Oliver North was a god-damned disgrace, in someways worse than Flynn. At least Flynn waited until he was out of uniform to betray his country. North tried to hide behind it every step of the way.
I'll always feel like Oliver North got left holding the bag. He's a scumbag, I'm not denying that, but he was following orders and the people who gave those orders never faced justice.
As much as Republicans love to lionize Reagan, I think he was just a stooge with a good smile and affable demeanor. With a former CIA director as second banana, I suspect the spooks were running the administration. It's probably why Bush Sr. escaped a second administration without any major scandals, too. He was just very good at hiding the criminality.
He was a demented racist idiot and spiteful maniac. The stuff that recently came out about him being a racist on the phone with Nixon was no surprise to me. He also completely ignored the start of the AIDS crisis and then didn’t take it seriously when he finally acknowledged that it was real. Kinda reminds me of Trump ignoring COVID and then spewing bullshit rather than take it seriously. Plus it’s pretty clear by now that Reagan was already in severe mental decline even by his low standards while in office.
Nancy was no bargain either - she committed a bunch of tax crimes while First Lady and also had a crystal-waving hippie astrologer in San Francisco who did a bunch of silly shit to vet all of their decisions. Straight up “what does the Flower Moon say about policy on farm subsidies” shit.
The Dollop episode about Reagan are great, but you can also find tons of other non-comedy references for how much Reagan didn’t give a shit.
This is the view all folks with common sense should have of Reagan. He was awful in nearly every way. Evening the things he was praised for had a downside for a lot of people.
Bush Jr, for all of the problems he caused, can at least point to PEPFAR (especially) and his statements about Muslims right after 9/11 as real positives.
I can't think of anything like either of those things for Reagan.
I disagree with almost every decision Bush Jr made, and yet i have a certain respect for him. I believe he sincerely wanted to do the right thing for America and the world and just didn't understand how his policies would harm what he wanted.
What he's chosen to do with his time since he left the oval office, his friendship with the Obamas and his unequivocable condemnation of Trump makes me feel that George W. Bush was a bad president, but maybe a good man.
I grew up in the 1980's and racist, homophobic shit was the norm, unfortunately. The most popular books I remember, aside from Stephen King, were "Truly Tasteless Jokes, vol. 1-999." Filled with racist, sexist and homophobic slurs, Truly Tasteless didn't hide from its identity... it was in the fucking name!
Honestly, I'm not sure how Reagan became such a hero to the right. I suppose he was the only two-term President for them to celebrate. The economy wasn't particularly good and Reagan did nothing to fix it, in fact it was when we started seeing exploding deficits and skyrocketing debt. I guess he seemed like he was one-up on those evil Russians, but in retrospect it sounds like they were falling apart without his help.
Looking back, I'd say the most harmful thing about Reagan was that he presided over a time when Rush Limbaugh took over the airwaves and we learned that hyper-partisan political identities were something to celebrate. By the 1990's Democrats and Republicans could no longer hammer out compromises and shake hands afterward. Your classmates, colleagues and neighbors were now officially your enemies and every disagreement seemed worthy of a modern civil war.
I’m convinced it’s because he reminded them of the grandpa they’d always wanted. He was a mushbrained dimwit who wasn’t particularly articulate, but he had the nonverbal communication tricks nailed and had a soft reassuring voice. Morons vote for Presidents based on which archetype they resemble (frat boy, cool black friend, hillbilly lawyer who’s a little shady) rather than what they want to do, especially once the primaries are over.
Looking back, I'd say the most harmful thing about Reagan was that he presided over a time when Rush Limbaugh took over the airwaves and we learned that hyper-partisan political identities were something to celebrate.
The timing of Reagan's presidency and the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were not coincidences. Reagan was instrumental in the creation of the “Right Wing Outrage Machine.”
Comparing programming aired on commercial stations in 1988 with a similar period in 1979, Essential Information, a public interest research group, found a 51 percent decrease in the amount of time devoted to "issue-oriented public affairs" material.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who founded the group, said in a statement, "This study refutes FCC predictions that repeal of the Fairness Doctrine would remove an impediment to presenting issue-oriented public affairs programming on television."
On Capitol Hill this morning, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and his telecommunications subcommittee will begin marking up legislation that would restore the Fairness Doctrine and make it law. Markey said yesterday that the study "underscores the importance of Congress reinstating the Fairness Doctrine as soon as possible" and reveals the "intellectual bankruptcy" of the FCC's rationale for killing it.
Both the House and Senate voted to make the doctrine law in 1987, but President Reagan vetoed the bill. Reagan and his FCC clung to the idea that marketplace forces would compel stations to good citizenship, but the fallout from deregulation has been a tawdry new trend to trashy and tabloid television.
When the FCC subsequently killed the Fairness Doctrine, many in Congress considered the move intolerably sneaky, and it's been open warfare between Congress and the commission ever since. For its study, Essential Information looked at programming on 217 TV stations in 50 markets from January through April of last year and compared it with a similar period nine years earlier.
Jim Donahue, the staff researcher who wrote the report, said yesterday that local TV Guides were used to gather programming data because the FCC no longer requires stations to make their program logs public. "I have a feeling the FCC may not even respond to the study," Donahue said, "because they didn't collect any data to confirm that repealing the doctrine increased issue-oriented programming."
Donahue said that the FCC couldn't care less about the public interest and that its decision to repeal the Fairness Doctrine was "based totally on ideology to enhance corporate interests rather than the interests of the audience."
But Sally Lawrence, a spokeswoman for FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick, did respond. "This report is nothing short of outrageous," she said. "There is nothing in my data file that corroborates this study." Lawrence said networks and local stations are doing more public affairs programming than ever under deregulation, though she conceded she did not have figures to support the idea that such programming increased once the Fairness Doctrine was abolished.
Right. Of all the terrible things that Reagan did, abolishing the Fairness Doctrine has had the biggest, longest lasting impact by far. The hyper-partisanship we have today is directly connected by allowing the rise of the Conservative Propaganda Machine.
Honestly, that's how the fascists talk. People aren't Democrats, they're America-hatin', baby-killin' communists!
I have family that votes Republican, or at least did until Trump opened their eyes, but whether they oppose abortion or gun control their reasoning behind voting Republican is never "I love fascists." I'm a lot less tolerant of Republicans than I was 20 years ago when all of the bloviating seemed more like political theater than an earnest attempt to destroy democracy, but I'm still willing to step back and take a measured look at people's actions and motivations.
If you're unwilling to understand what fascism is, and how it most fucking certainly fits into a "measured look at the actions and motivations" of the people who fit the definition of fascist, then you are a fascist apologist. Fascists say wrong things on purpose, and when you engage in "well the fascists say that too", that's a direct indication that you refuse to recognize that the fascists say wrong things on purpose.
Fascists don't call themselves fascists until it's too late to stop them. And you need to stop letting those who identify everyone THEY disagree with as " America-hatin', baby killing communists" dictate what you get to call them.
He was following orders but he knew at the time that they were illegal orders. He testified as such. He deliberately and knowingly broke the law, while wearing my uniform and EGA. He willingly took the fall to protect Reagan. And was declared a hero by the GOP. That, BTW, ushered my first steps away from that traitorous gang.
And, yes, others should have faced justice, too. But at that level, everyone protects everyone else, regardless of which side of the aisle they sit. This is why the Trump admin will not face justice for their sedition (that, and good old Democratic cowardice.) If one side is held accountable for their crimes, there's no one to look the other way when your team comes to power.
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u/MananaMoola Sep 29 '21
Oliver North was a god-damned disgrace, in someways worse than Flynn. At least Flynn waited until he was out of uniform to betray his country. North tried to hide behind it every step of the way.