Yeah, there are no good Republicans. Reagan put the ball in motion by ripping away every chance at economic security for the past 40 years and the whole late-capitalism thing snowballed. It’s like Reagan was the friendly, smiling shopkeeper who was merely embezzling, then the mob came in for their taste, and finally Trump comes in at the end stage with a baseball bat to break the windows and loot whatever’s left in the store.
Also in the annals of No Good Republicans, I’ve become increasingly amazed at all the otherwise smart people on twitter who are SHOCKED that Trump’s lawyers and GOP Senators have the nerve to tell obvious lies in front of Chief Justice Roberts. Has it not sunk in yet that SCOTUS is partisan and Roberts is a Republican? That the only time he sides with the liberals is when he’s worried the Court’s decision is so egregiously bad it will be reviled within 10-20 years and hurt his legacy?
I mean, this is the guy who was pissed off about the North Carolina gerrymandering case not because of the gerrymandering, but because the GOP’s violation of the Stringer Bell Rule was so blatant it forced him to vote with the liberals for the sake of appearances.
I'm delighted to learn that you think Reagan was a prick. I always thought he was one. It completely mystified me how people could find an avuncular figure in someone who was obviously so self-certain and so malicious toward anyone who dared to disagree with him. He was just a lot smoother than Trump. Than again, so is a skunk or a three-toed sloth.
The similarities between Trump and Reagan also include fabricating self-aggrandizing stories out of whole cloth. Reagan famously claimed to have been part of a group that liberated a concentration camp during WWII, even though he never left the States and did nothing but make shitty propaganda and training films.
Reagan pioneered the "many people say" bit, and Trump has raised it to an art form.
And, of course, Reagan subverted the Constitution by selling arms to Iran to fund an illegal war in Central America, while Trump and the GOP have just decided that the Constitution is a meaningless impediment to full-on authoritarianism.
"In any event, as Trump has said, in one of those breathtaking bits of total nihilism he sometimes can’t help but expose, “I won’t be here” when it happens."
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." —President George W. Bush, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008[19][20] ~ ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism
Crimbeciles have to rub their victims nose in their shit. It's no fun otherwise.
Bravo, hear, hear, truly astute. Growing up during the 60s and 70s, I was already well on my way to political cynicism especially with regard to Republicans. My eyes were further opened by the writings of folks like Walter Karp to the depredations of politiclal elites generally. But the one thing I was still naive about was the role of what was then called "the press". You'd think Vietnam would have taught me a valuable lesson but I still had Frank Capra notions about how honest journalism could enlighten the public.
The complicity of the media in the catastrophe that was Reagan disabused me of that. I marvel at how Reagan passed what I think is still the largest tax increase in history in 1982 and yet was then and since lauded as the tax-cutting hero of the Republican Party. Now Trump, whose tariffs amount to one of the largest tax increases in recent times, and whose tax bill will cost middle and working class people a bundle, gets similar treatment when it comes to the actual destruction wrought by the morons "policies".
This is a great essay. So how come we're not reading it in the Times?
At the beginning of the revolution the vanguard knows ideology is mostly propaganda and the real important part is power. At the end of the revolution the only ones left are the true believers and the moral morons.
Reagan was the worst president until Bush Jr, who was the worst until Trump. Nixon totally sucked, too. Funny not funny how every Republican president since Eisenhower was more and more disastrous.
I like your old Hollywood v. wrestling metaphor. I've been describing it as Gilligan's Island v. Survivor. Of course, we knew Gilligan's was a fiction, but it took the writers' strike to reveal how fictional modern "reality" TV is. Trump voters didn't get the word, apparently, and thought that was a real board room with a real CEO, not a cheap set with a bankrupt grifter.
There is an Iran ex-hostage in my town. He refuses to accept that Reagan, Rockefeller and Kissinger prolonged his suffering for their benefit. He blames Carter. Also, the mess in Iraq is Obama's fault. Jeez, these people!
You really have to go back to the 1960s to find more than one or two isolated examples of responsible civic-minded Republicans. Due to more than 50 years of repeated hammering and gouging of the American economy, infrastructure and social systems by the GOP, the country is really tottering. This is why the 2020 General Election represents the last hope for saving what remains of the country. I'm hoping that there really is enough voters who realize that GOP's policies are only working for the wealthy and habitual grifters. I'm not sure there are enough, in fact, but I'm just barely hopeful.
The revelation that the release of the hostages was delayed to influence the election (which, really, is not exactly a shocking revelation at all) and the general positive response to it from the wingnuts has made me realize that it's possible to retroactively own the libs.
Good ol' Ronnie brought his CAMP wars to those of us growing some illegal herbs out here on the west coast. Fun stuff - the federal government was making war on us. I got it up close and personal once when I was sitting in a draw up in the coast range not far from my garden when a column of heavily armed soldiers and police came down from the ridge above. 20+ dudes with m-16's, shotguns and other bad looking stuff that is clearly intended to kill people. Fortunately, like all heavily armed Americans you could hear them from a fucking mile away. No wonder we got ambushed so often in Vietnam...
Anyway, I found a good hiding spot in some heavy brush and watched them go by - I left the area and never went back. Considered that lost garden just the Cost of Doing Business. That's why I'd always do three or four patches.
That's when I figured out that Republicans are fascists with a nice sounding name. Glad everyone else is finally catching up to that conclusion. Fuck every Republican, including the old grandmas and grandpas that keep voting fascist. I might not like the democrats sometimes (ok, a lot of the time), they're corporate toadies much of the time, but at least they're not murderous fascist pigs.
No, I think Reagan still has a halo in a lot of quarters.
I think the oil shocks and the rest of the world having rebuilt had most to do with an end to it being easier not to worry all the time, but also
0.) true fear of the Bolsheviki got a lot of the rich to at least pretend enough sympathy and solidarity with the rest of us to cut us a better deal, and
1.) I recall seeing that there was a Rand[?] report trying to answer 'Why did "the 'Sixties" happen?' and the answer was 'prosperity well-distributed enough that white people, at least, weren't afraid all the time'; my paranoid side _insists_ that the Secret Chiefs saw that and said 'Thought so! Well, we won't be having any of _that_ again, then.'.
One good thing about the "I won't be here" quote: it means that at least Trump has considered the possibility of leaving office.
Yeah, there are no good Republicans. Reagan put the ball in motion by ripping away every chance at economic security for the past 40 years and the whole late-capitalism thing snowballed. It’s like Reagan was the friendly, smiling shopkeeper who was merely embezzling, then the mob came in for their taste, and finally Trump comes in at the end stage with a baseball bat to break the windows and loot whatever’s left in the store.
Also in the annals of No Good Republicans, I’ve become increasingly amazed at all the otherwise smart people on twitter who are SHOCKED that Trump’s lawyers and GOP Senators have the nerve to tell obvious lies in front of Chief Justice Roberts. Has it not sunk in yet that SCOTUS is partisan and Roberts is a Republican? That the only time he sides with the liberals is when he’s worried the Court’s decision is so egregiously bad it will be reviled within 10-20 years and hurt his legacy?
I mean, this is the guy who was pissed off about the North Carolina gerrymandering case not because of the gerrymandering, but because the GOP’s violation of the Stringer Bell Rule was so blatant it forced him to vote with the liberals for the sake of appearances.
Morning In Make America Great Again (MIMAGA)
I'm delighted to learn that you think Reagan was a prick. I always thought he was one. It completely mystified me how people could find an avuncular figure in someone who was obviously so self-certain and so malicious toward anyone who dared to disagree with him. He was just a lot smoother than Trump. Than again, so is a skunk or a three-toed sloth.
The similarities between Trump and Reagan also include fabricating self-aggrandizing stories out of whole cloth. Reagan famously claimed to have been part of a group that liberated a concentration camp during WWII, even though he never left the States and did nothing but make shitty propaganda and training films.
Reagan pioneered the "many people say" bit, and Trump has raised it to an art form.
And, of course, Reagan subverted the Constitution by selling arms to Iran to fund an illegal war in Central America, while Trump and the GOP have just decided that the Constitution is a meaningless impediment to full-on authoritarianism.
"In any event, as Trump has said, in one of those breathtaking bits of total nihilism he sometimes can’t help but expose, “I won’t be here” when it happens."
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." —President George W. Bush, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008[19][20] ~ ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism
Crimbeciles have to rub their victims nose in their shit. It's no fun otherwise.
Too many people who watch TV don't think very much, but they do vote.
Bravo, hear, hear, truly astute. Growing up during the 60s and 70s, I was already well on my way to political cynicism especially with regard to Republicans. My eyes were further opened by the writings of folks like Walter Karp to the depredations of politiclal elites generally. But the one thing I was still naive about was the role of what was then called "the press". You'd think Vietnam would have taught me a valuable lesson but I still had Frank Capra notions about how honest journalism could enlighten the public.
The complicity of the media in the catastrophe that was Reagan disabused me of that. I marvel at how Reagan passed what I think is still the largest tax increase in history in 1982 and yet was then and since lauded as the tax-cutting hero of the Republican Party. Now Trump, whose tariffs amount to one of the largest tax increases in recent times, and whose tax bill will cost middle and working class people a bundle, gets similar treatment when it comes to the actual destruction wrought by the morons "policies".
This is a great essay. So how come we're not reading it in the Times?
At the beginning of the revolution the vanguard knows ideology is mostly propaganda and the real important part is power. At the end of the revolution the only ones left are the true believers and the moral morons.
The last good Republicans were Lincoln and Seward. It’s all been downhill since.
Reagan was the worst president until Bush Jr, who was the worst until Trump. Nixon totally sucked, too. Funny not funny how every Republican president since Eisenhower was more and more disastrous.
I like your old Hollywood v. wrestling metaphor. I've been describing it as Gilligan's Island v. Survivor. Of course, we knew Gilligan's was a fiction, but it took the writers' strike to reveal how fictional modern "reality" TV is. Trump voters didn't get the word, apparently, and thought that was a real board room with a real CEO, not a cheap set with a bankrupt grifter.
There is an Iran ex-hostage in my town. He refuses to accept that Reagan, Rockefeller and Kissinger prolonged his suffering for their benefit. He blames Carter. Also, the mess in Iraq is Obama's fault. Jeez, these people!
Preach it brother.
You really have to go back to the 1960s to find more than one or two isolated examples of responsible civic-minded Republicans. Due to more than 50 years of repeated hammering and gouging of the American economy, infrastructure and social systems by the GOP, the country is really tottering. This is why the 2020 General Election represents the last hope for saving what remains of the country. I'm hoping that there really is enough voters who realize that GOP's policies are only working for the wealthy and habitual grifters. I'm not sure there are enough, in fact, but I'm just barely hopeful.
The revelation that the release of the hostages was delayed to influence the election (which, really, is not exactly a shocking revelation at all) and the general positive response to it from the wingnuts has made me realize that it's possible to retroactively own the libs.
Good ol' Ronnie brought his CAMP wars to those of us growing some illegal herbs out here on the west coast. Fun stuff - the federal government was making war on us. I got it up close and personal once when I was sitting in a draw up in the coast range not far from my garden when a column of heavily armed soldiers and police came down from the ridge above. 20+ dudes with m-16's, shotguns and other bad looking stuff that is clearly intended to kill people. Fortunately, like all heavily armed Americans you could hear them from a fucking mile away. No wonder we got ambushed so often in Vietnam...
Anyway, I found a good hiding spot in some heavy brush and watched them go by - I left the area and never went back. Considered that lost garden just the Cost of Doing Business. That's why I'd always do three or four patches.
That's when I figured out that Republicans are fascists with a nice sounding name. Glad everyone else is finally catching up to that conclusion. Fuck every Republican, including the old grandmas and grandpas that keep voting fascist. I might not like the democrats sometimes (ok, a lot of the time), they're corporate toadies much of the time, but at least they're not murderous fascist pigs.
No, I think Reagan still has a halo in a lot of quarters.
I think the oil shocks and the rest of the world having rebuilt had most to do with an end to it being easier not to worry all the time, but also
0.) true fear of the Bolsheviki got a lot of the rich to at least pretend enough sympathy and solidarity with the rest of us to cut us a better deal, and
1.) I recall seeing that there was a Rand[?] report trying to answer 'Why did "the 'Sixties" happen?' and the answer was 'prosperity well-distributed enough that white people, at least, weren't afraid all the time'; my paranoid side _insists_ that the Secret Chiefs saw that and said 'Thought so! Well, we won't be having any of _that_ again, then.'.