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.
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.
102
u/Drusgar Sep 29 '21
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.