Comment by freedomben
3 years ago
Not coincidentally, 10 to 15 years ago is around when people started viewing the "other" party as "evil." You can justify a lot of behavior when you declare yourself full of righteous indignation.
3 years ago
Not coincidentally, 10 to 15 years ago is around when people started viewing the "other" party as "evil." You can justify a lot of behavior when you declare yourself full of righteous indignation.
You were not alive in the 80s then. Democrats and civil society hated Reagan for what he did to this country. He was definitely seen as evil.
No. The media and democrats hated him. He was an amazing president that ended the Cold War. Ended inflation and kick started 20 years of economic growth.
People forget how quickly Carter screwed up the economy.
> People forget how quickly Carter screwed up the economy.
The oil shock and stagflation began under Nixon/Ford, and stagflation itself was spurred by Nixonian policy. People seem to forget this quite often. Carter was only president during the last 3 years of the 70s.
Volcker was appointed by Carter and made things really bad for a brief time, but those 20% interest rates ended stagflation, leading to Volcker's reappointment by Reagan.
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> He was an amazing president that ended the Cold War. Ended inflation and kick started 20 years of economic growth.
Even a simple look at the timeline shows that is wrong. It doesn't even stand up to a cursory look at the evidence.
Reagan massively escalated the Cold War. There is literally a heading on his wikipedia page entitled "Escalation of the Cold War".
The Soviet Union fell after Reagan left the oval office! The 1989 Revolutions all happened after Reagan left. The breakup of the Soviet Union itself happened well over a year later.
Reagan left the US in bad shape. He slowed down inflation but massively expanded public debt. He left Bush such a crappy economy that it immediately entered a recession that resulted in him losing his reelection run.
Not only that, he started the decline of the US economy. https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/styles/slimmed_natu... Before Reagan nominal GDP growth was high, after the US turned hardcore conservative, GDP growth has been poor.
I have no idea how Republicans managed to brainwash people so badly that they don't even look at the most basic evidence.
People's opinions are often formed by musicians, partisan journos, and modern documentaries/movies which they then translate to mean it was the popular perception of leaders or the bulk of the people who lived through it.
Most of the journalists who remain popular tend to be those who are more radical/on the edge of cultural which is how they remained relevant beyond their era so it's easy to assume those people are representative of the population or even the educated class.
Yes many did, but it was mainly the activists and people who follow politics closely, not the average person. The average Democrat didn't think that about Reagan, as evidenced by the re-election results and the fact that H.W. rode Reagan's coat tails.
I'm not sure that makes sense. The modern filibuster is a bipartisan agreement for inaction.
It's really a bipartisan agreement to defer to Senate Republicans on everything controversial, and to let them take both the blame and credit for it. Democrats are happy with that because when their votes don't count, they can pretend to support anything. When Democrats lose, it energizes their base. Republicans are happy to take credit for economically liberal and nationalistic legislation. And for the legislation that just rewards the wealthy for being wealthy (say, bailouts), movement right-wing and libertarian Republicans can vote against it (and they're mostly in the House) while small consistent groups of Democrats can cross over to make sure it passes anyway.
This is friends cooperating.
You definitely could be right. The motivations of the politicians there make perfect sense. Plus it allows them to fit in the "republicans are evil" to their base, and the republicans can fit in the "democrats are evil" to theirs. Meanwhile the politicians are working together.
Seems like a fair number of democrats probably thought Nixon was a criminal and Reagan was satan and ghwb was a liar and gwb was a warmonger and trump was a fraudster. Also seems like a fair number of republicans probably thought Clinton was a degenerate and Obama was subhuman and Biden is illegitimate, which makes 10-15 a pretty low estimate.
> Seems like a fair number of democrats probably thought Nixon was a criminal and Reagan was satan and ghwb was a liar and gwb was a warmonger and trump was a fraudster.
Yes true, but it didn't feel widespread then. It was mostly just people who follow politics closely. Now it's nearly everyone.
I would tend to agree. Hate is infectious, love is hard work.
Yet shutting down the government for sport wasn’t a thing.
Were you working during the furlough winter of 1995-1996?
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Out of curiosity, which part of the statement did you think suggested drug abuse?