I did not see repealing the fairness doctrine mentioned.
This is what is basically allowing media like fox “news” to spout straight up lies and made up news, while selectively not mentioning, twisting or brushing over actual news.
It’s also what allowed Sinclair to start their buying spree and create a hidden broadcast network of similar right-wing propaganda and lies. John Oliver had a very good episode on them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
For me this is the biggest sin of Ronald Reagan. Without this change to content quality control, there wouldn’t be so many Americans who live in an alternate reality, which is also what is allowing the republican party to not even try to govern & is allowing them to be as despicable as they are. Those rightwing “news” channels will after all just brush over their gaffes & instead conjure some made up scandal again over something democrats or one of the designated out groups has allegedly done.
Fox News is cable. And was never subject to the fairness doctrine. It may have had a small impact on AM radio. But nothing near the impact of all the consolidation that happened under Reagan and Clinton.
All of these things objectively happened. A conservative might argue that they weren’t all Reagan’s fault/responsibility, but that’s bullshit.
It took congress and a nation full of assholes to allow it. Every adult that was alive and able to vote at the time is responsible to some degree. Same as now.
People that voted against the assholes that did those things are not responsible.
I disagree.
We all have a responsibility. It isn’t as weighty an onus as someone that actively chose that leadership, but that’s the price of democracy, we all share in the burden as well as the benefits.
If nothing else, passively accepting it without revolution is a form of responsibility. We should be acting in that fashion now and aren’t, despite the invasion of body autonomy, the blatant racism and bigotry present in the system, and the massive numbers of people that will die because we didn’t rise up.
Notice the we in that. My old, crippled ass is just as responsible for not taking direct action. I was too young during Reagan, but I saw this shit coming during shrub/bush2 after 9/11. Didn’t do anything but vote and complain then, and don’t now because nobody believes how bad it’s going to get.
So, yeah everyone in responsible.
Yea, no. Half the reason democracy is great is getting to say, “I didn’t vote for the fuckhole.”
Just before he was elected, his campaign conspired to prevent the release of US hostages, a move they made to make Carter look bad. This is one of the reasons he won. The man worked directly against the benefit of US citizens for personal gain.
It’s a shame that Carter gets the blame for failing to reach an agreement to release the hostages, instead of Regan getting pinned for the much worse behavior of deliberately delaying their release.
Where did you learn that?
This is one report about it. It’s fair to ask for sources of course but also literally all I had to do was do one web search.
Deregulation of rails also had massive effects down the line. There was a lot of consolidation that just made everything significantly more expensive and caused us to be more dependent on oil thanks to the massive rise in the trucking industry
The deregulation was kind of inevitable. It was a bad time for railroads before it and it was a slightly less bad time for railroads after it.
I strongly suspect that in the long run the solution will be to nationalize the rails and signaling then license private companies to run on them
There was once a union employee. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for striking “illegally” the big companies did hardcore union busting. This employee, young and with a family, was suddenly thrusted into a world with wages racing to the bottom. People being fired for any or no reason. Strike? Say hi to your scabs.
I know this is vague, but it’s real. Edited for privacy, but real nonetheless. Fuck Ronald Reagan.
Edit:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/788002965 Some context for my anecdote. Sorry :(
US workers are too tribal, each industry thinks they’re different than others.
See what happened with the nordic unions, uniting against Tesla across different industries? This is what the American unions should have done to the US government after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Automotive, public servants, train drivers, every union should have walked out until the controllers were reinstated. Instead they looked on as if it didn’t apply to them.
Ronald Reagan is such a scab himself, he once led strikes as the head of the SAG, then look what he did to Unions.
He also started the path to end the fairness doctrine, which directly leads to rush limbaugh, which leads to fox “news” which leads to the tea party which leads to sarah palin as a major ticket vice presidential candidate which leads to a trump presidency which leads to how fucked we are today and in the future.
Technically Reagan started closing mental institutions while he was governor of California. He promised to open up alternatives and never did. It was a popular action that started when “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” showed abuse in the mental health system and the new system was suppose to have fixed those issues.
This is the problem, is that mental health abuses still happen today in whats left of mental health system in america.
We don’t need to tear it down, we need a federal oversight authority with balls and power to revoke licenses, issue massive fines, etc etc, with the funding and manpower to randomly inspect these facilities and interview patients at the drop of a hat, at any time of year, possibly multiple times a year.
and we need massive incentives to get hordes of new people, doctors, nurses, therapists, etc, into education to become qualified in their respective fields to do these jobs, and the fair pay for them.
My point was only that Reagan didn’t destroy the mental health systems while he was president. If you try bringing that up to a supporter, they will try and gotcha you on it. The other stuff was just to give some context as to why he was able to get away with it. Republicans never let a tragedy go to waste.
California was the first state to start dismantling their mental health systems and other states followed their lead, so most of the blame is still on him.
Given that homelessness rates almost directly correlate with cost of living, and not whether or not mental institutions exist, that’s the wrong reason to blame Reagan for a rise in homelessness. All of the union busting under his presidency is a much better reason
What about all the homeless that are too mentally ill to even sign up for welfare? Not that welfare even comes close to cost of living. There are quite a few of them.
He also further spread anti-government sentiment which has made society far worse as people question everything about government and how it can help people.
Why is questioning the government a bad thing? Shouldnt we have questioned the government more when we were looking for WMDs?
Difference between holding government accountable and outright saying government is always the problem. The latter only creates apathy among voters.
You have two different things there, holding the government accountable, is a thing that happens AFTER they have harmed you, why dont we have mistrust for them while they are making a claim?
Small recent example. General blanket distrust in government leads to unwillingness to trust governmental health experts, leading to making the covid pandemic worse than was necessary.
As was intended by those like Reagan.
Or conversely, the general trust in the government led people to go along with measures like lockdowns that harmed the economy, caused severe inflation, and didnt let the kids go to school.
You are literally repeating bullshit government talking points four years later, you need a little less trust in “experts”.
You are literally repeating bullshit conservative misinformation.
I am a former engineer, so I am a data driven person not a propaganda driven person. I watched the data they published and I saw exactly what happened before and after lockdowns, and it was literally zero change. But they kept doing it for year(s?) afterward because you guys trusted them. And if you dont believe me, they had a whole big data anaylsis by JP morgan chase at the time. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11687699/lockdowns-difference-coronavirus-destroyed-livelihoods-jp-morgan/
Did you know that the Boost app lets you add tags to people’s names?
I think its amusing that I trigger you guys so much just by disagreeing.
Not really, because the way to ensure government doesn’t do bad things is to vote. There’s no reason to believe that anti-government sentiment makes people politically apathetic.
Are you aware that the worst atrocities committed by any group of humans have been committed by governments?
It’s good to question government. Governments’ relationship to their subjects is one of domination. That can go bad very quickly because it’s nothing like a relationship between equals.
The only comment that even attempts to debunk anything while offering sources is buried by downvotes. This community is badly in need of moderation.
You’re not wrong, but as it’s literally been six months since anyone posted anything here I’ve decided to let the discussion continue as long as the topic stays on Regan’s presidency.
You should be aware guys this is a pro trump thread. Negative Trump relayed comments have been removed (including mine) without reasons given. might be worth blocking this OP in the spirit of Lemmy.
Your comments were removed simply because they were off-topic or broke the civility rules, as did many others.
Apologies for not leaving a specific reason in each case, but there were a lot of comments that had to be removed and I’ve had a busy day.
