as a welfare measure, because it is the sum of inflation and real growth. The inflation component is why it peaks in the Carter years. Real GDP per capita grew at 2.1%/a in the 1970s, then 2.3%/a in the 1980s. (http://www.measuringworth.com/growth/)

    I see no unemployment data at your link, but you can easily find (http://www.fusioninvesting.com/wp-conten…) that unemployment rose from ~5% to ~10% from 1972 to 1982, then fell back to ~5% by 1990.

    Your litany of assertions is much less well-supported that those at your link. Poorer? Real GDP/captia has nearly doubled since 1982. Stupider? The fraction of the population with a college degree has also nearly doubled in that period. (Not to mention the Flynn effect.) Weaker? Hard to quantify. More indebted? Undoubtedly. Less healthy? Life expectancy has increased by about 5 years. (We can probably bench-press less, but we could probably bench-press even more in the 19th century.)

    I am always amazed by people who believe that the human condition is deteriorating, and also by people who believe that 30-year trends can be asribed to one president. I want to ask: do you really believe this stuff, or are you aware that this is just doing political spin?

  11. @4
    “There are two types of people– People who divide people into two types & those who don’t.”

    I bring up this funny to illustrate the fundamental difference between the conservative/right-wing people and those who are defined by them as being “liberal.” To the rightwinger, politics is like a sport. There are two teams, and one side is always against the other. There is no room for subtlety or nuance. Thus, if you don’t like Reagan, you obviously adore Clinton. For the rightwinger, governing the country is a by-product of the real goal, which is to win. Whether by hook or by crook, or both, if a rightwinger is elected to office, the highest virtue has been achieved. Whatever he does in congress, or in his personal/financial life is only important if it will further his winning again the next cycle. The greatest evil is not in taking up an opposing viewpoint in policy, per se, but in the opposition itself. By simply disagreeing w/ a rightwinger, you are now the Devil Incarnate, and anything done to you that prevents you from having any impact on America is a virtue.

    There are a few people who define themselves (or are defined by others) as “left,” who fall into this behavior pattern, but by far, the majority of people who view the world in absolutes, an Us vs Them proposition, are usually conservative. They worship power, because they perceive that the Strong will win. They care little for justice, equality or even freedom, only if those values can be used for their side to “win.”

    Obviously, those who do not see the world in such childish, simplistic terms, are in agreement w/ each other. But these are the sorts of people who have advanced humanity forward.

  12. I think the title of the post is silly. Even if it was “objectively” true that Reagan started a downward spiral (which it’s really not; evolution is “objectively” true, that cigarettes cause cancer is “objectively” true; that one man “ruined” the U.S., not so much), it required the concerted efforts of every president and politician and voter after him. You can’t seriously assign blame just to the guy who started doing bad things without blaming every other person who chose to do the exact same bad things after him.

    And the word “ruined” is anything but “objective” in regards to something like a country. To suggest that the U.S. is “objectively ruined” is like saying, “I am, literally, starving,” after you skip lunch. With all respect, it’s bad writing.

    And the fact is that for a lot of minorities, women, gays, lesbians, and transgendered people, U.S. in 1980 was not a better place to live than the U.S. in 2010.

  13. Wright @10 and Golob @5:

    Much as I think there are compelling arguments to be made that Reagan set several precedents that have screwed up this country royally, I have to agree with my conservative commenter friend here that they hyperbole is unjustified. Debt levels and balance of trade are directly related, for instance, so citing both is redundant, and wealth concentration is not a priori bad (if, for instance, higher wealth concentration had been accompanied by the median standard of living skyrocketing).

    If you’re going to call Reagan a douchebag (which, admittedly, he was) but want to actually try to substantiate that claim, at least be intellectually honest about it and make a more nuanced argument that can be justified.

    Unless, of course, you’re just trolling. 🙂

  17. @15 – because countless millions fell for his “I’m just a harmless old grandpa!” shtick and have no idea what a hard turn to the right this country took during his presidency and how much that hurt their own long-term economic prospects. So in answer to the question “Were those just stupid Americans?” the answer is yes, yes they were.

  18. @15, since I’ve already criticized the silly idea that one man ruined the country, let me just remind you that Ronald Reagan supported terrorists in Central America. Even if he didn’t also amp up the drug war and support murderous dictators all over the world, once you give aid, comfort, and arms to terrorists, any good he might have theoretically accomplished, whatever it might be, is forever tarnished.

  21. But won’t your Boy Genius Barack fix things?
    Isn’t he wiping out our debt?
    Aren’t the people of America shouldering the burden and solving their own problems without relying on the ‘guvmint’?
    Aren’t we installing enlightened single payer health care systems to deliver care to ALL Americans?

    Happy Days are Here Again, Jonny!!

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  22. The real damage Reagan did was the institution of teary-eyed trembling-voiced bogus patriotism over clear-eyed reality in people’s assessment of the United States. He got elected on a promise of “morning in America again”, in reaction against a decade of “we’re the bad guys”. A necessary correction, perhaps, but ever since Reagan truth has simply not been interesting or valuable to most people.

    Reagan is the president who could sincerely and emotionally tell foreign leaders about his wholly imaginary WWII service. He was our most emotional President ever, hitting dog-notes that non-fans couldn’t hear but which made fans well up with pride. Misplaced pride as often as any other kind.

    We’re still doing it. Every time you see one of those “these colors don’t run” stickers, you’re seeing Reagan’s legacy. This is a relic of the “Reagan destroyed Communism” idea, which is absolutely central to modern right-wing thinking.

    The clearest expression of Reaganism was Ollie North’s performance in front of the Senate — the last gasp of the old Senate as an actual deliberative body. He cried, and he held back tears the whole time, as he described his extralegal wholesale shredding of the Constitution. Real tea party stuff, of course.

    David, the economic stuff you mention only pertains to some Americans. If you’re white and middle-class or above, the Reagan years were an unprecedented expansion of wealth. But 100% — more than 100% — of that growth was among the salaried classes. Hourly wage earners earn dramatically less today than they did in 1975, adjusted for inflation. The worst sliver of poverty receives some attention, but the wide swathe of working class people in America have been floating in shit for forty years.

  23. Unless you’re over the age of 35, you probably don’t have an “objective” opinion as to President Reagan’s contribution to America. By all accounts his success in handling Foreign Affairs was one of the best. Had he decided to go to war over Beirut, a lot more than 241 Marines would have been killed.

    @18 Reagan’s victory over Carter and Mondale were #2 and #3 in the top 10 Presidential Election Blowout’s in the history of America. Your “objective” POV that Americans are stupid may be at risk of being slightly flawed or counter productive to your point.

  24. I could have sworn that what ruined the country was negro-thug-enabling liberal Jews like Golob.

  25. Our country getting weaker and stupider is directly related to liberal Jews like Golob who agitate for the twelve million plus illegal mexicans in the USA, and the Jew’s coddling of their favorite pets, negro thugs.

  27. If anyone wants a more nuanced view of this topic, Haines Johnson’s “Sleepwalking Through History” is an excellent account of the 1980s in America.

    While I am not going to make any “objective” statements, I do think that Reagan instilled and confirmed attitudes of deregulation, greed, selfishness, and cynicism to government that were a significant departure from the New Deal consensus of the past half century, and which harmed our nation more than benefited it.

    Random trivia: the largest real economic growth in our nation’s history was in the first half of the 1960s.

  28. Raindrop is right. There are an awful lot of stupid Americans and dead celebrities. Besides, some people – including most Seattleites – will wait in line for anything, and others just love a good funeral.

    And David is being willfully obtuse. It’s entirely possible to recognize the damage that both Reagan AND Clinton did. He thinks all of us are as dumb as the average conservative, with their NFL view of politics.

    LJM, it is true that gay folks have more rights in 2010 as opposed to 1980, but that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Ronald Reagan. We fought and bled for that ourselves. While Reagan didn’t “invent” AIDS, he was more than happy to sit back and watch as it took its toll – even killing some of he and Nancy’s “close personal friends” (which should tell you what kind of friend he was)

    But when you get right down to it, here’s what Reagan did: He put a kindly face on greed, willful ignorance, and every other nasty human impulse. He made it OK to be an asshole.

  30. Fnarf @ 23: I appreciate your measured response, but while it is true that the growth of the last 40 years has favored the wealthy, it is simply not true that “Hourly wage earners earn dramatically less today than they did in 1975, adjusted for inflation”. The very slowest-growing measure of well-being, the inflation-adjusted hourly unskilled wage, is the same as it was in 1975. The inflation-adjusted production worker compensation, which measures the value of wages plus benefits for blue-collar workers, is 10% higher than it was in 1975. And the real GDP per capita, the broadest measure of well-being which includes the inflation-adjusted income for all people, is 55% higher than it was in 1975. (You can get all these numbers from the link I provided above.)

  31. Dr Golob correctly notes that America is on a steep slippery slope but his liberal prejudices blind him to the cause.
    The disintergration of the Family is the culprit.
    Enlightened observers will find that the out-of-wedlock birthrate correlates to our societal decay, as Dan celebrates daily with his “Every Child Deserves…”.
    The phenomenon as been oh so cleverly dubbed
    “Skipping Toward Gommorah”….

  32. It’s inaccurate to say that Reagan ruined our country, when in fact, Americans ruined our country by freely electing and supporting the psychopaths, compulsive liars and kleptomaniacs that’ve caused our national suicide.

    Based on our history, it’s fair to say that most Americans lack empathy, intelligence and basic human decency.

  34. @22: GTFO Period Hive Drone. Go catch American foulbrood, Varroa mites, and Nosema disease, spread them to the rest of the Period Hive, and die.

    @25, 26: Obvious troll is obvious. TROLL HARDER, F@GG0T.

    @32: You know what’s deviant? Your spelling of “Gomorrah”, that’s what. STFUDIAFKTHXBAI.

  36. 35: at least I’m not a libtard like you who is too wimpy to spell out the word FAGGOT.

  38. Alls I know is he said to the guy to tear down this wall, and then this wall was teared down.

    And people liked him, so his monetary, military, and labor policies must of been good.

  39. I will never forget Reagan’s decision to win election by giving al-Qaeda Stingers and to let the Pakistanis fund them.

    It all goes back to that Epic Fail.

  41. These are good debates but don’t blame him for for AIDS, that’s just silly. Your STD problems are of your own making.

  43. @31 – David Wright, you’re missing the point. It’s easy to focus on GDP, but 30 years of runaway bubble growth is easy to do in comparison with the true task before every President, which is setting our country on a sustainable course against the headwinds of popular sentiment. No President – including Obama – has come close to living up to this standard, but Reagan introduced the idea of the “free lunch”, whereby both deficits AND government can grow, while taxes get cut. This started modern deficit thinking, leading Cheney to say “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” because “conservatives” could always get away with cutting taxes and high deficit spending even in good times *without any political blowback*.

    Republicans love to rail about the deficit nowadays, because it makes Democrats afraid of taking the stimulus measures that are truly needed to get the economy going again and really close the revenue gap, but no Republican since Reagan has been serious about the tradeoff between spending (of which tax cuts are a form) and revenue. In short, Reagan ushered in our current state of apathy about deficits, leaving a ticking time bomb that will go off well beyond his presidency.

    And that’s not even talking about energy policy (fail!), foreign policy (cheated and lied!), and many other atrocious stains on his record. He was able to hide all of that, because he was an *actor* who knew how to play his audience.

  44. @23: Fnarf, I see where you’re coming from, and to some extent, where Golob’s coming from, but I wonder if you feel that Reagan and his policies are a cause or are a symptom of our problem.

    I tend to see them as a little bit of both, of course, but to some extent calling Reagan out as simply the “cause” obscures the point. The challenges we face today, the way I see it, are mostly owed to a collective inability or unwillingness to think long-term and to make the sacrifices necessary of one generation to secure wealth for future generations. Reagan was a symptom of this kind of short-sightedness, as too he was a cause. But it’s not just him. It’s everyone, sort of.

    All that being said, a lot of economic measures are bullshit, for the reasons David Wright points out. Even if we had gotten much richer as a country during this time period (which conservatives have sufficient evidence to argue), to me it really probably doesn’t matter: what matters is whether or not that actually makes us happy, and whether or not our richness is sustainable. I’d suggest that the post-Reagan period is one of economic growth, in terms of general measures like GDP, but one that is not sustainable and not likely to make us happier as a nation.

    We can sorta see that already with the excessive borrowing and bailouts needed to keep top-down Reaganomics chugging along.

  45. Let’s not forget about how the lunatic actually thought there was such a thing as a “winnable” nuclear war, okay?

    That’s important.

  49. Why are you such a wimp that you can’t bring yourself to spell out the word FAGGOT? You are a spineless politically-correct impotent squish.

  50. Glad to know that conversation’s generally over. Thanks for holdin’ down the fort on killing off the troll, as usual, Venomlash. I hardly even notice them anymore thanks to ol’ unregistered off.

    I’m sure you’ve also noticed that this “unregistered off” makes the gems shine a little brighter, and I spend more time reading thoughtful, articulate comments by libertarians and social conservatives I might disagree with – and less concern is paid to the childish bullshit I’m sure has been hashed out here by the trolls. Thank god I can’t hear that crap.

    What’s that you said, f@gg0t? Oh wait, no. I can’t even hear you. It’s awesome. Must suck to be crushed by the weight of your own vitriolic, ad hominem irrelevance. But I wouldn’t know. I can’t hear anything you’re saying. Sweet. Troll harder, f@gg0t.

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