General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The events that made you realize America is f'ing stupid? [View all]NanaCat
(1,716 posts)Plenty of people knew before he was elected that his wife was into astrology (it wasn't a secret, you know). We knew how stupid it would be to cute the upper tax rate and tax Social Security--and we were proved right. In real time. We knew what a bigoted wanker he was, too.
The only reason we didn't know how he would respond to the AIDS crisis was because, gee, the scope of the spread of it wasn't known when he ran for office. If we had known in 1979, the chances are very close to 1:1 that he would have said something stupid and hateful about it on the campaign trail. If he said anything at all. And we had plenty of reason to believe he'd blow it off. He'd already proved without a shadow of a doubt that anything that related to people he hated didn't matter to him--if he didn't actively punch down to make things worse.
That's who he was, and those of us paying attention in 1980 knew that. We knew what a disaster he'd be as POTUS. Why didn't you see it?