Ronald Reagan was angry. It was October 1986, & his veto against the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid...

[calimary]

26. Welcome to DU, rustbeltrefugee!

Glad you're here! And YES it was a dog-whistle. Remember, he had people like lee atwater and david gergen and roger ailes and richard viguerie with his well-refined and tested mailing-list shakedown schemes, and other master manipulators of the media and the public zeitgeist working for him. And fiends like kkkarl rove were eager young up-n-coming students. And the rise of the evangelicals like jerry falwell and pat robertson and too many others were on the rise, with their empires building and their takeover of America was metastasizing like a fucking cancer! Pirates On Parade. YOU BET YOUR BIPPY they knew about this kind of mind-game. And don't forget - the 1980 election also brought newt gingrich into Congress - with his GOPAC and his little black book - his sneaky-ass and soon-to-be-famous lexicon, in which he issued lists of words and phrases to use to, well, "decorate effectively." As in - adding the meanings and inferences and subtle suggestions of your choice to multiple concepts. There were lists of negative words and phrases to use when talking about Democrats and liberals, and there were comparable lists of positive words and phrases to use when talking about all things republi-CON and CONservative.

Words were POWERFUL!!!! They made a science of this. frank luntz was busy warming up in the bullpen and refining his version of this with his focus-group testing of people's reaction to words and phrases and the impressions they'd come away with, upon hearing this stuff. Words like "family" and "faith" and "patriotic" and other stuff were always attached to CON subjects, topics, and people. You weren't supposed to attach those words to anything regarding the Dems. That way you could VERY subtly paint a picture - and add a taint to what you didn't like (like the Dems) and you could make Democrats and liberals look and sound un-American and unpatriotic and godless and Communistic, while all things republi-CON were painted with apple pie and Mom and red-white-and-blue America colors, and it was all under-the-radar. And it worked. And YES, "welfare queens" was used to slam an entire demographic group = blacks.

Then on top of that, reagan was such a smooth talker and so congenial with his aw-shucks schtick. Lovable and amiable and harmless, just a nice-friendly-old-uncle. Reminded me of the manipulative "Friendly Angel" monster in one of the original "Star Trek" series episodes. It was all schtick. And straight outta Hollywood, no less! What a salesman - WORLD CLASS. And it worked. The ground was all nicely softened and ready for planting seeds. People were already favorably predisposed towards nice, kindly "Old Dutch" and "The Gipper" and all this other cosmetic crap that was spewed all the time. And it worked. Mind games and mind control EVERYWHERE. They managed every molecule carefully and meticulously, and had their once-in-a-lifetime salesman out there selling it to America, and damned effectively, too. As silky and subtle and sneaky-ass as hell. They left no fingerprints. DAYUM those bastards were good. That's how so much of the shit we're now wading through got started and imbedded and implanted in the backs of gullible voters everywhere who yearned for some hero, some Captain America type - and they were given it with all the empty calories of whipped cream and a cherry on top.

To this day I despise ronald reagan. I think he was the worst thing to happen to the United States of America in modern times. It all got started on his watch. All the demons and cockroaches and snakes and rats and other political vermin were unleashed on his watch. The foxes were unleashed on the henhouses, and the theft and gorging and gouging were unrestrained. The damage he did, that he caused, that he begat - LONG-TERM damage that in some cases is so deeply imbedded and ingested that it'll take generations to undo - was damn near criminal. Hell, it was FLAT-OUT criminal when it came to things like Iran/Contra. What a bleak decade. The only good thing I can say about ronald reagan, to this day, is that he's dead.

On edit - ...and NO, you're NOT crazy.