As someone who survived the Reagan administration, this comment really sums the sensation up well. Like did you MFers have the same Reagan, I did? The one that was open and shameless about trickle down economics? Yeah, the wealthy get everything amd a little bit will trickle down to the vast majority of you (don’t mind the urine smell of that trickle).
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Oh, look, another day, another thing Reagan fucked up. Sometimes I feel awake in the matrix when people are all “OMG REAGAN <3” in real life. It just doesn’t seem real how people can like him so much when, in hindsight, he irreversibly fucked our country and so many others.
collapse_already@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hey, pee is a privilege
uuldika@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
things I dislike Reagan for:
things Reagan was kinda based for:
actually wanting to eliminate nuclear weapons. everyone remembers SDI as a ridiculously expensive boondoggle (which it would have been tbf) or as a trap to get USSR to spend itself into bankruptcy (it wasn’t imo, since the Russians realized they could build MIRVs), but I honestly think Reagan sincerely wanted a missile shield to have a missile shield. apparently he was hawkish on nuclear war until he watched The Day After, which terrified him and left him depressed for weeks and completely changed his thinking on nukes. he got so close to bilateral disarmament at the Reikjavik summit, but it fell apart because of his insistence on pursuing SDI.
not being a raging egotistical jerk like Trump. he was respectful towards Carter and Mondale. he even respected the Soviet Premiers he met with, despite his anti-Communism. he had actual principles and ideals, even if I disagree with some of them.
when the USSR collapsed, Bush ignored Russia’s pleas to help it restructure and rebuild, to secure its nuclear weapons stockpiles, to integrate its economy. so we ended up with a country with starving nuclear weapons designers trying to grow potatoes in their back yards, and a Mafia takeover, and massive distrust and antipathy towards the West. I think Reagan would have actually lent them a helping hand, and Putin wouldn’t have happened.
roguesignal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Nuanced take. Nice to see it. Opinions online are so frequently black-and-white
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
That’s a really good take. I didn’t know about how close we came to bilateral disarmament, wow! And yeah, I always kinda knew we just let them fall apart on their own, but seeing it put that way is enormously frustrating. It’s wild how the late 80’s/ early 90’s had a chance to put us on track for a really great future for almost no cost, and instead we looked at it, did a line of blow, and said “nah lol, I got mine, idiot”