• flossdaily@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    1 year ago

    At least under Reagan, many of these policies had never been tested.

    Republicans of today are several orders of magnitude worse. We’ve now witnessed the damage of trickle-down economics, of vilifying “pinko commies”, of ignoring a global pandemic… And yet they do it anyway.

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      1 year ago

      It may be tempting to think that, but those policies all had precedent. Trickle-down just used to be called ‘Horse-and-sparrow’ economics. We had red scares before, and each of them were just as stupid, if not moreso (the one time we actually should have been wary, in the early-mid 40s, we were blithely complacent - go figure). And prior influenza epidemics and the spread of longer-term diseases had shown the danger of taking a lackadaisical approach to public health.

      Reagan wasn’t the birth of these policies - he was just the one most successful in lodging them long-term into the rotting craw of American politics.

      • DrPop@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Reagan figured out that if you tell people what they want to hear, you can get away with anything.

      • madcaesar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thank you for providing more historical context. It just shows how much worse it was / is.

        Fuck… Politics just sucks in the US