Did the Destruction of America Begin with Ronald Reagan?

Sep. 15, 2020 4:50 pm

By Thom Hartmann A...

Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies are letting America die.

The billionaires who make their money from fossil fuels have bought off Trump and Republicans so that they are denying climate change while a dozen states in the west burn and the Gulf Coast is repeatedly ravaged by hurricanes. Firefighters in California and Oregon are identifying the remains of homes where people died by the smell of burnt human flesh.

The billionaires who make their money screwing American students with almost $2 trillion in student loans bribed politicians in 2005 to make it illegal to declare bankruptcy on those loans. Across America, students are experiencing depression, despair, and suicide.

The billionaires who own millions of rental properties across the country are actively ignoring both legal requirements and moral-morality based requests, depending on the state, to prevent evictions and are today throwing people out of their homes in the middle of a pandemic.

The billionaires who own Fox news and some of our largest radio networks are facilitating lies about climate change and the coronavirus, both of which are killing people, while these billionaires live in their protected bubbles. They are also stoking racial violence by repeatedly portraying protesters calling for Black equality under the law as terrorists.

Massive tax cuts by Reagan, Bush and Trump have transferred fully $50 trillion from the homes and pockets of working people into the money bins and foreign bank accounts of the billionaire class since 1980. As a result, fewer than half of Americans are still in the middle class, and fear and rage increasingly dominate the American political landscape.

Using that despair and anger people are feeling as they watch their lives be wiped out, their homes destroyed, and their jobs vanish, Trump and the Republican party are fomenting violence and political instability by trying to scapegoat Black and Brown people. The growing Qanon movement on the right further asserts that "international Jewish bankers" like George Soros are behind at all, stoking anti-Semitism along with their garden-variety racism.

This all began in the 1980s with the so-called Reagan Revolution, when Reagan dropped the top tax rate from 74% to 25% and begin a vicious, scorched-earth campaign to destroy unions across the country while authoring NAFTA and other free trade agreements.

Reagan even championed the destruction of our public schools and the modern day Republican rejection of science on everything from the origin of the earth to climate change. He even empowered people like "Christian" billionaire Pat Roberts who argued that the earth is only 6000 years old and, at the peak of the AIDS crisis that Reagan refused to acknowledge, said the biggest crisis facing America was homosexuality.

If America is to recover from this hellscape that rightwing billionaires and their bought-off politicians have inflicted on us, it's going to require a massive, nationwide awakening and a nonstop multi-year effort.

Reaganism needs to be ripped out by the root. His policies of minimizing science, privatizing our public schools, defunding social security and social welfare programs, ending support for infrastructure repair and construction, wiping out union protections for working people, and of transferring America's wealth to the billionaire class must be reversed.

Until Reaganism is utterly destroyed, the crises engulfing America will simply get worse and worse.

-Thom

Comments

DrRichard 2 years 37 weeks ago

In fairness St. Ronald was simply the culmination of the "cancer of creeping capitalism", to parody a saying from the paranoid '50s about communism. And anyway he wasn't smart enough to think all this up.

What is sad is that neither Clinton nor Obama really made any serious efforts to turn things around, much less level with the American people on what was happening and provide a real vision for "change". Holding on to what is left is about the best the voters are promised, even though Americans are hungry for a better country. That throwing of empty promises has been distorted into being part of the toxic appeal of Trumpism.

One might hope better from Congress, but the level of corruption is so high that few seem to express any vision or coherent philosophy for what could be. We need a new FDR but such a person is unlikely to be nominated today, much less have the power and ability to get things done right.

Legend 2 years 37 weeks ago

Change can only happen with control of the 3 branches. As it is the change has been less taxes for the wealthy and corporations due to Republican control.

avn013 2 years 37 weeks ago

The less the middle class the more chances for a collapse (and a loud one).

I think that Andrew Yang is one of the people who has analyzed the fiscal strategy of the last 40 years and has argueg convicingly that it is high tike for trickle up economics. Otherwise we will continue falling down.

djgilbert 2 years 37 weeks ago

A major change in course is certainly needed and soon.

The needed changes are going to face incredible headwinds because we have a constitutional system built on several points of exploitation that are not consistent with climate challenges, a major shift in demographics, and a multipolar world.

If the country is going to remain intact, some major changes are needed. Elections of a king (president) need to be replaced with a more democratic executive system, a dysfunctional legislative chamber due to overrepresentation of small population segments needs adjustment, and the unrestrained power of a judiciary appointed for life needs to face term limits.

It will take the two generations coming into power to make it happen. There are signs of hope but the scope of needed changes may not yet be clear to most.

wjschneider2 2 years 37 weeks ago

Here is an interesting article that talks about the attitude which is endemic in the political world:

https://www.politicalorphans.com/how-the-kleptocrats-bought-washington/

I warn you, it is depressing. I had wondered why Clinton and Obama didn’t try to do more in their first 2 years (when they had the House and Senate)...now I think I know.

Legend 2 years 37 weeks ago

Could not agree more! Vote as if you life depends on it, becase it does.

alis volat 2 years 37 weeks ago

Just a quick note on the New Deal and FDR....credit should go to Secretary Frances Perkins, Eleanor, and Secretary Harold Ickes for much of the progress. They really had to push him.

Then came the Cold War, and we still have not shed the old paradigm of fearing Communism and Socialism.

Then came 9/11 and more fear with a capital F.

Now we are facing climate change, a major health crisis and lack of care, and a madman with a cult following.

The computer age will continue to usher in the solutions. Science and data will help us get to some level we can tolerate and then possibly mitigate some of the loss. But and there is always a but, neither data or science work without the TRUTH. Could it be that the world's greatest liar will help us find our way without meaning to? Remember, remember the 3rd of November!

ADemo4Ever 2 years 37 weeks ago

If you begin to reason how this will all turn out just vision that the middle class and poverty disappear due to a crisis such as we have and lose of means to survive due to no jobs or jobs that pay next to nothing it will not matter if the tax rate is low. There will be no taxes collected. Then what will the wealthy steal.

If the population become so indoctrinated with an oligarchy system of government and the power of the wealthy becomes so soft that another regime is likely to step in and take over...i.e. China, Russia. When men in our so called Democracy tout arming ourselves against the people who are coming if the election does not turn out in favor of the incumbent president is allowed to spout this retoric; we as a Democracy are in trouble. I wonder if push comes to shove, will our military side with the right side of our freedom

It might actually be nice for just one week of not mentioning the name Donald Trump on the news and see what happens. I know for one, it would be a nice silence from all of the brovado that escapes from his mouth daily and hourly.

whatabout 2 years 37 weeks ago

I know the progressives do not embrace religion but you have to admit, God must be terribly pissed at the Left Coast.

Take a Native American to lunch, they can solve your forest fire issue but until you get your collective heads out of your rear ends you will never save your pathetic cities from being burned to the ground by antifa and blm both supported by the democrat party.

EDIT,

Sorry, some duplicates in my previous post.

More on the West Coast crisis called "climate change". I archived them to make it easier for you.

Legend 2 years 37 weeks ago

#10

The same that I do not click on the Russian ads, I am not about to click on any of Whatabutts links.

Remember last winter when Australia had record forest fires. Maybe there is a link. Or maybe they do not rake their leaves like California.

All4FreshAir 2 years 37 weeks ago

#11

Dr Richard is so spot on.

I think the lack of effort to change or even talk about change during the Clinton and Obama admins led to the undestandable distrust by the left. When the candidate you helped elect, ignores your efforts and leaves all the corrupt officials in place, it puts people off about the effectiveness of elections. We also watched two Democratic canidiates win the presidency but not take office....maybe three, Gore, Kerry, Clinton. For 20 years, nothing was done to insure elections weren't hackable.
I have never called the occupent of the Whire House, President. I cringed when everyone referred to him by that title. Trump happened because the Democrats always fear hurting the feelings of the monsters destroying our country now.

switterist2day 2 years 37 weeks ago

#12

I agree with DrRichard. Sad but true!

switterist2day 2 years 37 weeks ago

#13

: ^ )

rostasi 2 years 37 weeks ago

#14

Oh, those clever Q-Bots of Qtaboutaland...

rostasi 2 years 37 weeks ago

#15

‘We were shocked’: RAND study uncovers massive income shift to the top 1%.

vetinla 2 years 36 weeks ago

#16

St. Reagan played his finest role as POTUS. Meanwhile, he and his minions took their marching orders from the same kind of malignant oligarchs, who buy the politicians to slant the rules, to favor the uber-rich.

Just like DJT, and ALL his predecessors.

Try and change this scenario, and you're toast.

That's today's American empire.

vetinla 2 years 36 weeks ago

#17

@ #9 Some of us progressives do embrace god & religion, difference is, we invent OUR OWN versions of both, because the others did too.

notberlin 2 years 36 weeks ago

#18

Anytime the "Ruskies" are brought into the mix, I recommend to just run. Biggest deep state scam going since Mcarthyism. So depressing that the dems continue to look for scapegoats rather than curing the cancer within.

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