At least under Reagan, many of these policies had never been tested.
Republicans of today are several orders of magnitude worse. We’ve now witnessed the damage of trickle-down economics, of vilifying “pinko commies”, of ignoring a global pandemic… And yet they do it anyway.
It may be tempting to think that, but those policies all had precedent. Trickle-down just used to be called ‘Horse-and-sparrow’ economics. We had red scares before, and each of them were just as stupid, if not moreso (the one time we actually should have been wary, in the early-mid 40s, we were blithely complacent - go figure). And prior influenza epidemics and the spread of longer-term diseases had shown the danger of taking a lackadaisical approach to public health.
Reagan wasn’t the birth of these policies - he was just the one most successful in lodging them long-term into the rotting craw of American politics.
At least under Reagan, many of these policies had never been tested.
Republicans of today are several orders of magnitude worse. We’ve now witnessed the damage of trickle-down economics, of vilifying “pinko commies”, of ignoring a global pandemic… And yet they do it anyway.
It may be tempting to think that, but those policies all had precedent. Trickle-down just used to be called ‘Horse-and-sparrow’ economics. We had red scares before, and each of them were just as stupid, if not moreso (the one time we actually should have been wary, in the early-mid 40s, we were blithely complacent - go figure). And prior influenza epidemics and the spread of longer-term diseases had shown the danger of taking a lackadaisical approach to public health.
Reagan wasn’t the birth of these policies - he was just the one most successful in lodging them long-term into the rotting craw of American politics.
Reagan figured out that if you tell people what they want to hear, you can get away with anything.
Thank you for providing more historical context. It just shows how much worse it was / is.
Fuck… Politics just sucks in the US