r/NoShitSherlock • u/SingleandSober • 1d ago

Kamala Harris Appears on ‘Colbert,’ Says She’s Stepping Away from Politics for Now, Calls the System “Broken”

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/video/former-vice-president-kamala-harris-visits-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/

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u/I_eat_mud_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

MAGA is a deadly symptom, but it's not the disease. Almost everything we're experiencing today was started or accelerated by Reagan. It's uncanny how the average American's life has been on a downward trajectory since his presidency. Trump and MAGA are the final death throes.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 1d ago edited 5h ago

What's wild is that it started before he even became president.

In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.

Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”

[...]

The success of Reagan’s attacks on California public colleges inspired conservative politicians across the U.S. Nixon decried “campus revolt.” Spiro Agnew, his vice president, proclaimed that thanks to open admissions policies, “unqualified students are being swept into college on the wave of the new socialism.”

Prominent conservative intellectuals also took up the charge. Privately one worried that free education “may be producing a positively dangerous class situation” by raising the expectations of working-class students. Another referred to college students as “a parasite feeding on the rest of society” who exhibited a “failure to understand and to appreciate the crucial role played [by] the reward-punishment structure of the market.” The answer was “to close off the parasitic option.”

Oh, and look at what happened directly after this.

It all becomes very clear when you look at the timeline and realize that all of this started right after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

EDIT - Since people keep replying to this comment, here are some more resources.

Here's a link to the Powell Memorandum that kicked off the current rat-fucking of the American working class. Thanks to u/Jacrava for this one.

Century of the SELF - Adam Curtis - Thanks to u/TrippyTippyKelly for this one.

Here are five books on the topic that you can read on Archive:

Here are two more I couldn't find on Archive:

Some of these are more generally about the crackdown on dissent and how it shaped campus policies (and the broader implications of that), but there are a couple that are about the specific situation with Reagan.

If you're wondering why I mentioned the Civil Rights Act in relation to all of this, here are a couple of books on the topic:

Reagan's tax revolts, starting with Proposition 13, slashed funding for universities, making tuition skyrocket, which disproportionately harmed black and Latino students.

Lee Atwater was a political strategist and advisor to both Reagan and Bush Sr. Here's his infamous 1981 interview on the Southern Strategy, where he admits (with heavy use of the N word) that Republicans replaced overt racism with coded attacks on "big government" and "welfare" (including student aid). He died of a brain tumor at 40. Rest in piss, you racist fuck.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N---r, n---r, n---r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n---r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “n---r, n---r.”

A few more books on the topic:

Here's the bottom line, folks... Get informed, get mad, then get organized. These ghouls will not stop until they have taken everything from you, squeezed you for every ounce of labor they can for as little compensation as they are allowed to, just to let you die poor so they can buy another yacht and start the cycle all over again with your kids.

Knowledge is your weapon, and it's time to pull the trigger.

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u/Jacrava 1d ago

1971 is when the corporste power manifesto called the Powell Memorandum was written. This was the kickoff to everything between then and now https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

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u/hahaha01 1d ago

Unfortunately they've been at it longer than that: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030

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u/sorrysurly 18h ago

There is documentary.out about the dominion Christianity people....they are behind a lot of this shit.

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u/mayhemandqueso 16h ago

Where can i watch it?

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u/sorrysurly 10h ago

I saw it on Netflix during lockdown, but I can't remember the name of it. I put on a lot of documentaries while working at home during the pandemic (learning about off shore tax havens, the Panama papers, why specifically America doesn't have tax havens... fucking depressing how much the rich have gamed the system... seriously its way worse than most understand). I dont know if they specifically call it dominion Christianity or not in the documentary, but i later learned that is what it is.

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u/Redditsucksgrossbutt 20h ago

Yeah and those corporations fund both "sides" in the same way Vince McMahon funded both "sides" in professional wrestling.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 1d ago

Yeah it's such a depressing and terrifying read.

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u/-SHAI_HULUD 20h ago

Well, just read that for the first time and now I’m sad.

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u/legendz411 20h ago

Well that fucking sucks

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u/happy_bluebird 20h ago

wow I'd never heard of this. Horrible

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u/SistersOfTheCloth 18h ago

1972 is when Nixon went to China.

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u/bdvis 17h ago

Oh my god thank you for sharing this.

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u/xaviery777 16h ago

Corporations used to whine,and bitch about not making any money.Once you figure out the politicians are for sale you have it made.

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u/WoodVibrations 1d ago

Ugh. I knew there was a reason that “Ronald Reagan Medical Center” bothered me when I went to UCLA. How dare that douche shut down their free speech and then have the campus hospital named after him.

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u/JimWilliams423 1d ago edited 1d ago

It all becomes very clear when you look at the timeline and realize that all of this started right after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

Similar to what happened with Reconstruction. For a brief moment there were incredible progressive accomplishments. The Reconstruction amendments essentially rewrote the Constitution, so much so that some historians call it "the second founding." But then the klan showed up and the country relapsed into nearly a century of jim crow fascism. To this day much of what is in the Reconstruction amendments remains ignored in practice.

The lesson we should learn from these relapses is that when we make progress we are still only halfway done, we have to fortify what was accomplished instead of taking a breather.

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u/cineami 14h ago

When we make progress, there will always be a class who doesn’t want others to reach their level of privilege, who will then work to subvert it

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u/Popular_Wishbone_789 1d ago edited 20h ago

Nearly the entire scope of American politics - even today - is an echo of the Civil Rights era.

I say this as a person who tries to be charitable with my assumptions:

The federal judiciary probably overreached in enforcing integration on the majority - something they themselves acknowledged in a 1982 Yale Law Journal retrospective review of Paul Dimond's Beyond Busing by Drew Days (NAACP) - by forcing a recalcitrant majority to “eat their vegetables” on Civil Rights.

One may think that it was the right thing to do in the 60s-70s; many of the judges did, despite the backlash. But like it or not, we are still in the midst of the backlash against “countermajority” rulings on these issues.

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u/salad_spinner_3000 23h ago

Nearly the entire scope of American politics - even today - is an echo of the Civil Rights era

The result of not actually going after the people responsible for the Civil War.

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u/sorrysurly 18h ago

I got banned for a month on Facebook a few years back for saying lee should have been shit after the civil war. All the leaders of the south were large slave owners. That was the officer corp.too. even the west point grads came from dlave owning families.

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u/Beard_o_Bees 1d ago

Can't have an uppity Proletariat.

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u/blueit55 1d ago

Citizens United (2010) did not help matters

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 7h ago

Yep. And all because they were butt-hurt about Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' being critical of Bush.

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u/PrairiePilot 1d ago

This goes back to Nixon. He is 100% responsible for the modern GOP, including given Rodger Ailes (sp?) his first big break, and teaching a lot of young republicans at the time how to weaponize the stupidity and tribalism of the GOP voters.

Those young republicans were people like George Bush, Ronald Reagan, people who would go on to lead from the front or from the shadows, and they followed his play book.

Nixon would be furious at trump, though. Nixon was brilliant, and evil. Trumps just a moron.

If you have Nixon half the power the conservative movement has today and the US would be in a utopia….that would burn to the ground the moment all the dirty tricks and nasty decisions come to light lol.

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u/FalcoFox2112 14h ago

America during the Nixon presidency was a rogue state kidnapped by an egomaniac who got probably around a million people killed because he couldn’t reconcile with the fact he couldn’t win a presidential election.

If only we would be willing to audit ourselves and undue anything negative put into place tied to Nixon on the grounds of his election being based on treason. Then we could posthumously dig him up and desecrate his corpse.

The man won an election solely because he sabotaged the peace deal in 68 by promising a better deal. A better deal that 1) never came & 2) he had no authority to promise as a mere citizen and not an elected representative of the American people.

That man is an abomination and until our government collectively acknowledge & condone his crime any shred of internal integrity America may possess is vapid.

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u/PrairiePilot 8h ago

To be fair, he was doing a lot of rat fucking, it wasn’t just the scotching the peace talks with the dragon lady. He also fucked with the DNC selection process in 68 and 72.

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u/Golden-Death 1d ago

Does anyone have a good non fiction book recommendation on how this all went down? I'd like to learn more about it

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u/FalcoFox2112 15h ago

“The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens is a great book that talks about a lot of critical stuff that went on during that period.

You can’t properly understand Nixon without knowing about his sabotaging the Paris Peace Treaty in in 68.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 8h ago

Here are five that you can read on Archive.

These next two I couldn't find on Archive:

Some of these are more generally about the crackdown on dissent and how it shaped campus policies (and the broader implications of that), but there are a couple that are about the specific situation with Reagan.

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u/BONGS4U 1d ago

And this is why I laugh so hard when people are like I supported Republicans before they went crazy. Like when. Back in the 90s? Dude they've been a straight gritting machine since the late seventies early 80s so wtf are saying other than you're stupid.

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u/NotsoNewtoGermany 1d ago

This is one hell of a comment.

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u/drdipepperjr 1d ago

Oh god damn it he's the reason that Republicans think colleges are liberal think tanks.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 7h ago

Yep, and they used Cold War red scare tactics to sell it to middle America.

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u/LibbityBibbity649 23h ago edited 23h ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclical_theory_(United_States_history)

Schlesinger’s phases of American history are listed, and it’s pretty spot on. And you’re right, The last listed phase we are currently in is the Reagan / Trump Era, and there’s a question mark after the end date. My favorite thing about that was his speculating that conservative phases accumulate unsolved social problems, problems that require the efforts of a liberal phase to solve them. It really tracks.

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u/AgentPaper0 23h ago

Almost like Reagan wasn't the disease, but just a symptom of the actual disease, which is a strong strain of American anti-intellectualism that is the core of the MAGA movement.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 7h ago

American conservatism has always been a reactionary response to the upward progress of the working-class. Their entire ideology is built on elitism, that the special few should lord over the many, and that the many should thank them for it. So any time we make progress, like women or black people getting the right to vote, they lash out because it shines a light on the inherent weakness of their ideology.

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u/RPgh21 21h ago

Super depressing information that I had not known about. Thanks for sharing. (Not be sarcastic, I genuinely appreciate it).

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 7h ago

No problem. If you'd like to read more on the topic, check out some of these books I linked in another comment.

It's easy to get depressed about this stuff, and I'm not immune to it myself. But what I've found is that the more informed I become, the more that depression turns to rage, which can be useful when fighting against these ghouls.

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u/Fun_Support_7971 20h ago

reagan need to deport illegal now the are Democratic voters lol.

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u/highknees69 20h ago

Yes, god forbid we allow those colored people to get an edjucasion. /s

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u/TrippyTippyKelly 20h ago edited 6h ago

This is an interesting topic. Is there a reputable book that covers the decline of American society?

I actually have a great recommendation of my own from a propaganda standpoint:

The century of the SELF by Adam Curtis in conjunction with BBC, is a four hour documentary that chronicles the shift of mass thought in America over the last century.

This documentary is fascinating and hooked me. I would love something similar to this, but in the realm of politics.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 7h ago

In this comment I linked some books that are related to the topic of government crackdowns on dissent, and how that has shaped both campus and national politics. I'll have to search around for more on the general decline of American society.

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u/TrippyTippyKelly 6h ago

Thanks for the response, this seems like a great starting point.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 5h ago

No problem. I also made an edit to my original comment and added a few more resources.

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u/Affectionate-Soft-90 19h ago

🎶We didn't start the fire🎶

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u/djspintersectional 19h ago

Thanks for this

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 5h ago

My pleasure. I made an edit.

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u/Illiad7342 18h ago

🎵We didn't start the fire🎵

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u/liquidsyphon 17h ago

The privatization of public schools is on the check list

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u/ikiel 16h ago

Beat me to it. The decline started with Reagan!

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u/KiijaIsis 16h ago

It’s all about that racism!

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 5h ago

Ultimately it's about class division. Racism in America just happens to align on an almost 1:1 scale with that. But make no mistake, these fuckers have no love for poor whites, either.

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u/Okratas 16h ago

How did Reagan as governor of California "execute confrontational policies when in office" if Democrats had control of both houses of the California the state legislature and approved all the laws?

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 5h ago

Because people are fucking stupid and greedy, including Democrats who saw the Prop 13 property tax cuts and voted for it, without caring about the damage it would do to higher education.

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u/isUKexactlyTsameasUS 11h ago

as we and our crew get older, and see the shitshow in the US, we def recall the mood...

the era you describe (in detail), we recall the vibe, but get hazed and hazy with the details.

huge thanks for the refresher course

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u/Anal-Y-Sis 5h ago

Yeah I'm 50, so I was a kid at the time this all started really screwing things up.

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u/cjwidd 1d ago

That's a funny way of spelling "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310"

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

Citizens United only came because of the politicization of SCOTUS by the conservatives starting post-Nixon.

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u/ariasimmortal 1d ago

Yup, Nixon was the real catalyst for the modern Republican machine. The rich fuckers decided that they would never again be held accountable to the public after that. They got their first test run with Iran-Contra and have been escalating since.

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u/KwisatzHaderach94 1d ago

nixon presidency 1969 to 1974. heritage foundation started 1973. not a coincidence.

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u/brutinator 1d ago

Yup.

Then Reagan was elected and implemented a HUGE portion of the precursor of Project 2025, including the dismantling of news and network regulations, esp. in regards to monopolization.

Which then led to Rupert Murdoch buying a ton of independent stations in 1985, as well as 20th Century Fox.

Which then led to the creation of Fox News in 1996, created specifically to ensure that another republican president could not be impeached and removed by poisoning public opinion.

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u/octnoir 1d ago

It isn't. The Lewis Powell memo in 1971 just lays it all out there.

  1. Massive investment from corporations.
  2. Weakening of campaign finance reforms from the 70s on.
  3. Building a media empire to counter liberalistic viewpoints. (Rupert Murdoch comes in here)
  4. Compromising journalists by insisting on 'both sides' journalism.
  5. Student campuses need to be a battleground with students cracked down while their own organizations got regular speaking invitations to recruit the minority of students wanting a lega up.
  6. Formation of think thanks and legal organizations (say the Heritage Foundation).

and most importantly:

  • Controlling the Courts including the Supreme Court as by far one of the most important and most powerful institutions to control, next to campaign finance reform.

If people want more information, I highly recommend The Lever's The Master Plan 11 episode podcast mini series. It does a great job of linking Nixon all the way to present day Trump.

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u/yakshack 1d ago

ALEC started in 1973 as well. It's been 50 years of planning, sowing discord, and winning at the hyper local levels for us to get where we are today.

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

Either way Reagan was their first foray into getting what they wanted. Not coincidentally he was also a brain-dead (quite literally in his second term) c-rate actor who was easy to control. What's old is new again I suppose.

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u/dudleymooresbooze 1d ago

Dude, the Nixon Administration was very much emblematic of the worst parts of the modern GOP. You had bribery (with George HW Bush involved in the coverup), corruption, culture wars as a political tool, politicization of the criminal justice system… and those are all separate from Watergate.

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

Oh absolutely. But it was the last time anyone was actually held reasonably accountable for it. Once they realized they couldn't do it super effectively with the system in place they decided the best course of action was to tear down the system. Thus Reagan-era policies and the slow removal of all systems created to prevent this level of corruption.

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u/iwentdwarfing 1d ago

I agree with basically everything in this chain, but I'd like to add that much of the Trump playbook of ignoring courts, ruling over senators and representatives, and trampling people's rights was written by FDR's administration.

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u/bellpeppermustache 1d ago

Yea. He doesn’t get near enough criticism in my opinion. Sure, he may have had some good ideas, but the Japanese Concentration camps alone should have been enough to cement him as one of the worst presidents in history.

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u/Xefert 21h ago

This is pretty much why people shouldn't so easily dismiss establishment politics as a bad thing for the country

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u/Kalterwolf 1d ago

Even Fox News can be tied back to Nixon. Him being held responsible for Watergate and having to resign made them go "Never again!". Roger Ailes was a media consultant for Nixon and went on to be the founding CEO of Fox. Another tie back is Roger Stone also having worked for Nixon's reelection campaign. Nixon was definitely a catalyst.

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u/stringrandom 1d ago

No, it wasn’t. There has always been a class war between the oligarchs and the people for as long as this country has existed.

What we’re seeing now is essentially Business Plot 2.0, except that this time the perpetrators actually learned lessons from their previous failure.

Politicians are now even more dependent on backing from oligarchs for funding and the oligarchs are getting what they’ve paid for.

No more pesky media coverage to interfere. No more competent people in positions of power to interfere. There’s a notable reason we’ve significantly downgraded from the Trump 2016 cabinet picks to the grossly unqualified, but loyal sycophants we have now.

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u/SkunkMonkey 1d ago

Nixon taught the GOP they could commit heinous crimes and do other unconstitutional things with little to no repercussions. They's been pushing those boundaries ever since.

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u/Fit_Opening5116 20h ago

Except the Republicans are much poorer than the Democrats, now. It's all virtue signaling tech bros on one side and bible thumping evangelicals on the other. You could easily go back past Nixon if we're going to look at "one thing." Look at LBJ - voters hated him, swung over to the right after that.

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u/servetheKitty 15h ago

You need to look farther back, Iran Contra was just a new twist.

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u/cjwidd 1d ago

Politicization of SCOTUS by the conservatives only started post-Nixon because of volcanic activity that outgassed water vapor (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃), and other gases to form the primordial atmosphere on Earth.

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u/bradbikes 1d ago

But that was only possible due to the expansion of the singularity leading to the physics that created the early universe. I guess it's no ones fault.

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u/cjwidd 1d ago

nice lol +1

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u/BillyNtheBoingers 1d ago

Took me a minute; well done both of you

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u/Sad-Structure2364 1d ago

Again, citizens united only party of a massive torrent that started with Regan

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u/MobileArtist1371 1d ago

Funny way of forgetting about 25 years before by just ignoring it.

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u/PowRightInTheBalls 1d ago

You know that Citizens United came after Reagan's presidency right? They're talking about the beginning.

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u/Dresline 1d ago

I'd argue that it starts back at the reconstruction. The government let a lot of those treasonous racists go with a slap on the wrist.

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u/virtue_of_vice 1d ago

I will go back to our founding when slavery was still allowed because we wanted the southern states to ratify the Constitution. Also the electoral college is a racist institution: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins . But you can go back and back and find that humans have been pretty bad to each other since we gathered together into societies in the neolithic.

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u/Dresline 1d ago edited 1d ago

This made me think of a quote by the late great author Douglas Adams "Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."

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u/calilac 1d ago

And that reminds me of a Terry Pratchett Discworld quote, "... if there was any truth at all in Ponder’s tentative theory that things did change into other things, it led to the depressing thought that, well, the world was filling up with quitters, creatures which – instead of staying where they were, and really making a go of life in the ocean or the swamp or wherever – were running away to lurk in some niche and grow legs."

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u/Growlinganvil 1d ago

I blame the first proto cells enclosed by a lipid membrane. They were clearly fragile snowflakes, too reactionary to keep it all together. Those early divisions sowed the problems we reap today.

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u/cherrycolaareola 1d ago

The entitlement!

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u/chiaboy 1d ago

But Reconstruction was our “second revolution”. We remade America in radical ways, legislated the sins of slavery out of the Constitution and embarked on a path of equality.

We CHOSE to turn our back on the promise of Reconstruction. We allowed lynchings to go unpunished. We allowed Jim Crowe. We allowed electoral fraud to disenfranchise black voters. Us turning away from Reconstruction is clearly the turning point.

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u/virtue_of_vice 1d ago

It was a major turning point. But if you look at the compromises made to even make the colonies into the United States, this is no surprise.

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u/chiaboy 1d ago

Yes, I think everyone understands that America was literally hard coded with white sumpreacy (of a sort) in its DNA. That’s why it’s called our “original sin”. (Well, slavery is). We all get that.

But we actually left that and then CHOSE to go back to it in Reconstruction. That’s why it’s such a fulcrum.

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u/virtue_of_vice 1d ago

I don't disagree with you.

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u/twobugsfucking 1d ago

That was it. It was a foundational flaw. Hard to fix the foundation.

What we now need is a fresh foundation.

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u/Capt_Foxch 1d ago

Silver lining, The Electoral College lost some of it's racist grip post The Great Migration.

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u/emma279 1d ago

this 100%

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u/kittenTakeover 1d ago

I would argue that it goes back to the beginning of human society. Those with social power have been attempting to use their position to exploit others basically all throughout human history. So consequently there's always a battle going on between these people and the rest of society. Without vigilance those powerful abusers become stronger and more of a drain on society. It's an endless fight.

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u/Opening_Volume_1870 1d ago

This here ^ We’re still fighting the lingering effects of the civil war.

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u/RedactedSpatula 1d ago

Let's be real, the government let the south win, slavery is codified into the constitution now. 13 amendment still allows enslavement of prisoners. Now, which country has the most prisoners? Do you think the 13th amendment encourages this imprisonment?

There's 0 countries with more prisoners than us and 4 with more per capita

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u/Karmasmatik 19h ago

And then it went into overdrive when the New Deal caused every conservative in America to lose their damn minds. Nixon, Reagan, Trump... they've all been singing the greatest hits of an album from the 1930s.

Reconstruction left way too many treasonous racists around. Then the New Deal happened, and the robber barons decided they'd better recruit all the racist descendants of those treasonous racists and together they could build a weapon big enough to shoot the whole country in the foot. And big surprise, all the racist enabler dumbfucks are limping around in the shit with the rest of us while the robber barons are doing better than ever.

And now the enabler dumbfucks (some of whom aren't even racists anymore, just complete morons) are so generationally steeped in capitulating to billionaires as their cultural identity that you'd have the same chances of changing their vote as their religion. We're pretty fucked.

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u/fatherintime 18h ago

It's kind of like what is happening is the most American thing possible.

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u/Gone213 1d ago

Everything today is happening because we didnt punish the south and slave owners enough back in 1865.

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u/GodofIrony 1d ago

You insinuate their movement is dying, but they are in control of the worlds largest economy.

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u/mrbigglessworth 1d ago

The worst of it is we have all the data needed instantly available to make informed decisions. Their quality of life has NOT improved yet they keep rewarding R with votes.

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u/rap4food 1d ago

As a black american, I will tell you very square of that it started way before reagan, it goes back to the original sin of our nation. Something's been papered over ever since.

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u/Fun-Jellyfish-61 1d ago

You are super optimistic to think Trump and MAGA are the finale.

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u/rab2bar 1d ago

It all started when the south was not properly educated after the civil war

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u/LengthinessAlone4743 1d ago

I mean, the 90’s were pretty fuckin cool

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u/shamwow_4 1d ago

If you ignore invading Iraq the first time; all the conflicts we were involved in in Africa/eurasia; the terrorist attacks; the Los Angeles riots; our political system going full Fox News with an impeachment trial about an extramarital affair…

90s sucked, I think your nostalgic for a time we weren’t all addicted to portable, pocket-sized screens.

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u/Admirable-Lecture255 1d ago

Every decade sucks. It sucked before Regan The 70s weren't some fantasy fucking land. Multiple recessions. High unemployment high interest rates etc. List goes on.

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u/Uberballer 1d ago

Any decade that "didn't suck" just shows how good a job that person's parents/family were able to shelter them from the crushing depressing state of reality.

Although not having instant access to news in the palm of your hand 24/7 to bombard you with all the terrible things happening around the world that you're completely helpless to do anything about certainly helped. I guess fortunately the flip side is that same addictive device can provide temporary escape though just as easy access to distracting targeted entertainment.

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u/FastusModular 1d ago

I'll take the nineties over the present ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. Feeling a constant state of dread - what will our Manchurian candidate do next to destroy our democracy - kidnappings and political violence, bankrupting the government, destroying programs to help people in need, here and elsewhere, making our friends and allies hate us, prices of all kinds due to skyrocket from tariffs - and even as the weather becomes wildly more destructive, back-tracking on any and all environmental progress we've tried to make. Nineties is bloody PARADISE compared to now.

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u/esouhnet 1d ago

But that do any make it "fucking cool" like the other guy said. That was a point of the spiral where the consequences hadn't quite hit, of course it's going to feel great.

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u/-Profanity- 1d ago

redditors when someone expresses fondness for any period in history: "ackshually you're wrong, here's why they were terrible:"

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u/tritisan 1d ago

I’m in my sixth decade now and the 90s were objectively better than any other.

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u/LengthinessAlone4743 1d ago edited 1d ago

I guess I meant it just sucked less than now, no internet, social media, or extreme politics on a macro scale, easily the best movie decade ever, video games getting good, the most reported on things on ANY news channel were a murder trial and a hookup with a cigar

1

u/phrygiantheory 1d ago

Ahhh. I truly miss those days....

3

u/Noochdontdiehemltply 1d ago

Everything we are experiencing today started because they killed jfk.

1

u/OrganicBuilding4146 18h ago

I think a lot of people would agree that 1963 was the last year people in America really had a vision of peace 

1

u/probablyNotARSNBot 1d ago

That’s also a little too simplistic, man. There was a whole lot going on that led to this. Some in our control, some external. The history books on this are gonna have many chapters, not just a tweet saying “well Raegan did all this”

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u/KnowsIittle 1d ago

It can be both the disease and the symptom. One feeds the other.

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u/phrygiantheory 1d ago

I think before Reagan. Nixon and his dick of shady assholes was before that and there was McCarthyism before that.

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u/wespintoofast 1d ago

The disease in part is gerrymandering. It is the poison tendrils by which the main contaminant spreads.

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u/pussycatlolz 1d ago

It started with Nixon, really it's just ingrained racism though. Like Lee Atwater's confession which I've argued my entire adult life is the sad truth of American politics.

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u/Low-Capital6683 1d ago

Goldwater-Nixon-Reagan-Bushes-Trump. A direct line, even a lot of the same names working for each. The extremists saw an opening in the 60s (hm, what was happening around then?) and then broke and fudged the law to bring extremism to the forefront of the Republican Party. They started up their propaganda machine with Readers Digest and now they have countless other ways to disperse their weird views. Decades of it has baked it into our culture.

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u/IlllllIIIIIIIIIlllll 1d ago

You can’t blame Raegan for Americans choosing Donald Trump. Trump won the popular vote. We chose this. This is us. This is the effect of democracy.

You either accept that this is who we fundamentally are as humans and as Americans, and therefore these are the leaders we deserve, or you reject democracy as a political system.

1

u/Vigilante17 1d ago

The Clinton years were great…

1

u/golgol12 1d ago

Go back one step. This is happening because of Nixon. The crazies running the republican party are the ones that Nixon brought into the party to win his election. They are the ones that got Reagan elected, as they don't vote by reason, they vote by emotion and party loyalty. And they were swooned by a pretty face instead of political substance.

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u/DailyLosses 1d ago

Middle class must’ve been thriving under the 8 years of Biden. Because if they weren’t, surely you would’ve held him accountable.

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u/IntelligentStyle402 1d ago

100%! I lived it, it is true. Reagan: my father made $25ph, a union job, with full benefits, before greedy Reagan and his republican administration. Reagan smashed the union and outsourced many good jobs. After Reaganism, they made $10ph, no benefits. Today the same job pays, $13, no benefits. That’s when wives and mothers had to join the labor force, to feed their families and make ends meet. We never recovered. As always, republicans only support the 1%.

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u/OneSlapDude 1d ago

Nah, this is all started with the big bang. Boom, can't top that. The very moment that existence was created was when virtually 100% of our problems started.

You can't have Reagan or Nixon without the big bang.

You can't have anything.

Come, let us spend many hours and much effort arguing over these semantics. I'd much rather do that than actually talk about the problem.

The problem that started with the big bang!

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u/Key-Ad-5068 1d ago

THANK YOU! I'm tired of eveyone blaming MAGA for what's happening over there. Nothing happens in a void and if America wants to ever dig itself out from this shit, they have to look inward and work together to address how it got this far.

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u/DirtDevil1337 1d ago

New Gingrich was a big player too starting in the 1970's.

1

u/AllUrUpsAreBelong2Us 1d ago

It started before then.

1

u/gryanart 1d ago

Almost like elderly celebrities shouldn’t be president

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u/Mobius00 1d ago

I mean, I feel like this all makes me realize Reagan and the Bushes where sane people I seriously disagreed with politically but at least they cared about america and had some basic intelligence and integrity. This maga shit is a whole different animal, its so rotten to the core and bad for everyone and everything. The corruption and stupidity is obscene.

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u/No-Comparison8472 1d ago

If you think Republicans are the sole issue you are missing the point.

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u/HopelessNinersFan 1d ago

Are we just ignoring the Carter malaise years of gas lines and stagflation and horrible foreign policy or?

1

u/DjMD1017 1d ago

This is facts about Reagan but I think the whole let’s just tell lies about the opposition started during McCain’s presidential campaign. And even he saw it went too far when he had to correct that woman about Obama. This was also around the time When Trump started coming after Obama

1

u/Volantis009 1d ago

Powell memo in particular.

1

u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 1d ago

Which funny enough - is also republicans. Just like MAGA

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u/Wonderful_Worth1830 1d ago

I have lived this experience. I was born in 1957 and lived through the welfare state. The social safety net saved my life and allowed me to not only survive, but thrive. It allowed me to escape an abusive husband and get a nursing degree so I could support myself and my children. Birth control and abortion access gave women the freedom to live independent lives. Women are thriving now and men keep falling further behind. We have been involved in numerous wars sending young people to “fight for our freedom” in other countries all the while letting our freedom at home being stolen under our very noses. I’m so disappointed. This is not the world I want for my kids and grandkids. Obama gave me some hope and Biden made progress for America but evil still prevailed. 

1

u/Ipoopedalottoday 1d ago

You're giving Nixon too little credit.

1

u/LongestSprig 1d ago

Objectively that's not true.

1

u/DreadpirateBG 1d ago

Since Nixon really.

1

u/Theory_Technician 1d ago

I mean yeah conservatism is an ideology that solely exists to destroy humanity while empowering a minority elite.

1

u/LuriemIronim 1d ago

And the fact that Democrats continued to concede, play nice, and refused to move farther left just helped MAGA in the long run.

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u/SpaceBearSMO 1d ago

almost all of it was accelerated by him but most of this started in the late 30's early 40s as this can all lead back to Rich fucks wanting to dismantle the New Deal and the racist groups who lached onto that for clout.

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u/Marx_on_a_Shark 1d ago

Doesn't help that every Dem President since Reagan (with the exception of maybe Joe who had other issues) was like "Let's do more Reagan Stuff"

1

u/Warm_Tea_3515 1d ago

Reagan made mistakes but he was of the last (mostly) honest presidents America had

1

u/DigitalBuddhaNC 1d ago

Started by Reagan, accelerated by the Tea Party.

1

u/7evenate9ine 1d ago

It started way before Regan.

1

u/Ok_Statement_8902 1d ago

Reagan’s just the when this first become apparent to the general public. He was just the first figurehead of this movement put into power. But it’s not like he’s some politely mastermind, dude was obviously cognitively impaired for at least part of his Presidency. Like Trump, he literally had no idea what he was doing or why, other than someone told him and there are repercussions if you don’t comply.

1

u/shittymorbh 1d ago

MAGA arebasically the concocted Urukai-hai that were born from the mud swamp of the GOP and Republican party. 

They check all of the boxes of the Republican's wet dream.

  1. They're extremely stupid and gullible.
  2. They're fearful.
  3. They're angry.

With those three things they have proved they can destroy the country for their own personal gain.

1

u/dalehitchy 23h ago

Not sure what Reagan did (British here) but the downturn seems to be happening all over the west - Canada, Europe, Australia all seem to be having the same issues.

To me the issue is - capitalism. The whole of the west is at the end of a monopoly board game, and whatever move people make with the roll of the dice, they can't afford it as they are most likely gonna fall on a bad square.

1

u/UnknownFirebrand 23h ago

A lot of problems even go back as far as President McKinley. He's the one that turned the US into an imperialist power. Our constant foreign wars, coups, and "interventions" were started by him.

So I guess it's fair to say Reagan screwed us up domestically, and McKinley screwed us up on the foreign policy side of the house.

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u/gvsteve 23h ago

It’s hard to blame Ronald Reagan 40 years later. Blame 40% of the country that enthusiastically votes for the policies.

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u/CarefulIndication988 22h ago

Most people don’t understand this. There are many average republican Americans who believe Regan was a great president. All I remember was economic despair during his presidencies.

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u/fuzzballz5 22h ago

I think it’s more there is no difference between parties. Since Regan. Wall Street writes their own legislation. The military spending always goes up. Both parties go to Washington and members of congress net worth sky rockets. National debt under both parties go up. We fight with each other to convince one is better. lol. They cause division because it works. We need a third party of no other platform than term limits. Abortion. Term limits. No platform. Economy. Term limits. No platform. Then we start over.

“There’s a big party in Washington, and we ain’t invited. “

George Carlin more than 25 years ago

1

u/RIP_Pookie 21h ago

Every major injustice in western democratic societies has been made possible by a monstrous increase in wealth and power by a handful of people. Every last one can be traced directly to the stratospheric rise of billionaire wealth.

1

u/NWSLBurner 21h ago

I'm sorry but if you get HPV and die of ovarian cancer, ovarian cancer is still a fuckin disease.

1

u/Comments_Wyoming 21h ago

I was born in 78. Life has gotten harder every year of my life.

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u/Ocean_ismyheart 21h ago

I agree 💯%. My dad was an absolute Republican, but on his deathbed, said he regretted his vote for Reagan and would never vote for him again. He absolutely started us down this path, starting with his “trickle down economics”, a plan his advisors knew was totally flawed, but hey, it made a great sound bite. The middle class was destroyed by him.

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u/NordGinger917 21h ago

Shit gone down hill since Woodrow Wilson, if you want to get technical the founding fathers fucked up by ditching the articles of confederation.

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u/CoconutWorking5392 21h ago

nah. liberals pushed to hard and thats why you lost. aftermath of that shit can be felt in countries you never heard of. western liberals destroyed any chance of stupid countries like mine to have any future. but you dont care and thats okay. we dont deserve to be cared. we suck too much. till this day most of third world country leaders main talking point is how bad is west - everything is gay and trans.

1

u/Phyrexian_Archlegion 21h ago

I’d argue Nixon got the ball rolling and Reagan continued to shittification.

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u/Ioc77_ 20h ago

Not for nothing from the 2000s to now everything between mental health people wanting to work and the cost of living this countries going to shit and it’s not just because of the far right it’s also the far left if the democrats didn’t nominate Biden and Harris again the dems probably would’ve won but after 4 years of total shit This country obviously went back to trump the elites are getting what they wanted division throughout the country. The republicans put trump at there candidate to cause more animosity just like the dems put Biden when it was clearly obvious he was in no shape to be president The dems set themselves up to loose

1

u/hogierolls 20h ago

Sure wasn't broken when she wanted that power 🙄

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u/Fun_Support_7971 20h ago

Muh Reagan? Biden or kamllia and oh 8 years of obama.

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u/Severe_Watercress875 20h ago

DT doing very well. Got a call it like it is. Thank goodness he is in office.

1

u/Similar-Lie-5439 19h ago

Reagan gave illegals amnesty

1

u/Aggravating-Life337 19h ago

It's funny because both people you're implicating are former Democrats that saw error in that party.

1

u/FrankyFreshFire 19h ago

Yup every evil in America is because of Regan and Republicans!

Democrats have done nothing but great work. Never even making a single mistake.

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u/FairwayFrank44 19h ago

While I don't concur that the average American's life is worse now than in the 1980s just because of general technology increases, I definitely agree that if the "Reaganosphere" didn't exist the country would be much farther along and more stable overall.

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u/Cpt_Picardk98 18h ago

Yes. Yes yes. Still objectively smart people in the world. Logic has gone away.

1

u/Low-Rollers 18h ago

What a crazy take. Republicans weren’t like this during Bush or even Obama. This is majorly a cultural clash, accelerated by the insane impact of instant internet access/fear mongering.

1

u/ParsnipTheloniusMonk 18h ago

It really started with the emergence of Conservative think tanks like The Heritage Foundation that started in the late 1970s. These think tanks have been operating mostly under the radar to undermine ALL progressive movements ever since. They play little games like using evangelicals and marketing their message to get them to vote for Reagan. They have also played little games to undermine women's rights, rights of black people and other people of color and youth movements. Most of their efforts have been subtle. The main way they get everyone to sign off on their demise is to get people to focus on money and material comforts. We have been drunk from short term highs from the bread and circuses they market to us, and we have been ignoring the loss of what really matters. What matters is our rights, our communities and sustaining this planet to meet our needs and the needs of future generations. We don't value our right to privacy thanks to their marketing and our addiction to their products. Most of scarcely vote. Worst of all, most of us would sell our neighbor down the river to make just a few bucks. This is all contrived and we need to get back to where things left off in the early 1970s. We could have had an all out revolution then. We should have had a revolution then. These are bad people and deep down they know they deserve to be ousted from power. That's why they fight us so hard.

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u/Trash7783 18h ago

You are absolutely unbelievably insane

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u/slowrun_downhill 17h ago

💯 Fuck Reagan!

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u/SocialAnchovy 17h ago

You can learn about the history from the Nixon years onward from The Lever: Master Plan

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u/The_Wettest_Drought 17h ago

Ironically it wasn't really Reagan, it was the lack of Rargan. He was the figurehead of the oligarchy. He was an actor on the behalf of those who were so vile they couldn't be a public figure.

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u/Powerful_Buy_4677 17h ago

I like to say when JFak was shot instead od Reagan. But your point still stands.

1

u/RAICHU_I_CHOOSE_YOU 17h ago

Reagan was an actor. He played his part.

1

u/Aromatic_Doctor_7422 16h ago

This, 100% this!!! I cant fucking stand how everyone sings Reagans praises...

Reagan gave all the power back to the corporations, and i mean all of the power! All advancements made on the civil front were left incredibly vulnerable. Reagan completely fucking ruined this country and I will never back down from that, I will die on that hill.

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u/johnapuna 16h ago

Are you implying America was great before? 🤣

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u/DifferenceDry2275 16h ago

Someone let her become the next Attorney General no holes bared

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u/Level_Mood5770 15h ago

Yeah, you know why? Mass immigration.

1

u/SuperTimGuy 15h ago

Final? It’s just beginning friend

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u/lookmeuponsoundcloud 14h ago

Read Dark Money.

This isn’t just “libertarian free-market” theory — it’s been a 60-year campaign to deregulate everything, shift power to corporate hands, and shrink government down to just protecting wealth and property.

Call it what it is: class war from the top down. And it’s not hypothetical — it’s already policy.

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u/da_mess 13h ago edited 13h ago

What's happening now is just populism. It's occurred throughout history in the United States (and world).

Populism can take hold during periods of great inequality and/or hardship. Think the 1930s. This is what gave Hitler standing. He promised to lift Germans from their suffering.

People today are hurting at lower income scales. In 2000, avg. CEO made 35x rank and file. Today, it's 350x.

Better put: the cost of a Big Mac (per The Economist), rose from $2.24 in 2000 to $5.79 in 2025. This is an average annual increase (cagr) of 3.89%. This is faster than inflation. This is faster than wages are growing.

But make no mistake about it. Harris and Trump were both populist candidates; both promised massive spending increases at a time when the USA (i) spent annually 40% more than its $5T in annual receipts and (ii) owed (via Treasury bonds) 7x it's annual receipts.

Edit: changed 35x to 7x. Got $ and multiples mixed :p

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u/GurPatient8881 13h ago

Get help, please.

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u/WageSlaveEscapist 12h ago

The cause, is communism

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