The Long Shadow of the Reagan Years

[dajoki]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the The DU Lounge forum).

The Long Shadow of the Reagan Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opinion/donald-trump-reagan.html

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The upheavals of our current era did not begin with Donald Trump, nor will they end now that he has been defeated. Nov. 4, 1980, was 40 years ago, a long time ago now. But in so many ways the cataclysms of 1980 created the world we live in today.

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For the life of me I have never been able to understand how so many Republicans talk about their patriotism and their love of the flag and at the same time despise the very government the Constitution created. Is that what patriotism means now — hating governance, but getting all teary-eyed and sentimental about Exxon Mobil?

It’s this enduring frame of mind that still eats away at us. It explains, just to pick one example, Republicans’ hatred of the Affordable Care Act — and why they’ve been trying to repeal it for all these years, even while swearing that they’ll protect so many of its provisions.

Because since Mr. Reagan, it’s been apostasy to suggest that good governance could ever do anything to improve people’s lives. Even the resistance to mask-wearing can arguably be traced back to November 1980: Just look at all the people who find that a mandate to wear a mask to keep other people from actually dying is somehow suppression of their freedom.

Sure, blame Donald Trump for his inept pandemic response. But blame Ronald Reagan for encouraging people to hate their own government, or to view an individual sacrifice for the common good as some kind of tyranny. The pending erasure of Mr. Trump from the White House means that the tone will change in January, from cruelty to kindness, from narcissism to empathy. But Joe Biden will find it a greater challenge to alter the core belief, now held by so many Americans, that their government is the gravest threat to their freedom.

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[Laelth]

1. Hear! Hear!

The “Reagan Revolution” did enormous damage to the American body politic.

-Laelth

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Actually, I'd say Ronnie was a good start, but it was Gingrich who finished it off.

[stopbush]

3. "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Rs seem to forget that Reagan never said that government was always the problem. He qualified that remark to apply to the specific time and situation in which the country found itself.

From that same Inaugural Address from 1981:

“Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. Yes, and the right-wing propaganda that came from it.

Many of them treated Reagan like he was the greatest leader in the history of humanity. I don't hear it as much from Faux News and Limbaugh anymore, but he was their foundation.

Not to mention evangelicals like Falwell who swarmed to Reagan and the Republicans, who gladly welcomed their voters for the sake of power, after Jimmy Carter and other Democrats half-heartedly discussed taxing their churches and other organizations.

They were full of contradictions back then too. Don't trust the government, but trust the military? Who runs that group, huh?

[Omaha Steve]

5. After a review by forum hosts....LOCKING

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