It was Reagan's election that was my awakening to who I was really sharing a country with. I had just started college and I could not believe that anyone would vote for an actor in the role of president although the bartender in the college bar where I waited tables told me she was going to vote for him because he had once given her a go…
It was Reagan's election that was my awakening to who I was really sharing a country with. I had just started college and I could not believe that anyone would vote for an actor in the role of president although the bartender in the college bar where I waited tables told me she was going to vote for him because he had once given her a good tip. I thought of her as an airhead and could not believe that most people would vote for him. Later on, I noticed former classmates, including Black ones who had gone to Ivy League universities, bragging about voting for him, and I was shocked. I thought, well, these were the jocks from my elite independent school. They all went on to become stockbrokers and make a lot of money and considered themselves the smart players of the Reagan 80s. Later on they would go to fund Obama's campaign and pretend they had never been Reaganites and embraced Reaganomics. When Reagan won I renewed my German passport and made sure that I had an escape plan. However, little did I know at the time that under Reagan scientists brought evidence to the fossil fuel industry that global warming was happening and brought it to politicians as well. According to the book, Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich, it was Reagan who decided to ignore the evidence, even though the fossil fuel industry was listening to scientists and ready to invest in alternative sources of fuel. Reagan came on board and told them, no you don't need to do that because I am going to put an insider in charge of the industry and then we can let someone in the future solve the problems. Perhaps he really did believe someone would come up with a way to solve the problem, perhaps he did not care. I tend to think he was just not mentally fit enough to understand the problem and was surrounded by corrupt advisors. We can see how well that is working. Our planet is one big climate disaster at this point, and it is hitting some harder than others. There are many ways to see Putin's war on Ukraine as an offshoot of global warming because there is a fight for increasingly scarce resources and Ukraine is blessed with plenty for the new green future, as well as those that everyone needs now, like grain, location by the sea with the harvest and shipping. Luckily, in Ukraine their actor president was a lawyer before and he is a sharp thinker. He sees the value of the area that Russia is trying to take.
Unfortunately for the planet Reagan was voted in by a lot of Democrats who turned Republican, eager for making money not by hard work but by becoming investment mangers and through the stock markets. "The American dream!" One thing that struck me about Reagan is that he was a leader that told Americans that they no longer had to have the manners they had been raised with where they would consider others, it was okay to brag and say, ME! ME! ME! That was the big psychological switch that I noticed that made him so popular. He was the guru of being self serving. The culture changed. Everyone was allowed to be selfish. Then came Donald Trump. He added another big cultural switch. This one was called everyone can be an open racist jerk! That was a new enlightenment to people. These are two big cultural shifts I have observed and one said, I your leader permit you to be selfish, and the next is I permit you not to be PC. This has made all the grumblers happy. The people who are too inconvenienced to consider others feelings, or other's cultures or place in society. If Reagan had not primed people to be selfish maybe they would not have so easily made the shift to Trump's out and out it is okay to have bad behavior. In any case, Reagan made a shift that many people were duped into following because it allowed them to do what they wanted and not consider others. Now we have gotten more of that with Trump, and it is hard to put the Genie back into the bottle. Biden hoped that if he could get his bill passed and let Americans see that there is a role for government and if they lived under a well run country which anyone under 60 probably doesn't even have an inkling of what government can be doing for a country in an experiential kind of way unless they immigrated her from elsewhere, because Reagan so thoroughly destroyed government taking care of people. People who lack imagination need to experience personally, they cannot just be told how it will be. It seems Biden understood that and so do all of the Republicans that are trying to thwart him. So, we are in a pretty pickle now.
Biden had the right idea: that government should indeed take care of people, but he never quite accepted that the people on the other side of the aisle are no longer like the ones he knew and worked with and compromised with when he was in the Senate. They are unrepentant Trumpists or, like McConnell, simply self-interested, with no concern that their actions are hurting or killing people. These senators are encouraging their constituents, by their awful example, to be ugly and uncaring. The pickle we are in is not at all pretty.
Compare Reagan's quips about "government" with the word of one of the founders of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln:
"The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities."
And in a government of, by, and for the people, we do it for each other, in concert, in a variety of ways. Reagan's and the modern GOP's "small government" was always a Trojan Horse for "anti-democracy" and feudalism-lite in its stead. "GOP" "small government" is selective; small for some, robust for others. Bankrupted bankers got Big help in Subprime Crisis, but aiding financially impacted ordinary folks was "moral hazard". The rich and powerful enjoyed waves of tax cuts and responsibility lifting "deregulation", while police where militarized, and responded with an increasingly heavy hand with those already most deprived.
Yet to this day, Reagan retains a media-fabricated "nice guy" image, even among some liberals, and even many Democrats, at least passively, support some form of "Reaganomic" prescriptions.
J L, I will never forgive Obama for not going after the banks that caused the crash. Their getting away with their malfeasance gave others the excuse to act similarly (just like not penalizing the Republicans who ignored subpoenas during the two impeachment trials gives those subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee a similar get-out-of-jail-free card).
And I'm worried that if Merrick Garland doesn't indict Trump soon, Trump will declare his candidacy and use that as an excuse to be ineligible for indictment.
Linda, I wholeheartedly agree with what you said. I turned 18 in 1972 and voted in my first presidential election for George McGovern. I proudly voted for President Carter in 1976 and 1980. I was shocked at all the people around me that voted for Reagan in 1980. Many were relatives from the WWII generation that had voted for FDR, Truman, Ike, Jack, LBJ's vision of a Great Society, and would have voted for Bobby too. How dare they vote for Reagan. I still don't understand it to this day. You are spot on about the permission Reagan gave to people to turn their backs on the New Deal and Civil Rights. Now Trump and the permission to be a racist, uncivil, and to be unpatriotic. Tomorrow on July 4, the MAGA clan dishonors all the Americans that have come before them to fight for the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. I fear that most of them have never even read the Declaration of Independence. I very much miss Bobby Kennedy today.
The very good who were assassinated in the 1960s....I often wonder where we would be today if MLK and RFK were still alive...for that matter, how history was altered by Lincoln's assasination at such a pivotal time.
I was so upset by those three assassinations that I and my young family expatriated for awhile. It was unbelievable. It still frightens me, that no matter the visible goodness, there is treachery behind the scenes. Today is no exception.
Treachery is an abiding feature of human nature. I think we are wise to always be aware or it, to attempt to inhibit and manage it, and not to let it obscure what can be cherished, where and when that is possible. According to Victor Frankel, even in extreme circumstances.
I bemoan that lack of a civics education for so many of our young. I believe strongly in the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s own education and no longer relying solely on either a public or private education system to deliver that education essential to understanding the world and the breadth of its horizons. I do believe strongly in the benefits of and support a strong and healthy public education system but see it as the cornerstone of a sound education not the completed structure. The task of building upon that
cornerstone is a lifelong task always available to be augmented and strengthened.
While our initial minds are not quite William James' "blank slate", our kit is pretty much all learned. Education provide the tools we need for a successful and responsible life, of which a profession is a key but far from the sole component. we cannot change the nature of reality, but by knowing how it works, we can ride it, too degrees, we can even influence what happens next, in pleasing ways, provided we know the rules.
As parents, my wife and I tried to educate our daughter to hit the ground running, equipped to go where she would like on her own two feet. I imagine formal education doing much the same, imparting information, but above all jump-starting or refining self-sustaining and self-revising skills that improve our life and "liberty and justice for all". Fortune favors the prepared mind.
I wonder if it had to do with his sterling image as host of the GE sponsored Sunday night TV? All America watched the good program after Sunday family dinners.
" I tend to think he was just not mentally fit enough to understand the problem and he was surrounded by corrupt advisors." BINGO! I think that is a key modus operandi of the Republican party. They choose a showman, a popular figure to be president, then pull strings behind him. Although George HW Bush seemed to try to be fair, just look at little Bush, Trump et al. They were and are among the least brightest men at the helm. Each had cabinets that just did awful things. Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's shortly after his term ended.
Oh, don't forget Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the person who convinced FDR of policy many times. She was an avid social activist and humanitarian, while he was a good ol' boy and a ladies' man. But, she made him see the liberal light, (and sometimes she leveraged his unfaithfulness!)
I watched her several times on TV in the 1950s. I don't recall the content of those programs, only that she made a strong positive impression on me. A lasting impression.
I vaguely recall an article in the NYT during Reagan's presidency titled "What the President Didn't Know, and When He Didn't know it" detailing some fairly disturbing examples of Reagan being pretty out of it, but no one seemed to care, and his faux-folksy persona seemed to cover a multitude of deficits.
I am often asked by fellow Progressive activists why it is that the clear evidence revealed in the January 6 Committee investigation has failed to separate Trump supporters from him. Why do they persist in supporting a politician who is so clearly corrupt and malevolent?
I believe it is because his supporters covet similar power over others. They feel that they have lost influence and control as society has become more diverse and groups who formerly had little power have found an agency and increased influence. Trump's supporters and those of Trump-like Republicans are not at all in favor of the equality of all. Rather they desire a world in which there are “real Americans” and “the others.” Trump supporters wish to hold the power to decide who is in which of those groups and empower the “real Americans” with the ability to govern, to decide right and wrong, whose votes should count and whose should not, what children should be taught in public schools, what books should be available in libraries, who can marry or not, and what faiths are acceptable or not. It is all about power for oneself over the agency of others. It is not simply about admiring or support of him, they truly wish to hold the same type of power over others they see Trump desires or holds.
The biggest danger of Trump is that his narcissism is highly contagious and he is patient zero of a narcissism pandemic.
Brilliantly said, Bruce. Contagious narcissism and I would add contagious cynicism, too. So jarring that people calling themselves Christian are among the worst affected, the words of Jesus not a being a big influence on them.
Keep in mind there are plenty of progressive Christians and people of faith who are actively engaged in justice work but the media ignores us and finds us boring:)
They are the descendants of the confederacy. They have never recovered from the loss of position. It used to be enough, and still is in some parts, to merely be white male.
So powerful, and so true: "One thing that struck me about Reagan is that he was a leader that told Americans that they no longer had to have the manners they had been raised with where they would consider others, it was okay to brag and say, ME! ME! ME! That was the big psychological switch that I noticed that made him so popular. He was the guru of being self serving. The culture changed. Everyone was allowed to be selfish. "
Yes, it was a turning point towards me vs we. As Candidate Reagan replied, "there he goes again" towards President Carter's clarion calls for conservation, he cast caution to the wind.
I briefly encountered Ronnie as an Undergraduate at UCLA at a Regent`s Meeting that was declared an "Illegal Assemby" & the curtain pulled back to a thick Glass Wall revealing a '60's Tableau of students being battered back with Police Batons. Reagan? Ronnie was acting non-plussed waiting for the Director to yell, "Cut" - that's a Print.
Odd to contemplate given Nixon's irresponsibility in other areas, but Nixon was forward-looking and protective of the environment. Protection of the global environment as antithetical to the official Republican notion of "freedom" began with Reagan.
Yes and folks tend to BLAME US BOOMERS, yet it was the conservatives who were self centered, and many of us rejected those values in favor of justice and peace. Why we were accused of being spoiled and self centered never made any sense, we boomers have always been a divided generation, over civil rights, justice for women and war (Vietnam) et al. So stop blaming us. It was the other part of our generation that messed things up the Gingriches and his gang of cronies. Lindsey Graham etc.
Generational blaming is not very useful since ultimately a society is a whole, as in the end, is our species; and there is always a need for nuance. The bigger issue is the degree to which our society always has, and since Reagan even more so, pandered to the agendas of those with money. The young are not wrong that they are getting the short end of the stick, especially as living wages, and worker protections ebb, college graduation is both more demanded for decent paying jobs, and the price become more personally burdensome, and the planet burns while so many old folks fiddle.
Warnings of the dangers of CO2 pollution have been sounded for decades. Both Nixon and Carter advocated care of the environment; but enough Americans turned our backs, and each of our impacts accumulate to the point, that the future is not looking good.
I don't think narcissism has much to do with love, but I suppose that what you love is what you care about, so yeah. Narcissism is good for profit, and a nation that reveres profit uber alles abandons the urge for a civilized society. Trump personifies malignant narcissism, and that is what he and his party now sell.
The troublesome secret of a just and democratic society is its need of discipline and effort. Of liberty is that for the word to have meaning outside the realm of a hermit, we must maintain it together. Liberty and Justice for all means respecting your identical rights; no rape, no polluting the well. Liberty means nothing without diversity (no?) and diversity means inevitable conflicts in good faith. Who get to drive across the intersection first? We have to agree to a common good.
But that's work.; sometimes emotional work, often mental and physical. And seemingly easier solutions are always an easy sell. "Just be selfish" has a certain appeal. "Greed is Good" was a line in a cautionary movie, but Republicans picked it up.
In Greedland, "The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits." You are never to blame, and every problem is somebody else's fault. Trump personifies it, and his party enables him.
You have nailed it about the cultural shift towards self- centeredness. But it began earlier than RR. On campus of U. Of Maryland 1967 there was an “Objectivist” group devoted to worship of Ayn Rand, who pushed “the virtue of selfishness.”
I have a sister and brother-in-law that attended Stanford in the early '80s and worshipped at the altar of Ayn Rand. So many in Silicon Valley were spawned in this culture.
There are no children in her created worlds. Plenty of sex. Her family’s pharmacy business was taken by the state when she was a teen. She had sisters in Russia she never connected with again after she left.
Oh wasn't that awful? "Atlas Shrugged" was the book of the day on college campuses. And then little Paul Ryan wanted it to be a model for our nation...and white male supremacy.
Hope Ah, Paul Ryan. Who remembers this brief flash in a pan with great abs (which he displayed) and the kookiest budget proposals since Reags]an’s ‘trickle down’ tax cuts. His brief reign as Hpuse Speaker was almost as disastrous of that of Newt Gingrich. Ryan did require his staff to read Atlas Shrugged. AWWWk. Now we speak of Ryan shrugged.
It was bad enough when Reagan was governor of California and decimated mental health care and public assistance for our most vulnerable people. Thus the beginning of the homeless crisis in our state. His focus was on getting people to question our government in favor of corporate rule by lying and conflating fact with fiction.
Linda, this is a very small cavil, yet I feel bound to make it.
Around the time that Reagan became President, I noticed a sharp switch in motivation among politicians and officials I saw working in Europe. Hitherto, the guiding attitude had been one of "What's in it for US?" In a short space of time, this was replaced by "What's in it for ME?" ME... ME... ME... ME...
Part of this I attribute to the passing of the generation that had fought and suffered in the Second World War, men and women determined to build a better world for posterity. Many in my own generation, born into the war and the struggling period of postwar reconstruction, now wanted a slice of the cake... for themselves. Many relinquished their loudly proclaimed social principles overnight, espousing the new "truths" of Reaganomics, etc. Much turning of coats.
So, yes, Reagan made a fine figurehead for "the clever hopes" of another "low dishonest decade" but it's his paymasters and our society that enabled the damage.
With Donald D.T. we move from the stereotyped puppetry of the period's soap operas through the looking glass into "virtual reality", a world of pure video game projections. Flickering appearances with nothing whatever behind them.
Mass psychosis guaranteed.
There's reason to fear that the cure may be a very hard one.
I am about the same age as you are... My first Presidential election was in 1980, and I totally agree with your analysis! My shock was when some professed Christians told me they were voting for Reagan, "because he is a Christian ". The mess we are in now has certainly been brewing for a long time.
So Jimmy Carter’s faith did not count as Christian? He told us to put on sweaters and turn down the thermostat, that was unforgivable. What’s more suspicious was that Jimmy was much better educated, also a strike against him.
I remember when Reagan announced his run for governor. Hope my dates are right. I was shocked that a candidate, an actor, who had no government experience or qualifications could run. And so naive even with high school and college history and civics. I grew up in a family of forever Democrats who were first generation Americans and my father was a veteran of WW2. They loved FDR. And voted for Stevenson. I wasn’t old enough to vote until the presidential election of 1972, after ratification of the 26th Amendment that lowered the voting age to 18. We had a McGovern sign on our lawn and no one destroyed it. We just debated on our front lawns, patios and driveways. Reagan: a rookie for California governor. And Nixon for president again in ‘72. A landslide. A crook. And with Reagan’s experience of dismantling the social services of our state, he was elected president in 1981. Of course a repub. Welcome to reality and life as an activist for social Justice, peace and anti racism. And the environment. Not ever ever ever a repug.
And we Californians should have known better. After former actor and song-and-dance man George Murphy's dismal stint as U.S. Senator, we thought Reagan would also be a flash in the pan. Boy, were we wrong.
Boy, did you nail us, but Reagan also had the propaganda master and the dirty tricks crew that demonized any program as socialism. And the masses of asses couldn’t wait to get to the trough. Sadly, the late 80’s should have told the fools that the rich had already gobbled up any largesse…
Never forget Frank or Grover Norquist. Both aided and abetted the worst evil this country has ever seen. Love your “master of twisted semantics.” Fits like skin
Reagan, an actor in the white house. Can't help but see the comparison to Trump, basically a personality puppet created to do the bidding of these extreme so called republicans. The problem is even the puppeteers could not control his power hungry sociopathic ways. Trump's rise to office really was orchestrated in the same way as Reagan's. Interesting and scary.
OMG Ted Cruz, true, but boy I worry about them electing his ass. He may be crazy and self serving but he's smart and knows how to work his base. I'm still hoping Cruz and all those wackos are indicted for something and put out of office for good.
In Reagan’s case, he became quite the political careerist, albeit also a puppet for many years of conservatives; early on he had some leftward-centrist orientation, then changed. Reagan had two 4-year terms elected (R) as Governor of California (1966, then again 1970), and survived a recall petition. He failed in bids for Republican presidential primaries in 1968 (Nixon) and 1976 (Ford).
As opposed to TFG, a libertine doofus who probably could have cared less about politics or parties until he smelled blood of discontent in the water. In a way, TFG punked those establishment powers who put Reagan into power, when he thumbed his nose at the Rep. establishment after the 2016 R. primaries - wiped that whole stage off the map. Those never-T folks are still either wondering what hit them, or, studied the moves to refine them for 2022+2024 - a chilling prospect.
It doesn't help for people to talk about him being old. Joe is very smart and we could move ahead....if it wasn't for what Trump did while he was at the helm and now the Republicans that blame Joe for breathing!
Linda, Good roadmap with stops for repub presidents, one by one, (generally, maybe not all repubs but …) destroying possibilities to save this country, socially (human rights, civil rights, women’s rights) Voting rights, Gun safety Laws and economically and environmentally, the planet and the courts. A lot of damage credited to a political party voted in by the people in fair elections. I’m sure there will be arguments against my blaming one party but look at the facts of each administration. Responsibility.
It was Reagan's election that was my awakening to who I was really sharing a country with. I had just started college and I could not believe that anyone would vote for an actor in the role of president although the bartender in the college bar where I waited tables told me she was going to vote for him because he had once given her a good tip. I thought of her as an airhead and could not believe that most people would vote for him. Later on, I noticed former classmates, including Black ones who had gone to Ivy League universities, bragging about voting for him, and I was shocked. I thought, well, these were the jocks from my elite independent school. They all went on to become stockbrokers and make a lot of money and considered themselves the smart players of the Reagan 80s. Later on they would go to fund Obama's campaign and pretend they had never been Reaganites and embraced Reaganomics. When Reagan won I renewed my German passport and made sure that I had an escape plan. However, little did I know at the time that under Reagan scientists brought evidence to the fossil fuel industry that global warming was happening and brought it to politicians as well. According to the book, Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich, it was Reagan who decided to ignore the evidence, even though the fossil fuel industry was listening to scientists and ready to invest in alternative sources of fuel. Reagan came on board and told them, no you don't need to do that because I am going to put an insider in charge of the industry and then we can let someone in the future solve the problems. Perhaps he really did believe someone would come up with a way to solve the problem, perhaps he did not care. I tend to think he was just not mentally fit enough to understand the problem and was surrounded by corrupt advisors. We can see how well that is working. Our planet is one big climate disaster at this point, and it is hitting some harder than others. There are many ways to see Putin's war on Ukraine as an offshoot of global warming because there is a fight for increasingly scarce resources and Ukraine is blessed with plenty for the new green future, as well as those that everyone needs now, like grain, location by the sea with the harvest and shipping. Luckily, in Ukraine their actor president was a lawyer before and he is a sharp thinker. He sees the value of the area that Russia is trying to take.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
Unfortunately for the planet Reagan was voted in by a lot of Democrats who turned Republican, eager for making money not by hard work but by becoming investment mangers and through the stock markets. "The American dream!" One thing that struck me about Reagan is that he was a leader that told Americans that they no longer had to have the manners they had been raised with where they would consider others, it was okay to brag and say, ME! ME! ME! That was the big psychological switch that I noticed that made him so popular. He was the guru of being self serving. The culture changed. Everyone was allowed to be selfish. Then came Donald Trump. He added another big cultural switch. This one was called everyone can be an open racist jerk! That was a new enlightenment to people. These are two big cultural shifts I have observed and one said, I your leader permit you to be selfish, and the next is I permit you not to be PC. This has made all the grumblers happy. The people who are too inconvenienced to consider others feelings, or other's cultures or place in society. If Reagan had not primed people to be selfish maybe they would not have so easily made the shift to Trump's out and out it is okay to have bad behavior. In any case, Reagan made a shift that many people were duped into following because it allowed them to do what they wanted and not consider others. Now we have gotten more of that with Trump, and it is hard to put the Genie back into the bottle. Biden hoped that if he could get his bill passed and let Americans see that there is a role for government and if they lived under a well run country which anyone under 60 probably doesn't even have an inkling of what government can be doing for a country in an experiential kind of way unless they immigrated her from elsewhere, because Reagan so thoroughly destroyed government taking care of people. People who lack imagination need to experience personally, they cannot just be told how it will be. It seems Biden understood that and so do all of the Republicans that are trying to thwart him. So, we are in a pretty pickle now.
Biden had the right idea: that government should indeed take care of people, but he never quite accepted that the people on the other side of the aisle are no longer like the ones he knew and worked with and compromised with when he was in the Senate. They are unrepentant Trumpists or, like McConnell, simply self-interested, with no concern that their actions are hurting or killing people. These senators are encouraging their constituents, by their awful example, to be ugly and uncaring. The pickle we are in is not at all pretty.
Compare Reagan's quips about "government" with the word of one of the founders of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln:
"The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities."
And in a government of, by, and for the people, we do it for each other, in concert, in a variety of ways. Reagan's and the modern GOP's "small government" was always a Trojan Horse for "anti-democracy" and feudalism-lite in its stead. "GOP" "small government" is selective; small for some, robust for others. Bankrupted bankers got Big help in Subprime Crisis, but aiding financially impacted ordinary folks was "moral hazard". The rich and powerful enjoyed waves of tax cuts and responsibility lifting "deregulation", while police where militarized, and responded with an increasingly heavy hand with those already most deprived.
Yet to this day, Reagan retains a media-fabricated "nice guy" image, even among some liberals, and even many Democrats, at least passively, support some form of "Reaganomic" prescriptions.
J L, I will never forgive Obama for not going after the banks that caused the crash. Their getting away with their malfeasance gave others the excuse to act similarly (just like not penalizing the Republicans who ignored subpoenas during the two impeachment trials gives those subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee a similar get-out-of-jail-free card).
And I'm worried that if Merrick Garland doesn't indict Trump soon, Trump will declare his candidacy and use that as an excuse to be ineligible for indictment.
Feudalism-lite? Lite?
There was some reciprocity even in racketeering -- pay up and we'll protect you. Where's there any reciprocity in our current corporate feudalism?
The people don't even have serf status.
He had better shift from that myth
Linda, I wholeheartedly agree with what you said. I turned 18 in 1972 and voted in my first presidential election for George McGovern. I proudly voted for President Carter in 1976 and 1980. I was shocked at all the people around me that voted for Reagan in 1980. Many were relatives from the WWII generation that had voted for FDR, Truman, Ike, Jack, LBJ's vision of a Great Society, and would have voted for Bobby too. How dare they vote for Reagan. I still don't understand it to this day. You are spot on about the permission Reagan gave to people to turn their backs on the New Deal and Civil Rights. Now Trump and the permission to be a racist, uncivil, and to be unpatriotic. Tomorrow on July 4, the MAGA clan dishonors all the Americans that have come before them to fight for the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. I fear that most of them have never even read the Declaration of Independence. I very much miss Bobby Kennedy today.
The very good who were assassinated in the 1960s....I often wonder where we would be today if MLK and RFK were still alive...for that matter, how history was altered by Lincoln's assasination at such a pivotal time.
I was so upset by those three assassinations that I and my young family expatriated for awhile. It was unbelievable. It still frightens me, that no matter the visible goodness, there is treachery behind the scenes. Today is no exception.
Treachery is an abiding feature of human nature. I think we are wise to always be aware or it, to attempt to inhibit and manage it, and not to let it obscure what can be cherished, where and when that is possible. According to Victor Frankel, even in extreme circumstances.
I bemoan that lack of a civics education for so many of our young. I believe strongly in the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s own education and no longer relying solely on either a public or private education system to deliver that education essential to understanding the world and the breadth of its horizons. I do believe strongly in the benefits of and support a strong and healthy public education system but see it as the cornerstone of a sound education not the completed structure. The task of building upon that
cornerstone is a lifelong task always available to be augmented and strengthened.
While our initial minds are not quite William James' "blank slate", our kit is pretty much all learned. Education provide the tools we need for a successful and responsible life, of which a profession is a key but far from the sole component. we cannot change the nature of reality, but by knowing how it works, we can ride it, too degrees, we can even influence what happens next, in pleasing ways, provided we know the rules.
As parents, my wife and I tried to educate our daughter to hit the ground running, equipped to go where she would like on her own two feet. I imagine formal education doing much the same, imparting information, but above all jump-starting or refining self-sustaining and self-revising skills that improve our life and "liberty and justice for all". Fortune favors the prepared mind.
I wonder if it had to do with his sterling image as host of the GE sponsored Sunday night TV? All America watched the good program after Sunday family dinners.
He was on television....and everyone that had a television knew him?
And Trump's TV program, too.
" I tend to think he was just not mentally fit enough to understand the problem and he was surrounded by corrupt advisors." BINGO! I think that is a key modus operandi of the Republican party. They choose a showman, a popular figure to be president, then pull strings behind him. Although George HW Bush seemed to try to be fair, just look at little Bush, Trump et al. They were and are among the least brightest men at the helm. Each had cabinets that just did awful things. Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's shortly after his term ended.
And was surely suffering with it during his administration.
Nancy Reagan, the de-facto first female president.
Oh, don't forget Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the person who convinced FDR of policy many times. She was an avid social activist and humanitarian, while he was a good ol' boy and a ladies' man. But, she made him see the liberal light, (and sometimes she leveraged his unfaithfulness!)
Thank you for remembering this great human being!
There's a great 3 part biography of Eleanor by Blanche Wiesen Cook. simple title-"Eleanor Roosevelt." It covers her entire life. Well worth the read.
Thank you.
I watched her several times on TV in the 1950s. I don't recall the content of those programs, only that she made a strong positive impression on me. A lasting impression.
Thank you! It looks very good.
An argument could be made for Edith Wilson, after Woodrow Wilson had his stroke.
Nancy, ruling by astrology!
Yes! I remember how often he said, "I can't remember" when questioned about the Iran-Contra affair.
My aunt saw the Alzheimer's while Reagan was still president.
He was also a greedy worm, I see it every day in memory care. Some people may be demented but they were evil before. I’d bet the farm.
I vaguely recall an article in the NYT during Reagan's presidency titled "What the President Didn't Know, and When He Didn't know it" detailing some fairly disturbing examples of Reagan being pretty out of it, but no one seemed to care, and his faux-folksy persona seemed to cover a multitude of deficits.
I am often asked by fellow Progressive activists why it is that the clear evidence revealed in the January 6 Committee investigation has failed to separate Trump supporters from him. Why do they persist in supporting a politician who is so clearly corrupt and malevolent?
I believe it is because his supporters covet similar power over others. They feel that they have lost influence and control as society has become more diverse and groups who formerly had little power have found an agency and increased influence. Trump's supporters and those of Trump-like Republicans are not at all in favor of the equality of all. Rather they desire a world in which there are “real Americans” and “the others.” Trump supporters wish to hold the power to decide who is in which of those groups and empower the “real Americans” with the ability to govern, to decide right and wrong, whose votes should count and whose should not, what children should be taught in public schools, what books should be available in libraries, who can marry or not, and what faiths are acceptable or not. It is all about power for oneself over the agency of others. It is not simply about admiring or support of him, they truly wish to hold the same type of power over others they see Trump desires or holds.
The biggest danger of Trump is that his narcissism is highly contagious and he is patient zero of a narcissism pandemic.
Brilliantly said, Bruce. Contagious narcissism and I would add contagious cynicism, too. So jarring that people calling themselves Christian are among the worst affected, the words of Jesus not a being a big influence on them.
Keep in mind there are plenty of progressive Christians and people of faith who are actively engaged in justice work but the media ignores us and finds us boring:)
Rupert has eaten their brains
Does that mean Rupert is a zombie?
They are the descendants of the confederacy. They have never recovered from the loss of position. It used to be enough, and still is in some parts, to merely be white male.
I liked this for your honest appraisal but not for the truth of what you’ve realized.
They persist because Trumpism is Fascism.
So powerful, and so true: "One thing that struck me about Reagan is that he was a leader that told Americans that they no longer had to have the manners they had been raised with where they would consider others, it was okay to brag and say, ME! ME! ME! That was the big psychological switch that I noticed that made him so popular. He was the guru of being self serving. The culture changed. Everyone was allowed to be selfish. "
Yes, it was a turning point towards me vs we. As Candidate Reagan replied, "there he goes again" towards President Carter's clarion calls for conservation, he cast caution to the wind.
I briefly encountered Ronnie as an Undergraduate at UCLA at a Regent`s Meeting that was declared an "Illegal Assemby" & the curtain pulled back to a thick Glass Wall revealing a '60's Tableau of students being battered back with Police Batons. Reagan? Ronnie was acting non-plussed waiting for the Director to yell, "Cut" - that's a Print.
Odd to contemplate given Nixon's irresponsibility in other areas, but Nixon was forward-looking and protective of the environment. Protection of the global environment as antithetical to the official Republican notion of "freedom" began with Reagan.
Karen Hessel
Yes and folks tend to BLAME US BOOMERS, yet it was the conservatives who were self centered, and many of us rejected those values in favor of justice and peace. Why we were accused of being spoiled and self centered never made any sense, we boomers have always been a divided generation, over civil rights, justice for women and war (Vietnam) et al. So stop blaming us. It was the other part of our generation that messed things up the Gingriches and his gang of cronies. Lindsey Graham etc.
Generational blaming is not very useful since ultimately a society is a whole, as in the end, is our species; and there is always a need for nuance. The bigger issue is the degree to which our society always has, and since Reagan even more so, pandered to the agendas of those with money. The young are not wrong that they are getting the short end of the stick, especially as living wages, and worker protections ebb, college graduation is both more demanded for decent paying jobs, and the price become more personally burdensome, and the planet burns while so many old folks fiddle.
Warnings of the dangers of CO2 pollution have been sounded for decades. Both Nixon and Carter advocated care of the environment; but enough Americans turned our backs, and each of our impacts accumulate to the point, that the future is not looking good.
OMG, I remember everybody, men included, wearing gold necklaces to advertise their new wealth and self-love!
I don't think narcissism has much to do with love, but I suppose that what you love is what you care about, so yeah. Narcissism is good for profit, and a nation that reveres profit uber alles abandons the urge for a civilized society. Trump personifies malignant narcissism, and that is what he and his party now sell.
The troublesome secret of a just and democratic society is its need of discipline and effort. Of liberty is that for the word to have meaning outside the realm of a hermit, we must maintain it together. Liberty and Justice for all means respecting your identical rights; no rape, no polluting the well. Liberty means nothing without diversity (no?) and diversity means inevitable conflicts in good faith. Who get to drive across the intersection first? We have to agree to a common good.
But that's work.; sometimes emotional work, often mental and physical. And seemingly easier solutions are always an easy sell. "Just be selfish" has a certain appeal. "Greed is Good" was a line in a cautionary movie, but Republicans picked it up.
In Greedland, "The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits." You are never to blame, and every problem is somebody else's fault. Trump personifies it, and his party enables him.
You have nailed it about the cultural shift towards self- centeredness. But it began earlier than RR. On campus of U. Of Maryland 1967 there was an “Objectivist” group devoted to worship of Ayn Rand, who pushed “the virtue of selfishness.”
Yes, people who lack imagination. . .
I have a sister and brother-in-law that attended Stanford in the early '80s and worshipped at the altar of Ayn Rand. So many in Silicon Valley were spawned in this culture.
JK Galbraith (FDR’s economist) described conservatives’ age-old search for “a moral justification of selfishness.”
Someone recently put it like this: You can’t tell me what to do. But I can tell you what to do.
She was a phony through and through. As she declared, it’s not who will let me, it’s who will stop me. The chump mantra, including all family
Correct.
Karen,
I read Atlas Shrugged in 1987. After finishing it I wondered where such a skewed picture could emanate from.
Ayn Rand was born in the Soviet Union. Her highly negative view of community was born from the warped view she got in the Soviet Union.
But, her extreme focus on the individual was just as sick and dysfunctional as Soviet Russia was.
There are no children in her created worlds. Plenty of sex. Her family’s pharmacy business was taken by the state when she was a teen. She had sisters in Russia she never connected with again after she left.
So very sad...
Oh wasn't that awful? "Atlas Shrugged" was the book of the day on college campuses. And then little Paul Ryan wanted it to be a model for our nation...and white male supremacy.
Hope Ah, Paul Ryan. Who remembers this brief flash in a pan with great abs (which he displayed) and the kookiest budget proposals since Reags]an’s ‘trickle down’ tax cuts. His brief reign as Hpuse Speaker was almost as disastrous of that of Newt Gingrich. Ryan did require his staff to read Atlas Shrugged. AWWWk. Now we speak of Ryan shrugged.
Good one, Keith! Nice to hear from you again. Happy Fourth!
It was bad enough when Reagan was governor of California and decimated mental health care and public assistance for our most vulnerable people. Thus the beginning of the homeless crisis in our state. His focus was on getting people to question our government in favor of corporate rule by lying and conflating fact with fiction.
Linda, this is a very small cavil, yet I feel bound to make it.
Around the time that Reagan became President, I noticed a sharp switch in motivation among politicians and officials I saw working in Europe. Hitherto, the guiding attitude had been one of "What's in it for US?" In a short space of time, this was replaced by "What's in it for ME?" ME... ME... ME... ME...
Part of this I attribute to the passing of the generation that had fought and suffered in the Second World War, men and women determined to build a better world for posterity. Many in my own generation, born into the war and the struggling period of postwar reconstruction, now wanted a slice of the cake... for themselves. Many relinquished their loudly proclaimed social principles overnight, espousing the new "truths" of Reaganomics, etc. Much turning of coats.
So, yes, Reagan made a fine figurehead for "the clever hopes" of another "low dishonest decade" but it's his paymasters and our society that enabled the damage.
With Donald D.T. we move from the stereotyped puppetry of the period's soap operas through the looking glass into "virtual reality", a world of pure video game projections. Flickering appearances with nothing whatever behind them.
Mass psychosis guaranteed.
There's reason to fear that the cure may be a very hard one.
I am about the same age as you are... My first Presidential election was in 1980, and I totally agree with your analysis! My shock was when some professed Christians told me they were voting for Reagan, "because he is a Christian ". The mess we are in now has certainly been brewing for a long time.
So Jimmy Carter’s faith did not count as Christian? He told us to put on sweaters and turn down the thermostat, that was unforgivable. What’s more suspicious was that Jimmy was much better educated, also a strike against him.
He's the definition of being Christian; as opposed to those who earn the moniker C.I.N.O. (christian in name only).
Ronald Reagan was not a Christian. His wife plotted his schedule with the help of an astrologer.
I remember when Reagan announced his run for governor. Hope my dates are right. I was shocked that a candidate, an actor, who had no government experience or qualifications could run. And so naive even with high school and college history and civics. I grew up in a family of forever Democrats who were first generation Americans and my father was a veteran of WW2. They loved FDR. And voted for Stevenson. I wasn’t old enough to vote until the presidential election of 1972, after ratification of the 26th Amendment that lowered the voting age to 18. We had a McGovern sign on our lawn and no one destroyed it. We just debated on our front lawns, patios and driveways. Reagan: a rookie for California governor. And Nixon for president again in ‘72. A landslide. A crook. And with Reagan’s experience of dismantling the social services of our state, he was elected president in 1981. Of course a repub. Welcome to reality and life as an activist for social Justice, peace and anti racism. And the environment. Not ever ever ever a repug.
And we Californians should have known better. After former actor and song-and-dance man George Murphy's dismal stint as U.S. Senator, we thought Reagan would also be a flash in the pan. Boy, were we wrong.
Boy, did you nail us, but Reagan also had the propaganda master and the dirty tricks crew that demonized any program as socialism. And the masses of asses couldn’t wait to get to the trough. Sadly, the late 80’s should have told the fools that the rich had already gobbled up any largesse…
Yes, Frank Luntz, the "pollster" and master of twisted semantics.
Never forget Frank or Grover Norquist. Both aided and abetted the worst evil this country has ever seen. Love your “master of twisted semantics.” Fits like skin
Reagan, an actor in the white house. Can't help but see the comparison to Trump, basically a personality puppet created to do the bidding of these extreme so called republicans. The problem is even the puppeteers could not control his power hungry sociopathic ways. Trump's rise to office really was orchestrated in the same way as Reagan's. Interesting and scary.
Yes! If McConnell was smarter he'd allow someone easier to control. Like Cruz!
OMG Ted Cruz, true, but boy I worry about them electing his ass. He may be crazy and self serving but he's smart and knows how to work his base. I'm still hoping Cruz and all those wackos are indicted for something and put out of office for good.
In Reagan’s case, he became quite the political careerist, albeit also a puppet for many years of conservatives; early on he had some leftward-centrist orientation, then changed. Reagan had two 4-year terms elected (R) as Governor of California (1966, then again 1970), and survived a recall petition. He failed in bids for Republican presidential primaries in 1968 (Nixon) and 1976 (Ford).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan
As opposed to TFG, a libertine doofus who probably could have cared less about politics or parties until he smelled blood of discontent in the water. In a way, TFG punked those establishment powers who put Reagan into power, when he thumbed his nose at the Rep. establishment after the 2016 R. primaries - wiped that whole stage off the map. Those never-T folks are still either wondering what hit them, or, studied the moves to refine them for 2022+2024 - a chilling prospect.
It doesn't help for people to talk about him being old. Joe is very smart and we could move ahead....if it wasn't for what Trump did while he was at the helm and now the Republicans that blame Joe for breathing!
Linda, Good roadmap with stops for repub presidents, one by one, (generally, maybe not all repubs but …) destroying possibilities to save this country, socially (human rights, civil rights, women’s rights) Voting rights, Gun safety Laws and economically and environmentally, the planet and the courts. A lot of damage credited to a political party voted in by the people in fair elections. I’m sure there will be arguments against my blaming one party but look at the facts of each administration. Responsibility.