The World That Might Have Been and the World We Have

I think the fork in the roads was the Reagan Presidency.

25 years from that marker needed to to forgo history, morality, decency, legality, responsibility, fairness, and just completely go to shit.

His memory for Reagan's days in office is better than mine.

Most of the people in this regime worked one way or another in the Reagan administration.

These were the guys that gave birth to the idea that government couldn't be trusted. LBJ by his military incompetence and inability to sell the war to the American people, and Nixon because his crimes were the straw that broke the camel's back. People wanted folksie, simple, even stupid politicians after that... anybody but an expert. Even Carter came to power on the platform that he was a simple peanut farmer and all that other bilge (he was a good president in a bad situation, but he was riding off an anti-intellectual bias). He made the mistake though of asking Americans to look beyond their pocketbooks for the meaning of life and maybe sacrifice a little... so he had to go.

Wittness the music in the US at the time, suddenly becomming more "folk music" inspired, the Waltons on TV, Dukes of Hazard, etc. People really wanted to be dumbed down and believe in good, clean, honest living... not moral grey areas.

Reagan was a bad B-movie actor and yet Americans lapped that crap up even more. He gave them warm fuzzies and talked about enemies like it was some kind of WWII budget flick all over again. Then you had George H. W. Bush, a guy that reminded people too much of the old style leadership and moral ambiguity, making tough choices like raising taxes, and didn't radiate warm fuzzies. So he had to go, in favor of another folksy president who talked about a place called Hope, etc. And that's how we got where we are today.

,...along with the political insanity of McCarthy and criminality of Nixon, scared a lot of people.

Honestly, after having examined the last 40 some years, I can not arrive at a simple answer about "why" we are where we are, today. Heck, at one time I believed we were in a strange lull with competing forces sufficiently equal in strength that we were neither moving forward or back. I was so wrong. I never anticipated the extremes I have witnessed over the last six years.

I do know this cabal has been working towards power positions the entire time and willing to do absolutely anything to get there, without conscience.

I also know this cabal will continue to do absolutely anything to maintain and expand that power, without conscience.

before the Beatles came over. It was the favorite of leftist college students.

It was country-western that the mass media pushed along with the Waltons and the Dukes of Hazard.

I was thinking more of acoustic-type pop music. You know, the Carpenters, James Taylor, all that kind of music. Not that there's anything intrinsicly wrong with it, but you can see perhaps a desire to emulate simpler times and get away from rock and roll type music and challenging authority and all that other type of stuff.

Of course, you also had disco, but I think that was just a wierd fad more than anything. The folksy/country type music was definitely part of a trend that persisted.

Huh. I'm going to think about that.

That's OK, Ronald Reagan was pretty much a non-entity, an intellectual lightweight whose main claim to fame was B-movies and rantings against the Reds. Think George Bush but less drunk and alot more eloquent. The actual action in his administration was his henchmen pulling off all sorts of dirty crimes and plotting phoney wars and police actions (Grenada being a perfect example). None of them would stick because all the public saw was Reagan, and nobody could picture the guy as evil incarnate.

I was born in 76 and I remember when Carter was president, a little bit. I remember when Reagan was shot, I clearly remember hearing about that on the radio and on TV. AIDS was big on the TV, too, which was scary because I didn't live far from the house of the Ray brothers, two hemophiliac kids who had their house burned down. I think that defines my generation alot- AIDS and Ronald Reagan.

DEATH SENTENCE.

But I'll agree that Reagan's Presidency brought the destruction of FDR's America out of the shadows.

and things definitely began to shift after Reagan was elected.

When he fired the Air Traffic Controllers... well, there was palpable change in the air. I don't know if anyone else felt it at the time, but I surely did.

workers' rights and dignity were taken away. workers were who made america great. today there is no pride or security at work. it is very sad indeed. it's just not the same anymore. member "see the usa in your cheverolet" ?

our legacy is turmoil.

The RW found that they could manipulate the coverage of events - even the events themselves - and thus alter the publics perception of them to the determent of the Carter Administration.

The rest is history.

Truman Doctrine. Permanent economic wartime footing.

You want a go line? That's it.

I'd almost agree.
But I think the National Security Act of 1947 put the first nail in the coffin.
It created the DoD, NSC, and CIA.

We may look back at the creation of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) as yet another ominous milestone on a par with these others.

The standard bearer of family values, who didn't get along with his own kids and who was the first divorced president in U.S. history?

The fiscal conservative who ran up the biggest deficit in history (up to that point)?

The law-and-order Republican whose administration boasted the most indicted and convicted officials in history?

Yes. I agree completely.

:thumbsup:

Reagan came into the White House, and a whole bunch of Democrats bowed down and worshipped him, including most of the founders of the DLC.

That was the time when the word "bipartisanship" began to mean "the Democrats agreeing to whatever dumb idea the Republicanites came up with."

Gone were the days of the Watergate hearings and the Church Commission, when criminals were held responsible for their crimes.

It's been downhill ever since, and I AM including the Clinton years. At best, the Clinton years were merely a less extreme downward slope for the average American.

:nopity:

Please do NOT criticize the greatest song ever written.
B-)

i think this is the single most destructive political statement in our history. turning government from "we the people" into "i've got mine, get your own".
but then again, i think, that as a species, we are a bunch of paranoid warriors.

..."Greed is Good" said Gordon Gekko from "Wall Street". Up to that point, it was all about the counter-culture and the rejection of capitalism. For that line to be uttered basically opened the floodgates to those closeted, ashamed plutocrats.

Reagan, did what he was told and he read his lines well. bush turd, does what he is told, but he sure can't read.