Reagan was one of the worst things to happen to the US. Maybe we should just stop electing shitty actors to do a difficult job.
Reagan (or more specifically Michael Deaver) taught us that propaganda works incredibly well, almost every time.
Most of us didn’t learn it though. And here we are.
Reagan (or more specifically Michael Deaver) taught us that propaganda works incredibly well, almost every time.
Hitler (and many mfers before him) already taught that lesson, people fall for it every, single, time.
Reagan was one of the worst things to happen to the US.
100% agree
Maybe we should just stop electing shitty actors to do a difficult job.
I’d argue the opposite on that tho.
We kept hearing with Biden that a president can’t do much, it’s all Congress.
So why are we running career politicians when the majority of America hates politicians? Why did we just one an ex-prosecuter when most Dem voters hate our justice system?
Like, we can at least halfway it with someone like Al Franken, someone that started out somewhere else then switched to politics. But why not just say fuck it and run Taylor Swift for president? Count on her carrying the entire down ballot and getting dual majorities and she just has to not veto what lands on her desk.
Either the president doesn’t really do anything and is just a figurehead or it has to be someone with decades of government experience.
It can’t be both.
But there’s certainly no reason to keep picking people with zero charisma for what’s basically a convoluted popularity contest. Even foreign relations, I guarantee foreign leaders would give Brad Pitt a better deal than Joe Biden. They’re not getting down into the nitty gritty, the drones work out the details anyways.
Obama and Bill won off their charisma above all. Biden as well was incredibly charismatic back in the day, it’s just as came out recently, his health had been an issue basically the entire term. I’m not saying this as a dig, but he is a shell of his former self. 40 years ago he was considered the best public speaker of his generation.
As much as I want a progressive and think they’d win on policy, what matters before the platform is charisma and we need to admit that.
It’s insane we didn’t learn it after Al Gore, but clearly the DNC didnt.
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It doesn’t matter how good you are at a job if you can’t get hired.
The most important quality of any presidential candidate is being able to win a convoluted popularity contest.
So we need to look at people that fit that criteria, then find a good candidate. Not find someone who would be a good president, that’s the easy part, there’s a shit ton of people who could be a good president like Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, he didn’t have to be smart, just be popular and listen to a smart guy who told him what to do.
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Exactly.
They do not have the experience or necessarily even the qualities required to win a popularity contest on that scale.
So I’m saying we find an empty suit that is good at winning popularity contests then listen to the party leaders in the House and Senate, since they’re the ones with decades of political experience, and I was about to write “and they write the laws” then remembered it’s mostly lobbyists and think-tank employees these days writing legislation.
But that’s a whole nother issue.
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We can worry about that once we can consistently keep Republicans out of the White house
For the past 3 elections we’ve been told that’s all that matters and we’re 1/3
The continued idolization of Reaganomics is a huge reason why the US continues to enshittify.
Maybe there shouldn’t be such a focus on cults of personality and electing celebrities. Imagine qualified people being in office.
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
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it was more symbolic for how people felt about him - it mattered way more to Reagan as an issue of optics.
And the Iranian hostage crisis was intentionally prolonged for the purpose of becoming that symbol…
Many Americans felt he was ineffective
Yes, I already mentioned the party fractured before the election due to his moderate policies compared to the party.
Now that I write this in some ways it mimics a lot of what happened with Biden.
It literally is, but I had hoped you had realized that already after reading:
people keep acting shocked about current events just don’t know we’re watching reruns.
But in any case what matters now is realizing this isn’t unique, and we’re not heading down the right path.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Isn’t just an old time saying, it’s the fucking truth and right now people need to read their history. You can’t just look up a random event to check against current events, you need to have an existing knowledge of history and be able to realize where, when, how, and most importantly why things are connected…
Or at least listen to people who do.
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