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Ronald Reagan?! The Actor?!
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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I had a history professor in college that once said in a lecture that it is impossible for someone who lived through something to view it historically because of perception and bias. I think of him every time I see something like this because it makes me wish I could live long enough to read historical analyses of stuff like Reagan's presidency. Hopefully history will be able to truthfully describe what he did to our country.
I wasn’t there for it, he’s a real piece of shit though and I don’t get why people liked him other than him telling them to live like there’s no tomorrow and completely separate investment from material value.
The mid to late 70s were pretty dismal. Stagflation, crazy interest rates, the gas crisis, etc. I was in middle school in 1980 so I didn't have a lot of life experience at the time but I remember how his speeches made people feel hopeful for the first time in a long while.
It's also very easy to look back and "realize" how bad he was/is.
But at the time, like you said, things weren't so clear, and Reagan won like 90% of the electoral vote, it was a massive landslide. Carter only won like 6 states.
I was there and I can tell you two things with absolute truth:
Hey, thanks for your post. I'm not from the US and the bit about the hostages was unknown to me.
Sounds like a parallel to what was going on with the military help for Ukraine just now...
Also as I ubderstand it a lot of the issues with the Reagan administration could be dismissed as just general "things going wrong" and we only saw how bad he was after a lot of shit leaked post presidency.
But I am working off my understanding im 24 Reagan may as well have been dead for my entire lifetime, hell he may have been he died in 2004 but I doubt there was much left of his mind.
No. Not at all. He was clearly bankrupting the American taxpayer and giving that money to the rich and the defense contractors. Like, obviously. He stripped all the environmental money, all the school money, all the health services money, and gave it to the rich. Just like that. He basically ran on that.
"Trickle down" was his. For real, not a single reasonable person thought that was ever going to be a thing. And, forty years later we damned well better be able to say - it wasn't.
Oh that shit was obvious for sure its just people ignored it. I was moreso referring to the insane shit like the astrologer and Nancy being way too influential.
I knew a friend who liked him. For what I asked, he said his tear down the wall speech.
Hollywood in the 80s (and other media) was on board with pushing this corporate agenda. I hate to give Reagan enough credit to claim he was solely responsible.
Oliver Sacks had an essay in one of his books, called, "The President's Speech," which we can work out referred to Reagan, based on the timeline. It was about watching a televised speech with a group of total aphasic people. As they were unable to understand language, they just watched the presentation and pomp, as well as the President's body language.
They all found it a hoot. They laughed and laughed, and had a grand old time.
This suggests to me that Reagan was popular based on his personal affect, bypassing his supporters' critical thinking and appealing to them on an emotional, subconscious level. That's why none of them could give a coherent answer as to why they liked him.