• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It doesn’t make sense to start at Reagan.

    Reagan happened because conservatives realized people don’t like conservatives.

    So they invented Faux News (memo in Nixon’s presidential library) so that voters would never hold Republicans accountable again, and then started running charismatic figureheads to eventually take the fall years after leaving office.

    Blaming Reagan (who is undoubtedly a piece of shit) is letting the real problem off the hook.

    I don’t remember Reagan, but I remember GW, and it was the same thing. When we’re finally rid of trump, the next will be even worse, and still taking orders from the same conservative machine that was feeding Reagan his talking points.

    So hate Reagan all you want, but don’t forget to hate the other people who were actually the ones in control. Because that machine is still running, it’s the one behind project 2025, not trump’s dumbass.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Reagan is the one that started defining the government as evil. He said "The scariest words you can hear is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ " From then on anything the government did was bad and evil by definition. He’s very much the start of this major problem of “drown the government in the bathtub” people. He launched the whole wave of them. You can’t negotiate with people that think that kind of thing because to them it’s all bad and evil. We haven’t even touched on his Reaganomics. Nixon was corrupt but at least he thought government had a role (he even started the EPA).

      Yes we can blame Fox News too.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        John Birch society predates Regan by decades. Perhaps Regan mainstreamed it. But even that’s debatable.

          • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Considering it was mainstream and prescient enough for that lunatic Barry Goldwater and others to address it specifically. Many decades before Reagan was President. I think it’s very unlikely he did anything other than harness them. That particular Cult of stupidness had been cultivated for nearly half a century at that point.

        • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          That is… haunting. We should probably do something as civilians with collective action, but their propaganda has made that really hard.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Ignorance is bliss, but it doesn’t solve shit.

            Just mentioning that The Family isnt solely focused on republicans got me a down vote almost immediately.

            Before we can fix this, we have to get people to acknowledge the problem. Otherwise we never truly win, just lose less sometimes

            • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Its one of those obstacles that appears insurmountable. They have all the money, influence, and power that they could ever ask for. What are we to do?

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                For now everyone still gets one vote.

                It’s too late to get anything going for 2024, maybe even 2028.

                But at some point we really need someone outside the two parties while we still have one vote each. We can’t just keep blindly voting our “team” no matter what, especially when our “team” doesn’t represent us.

                It’s going to suck, and it’s going to be turbulent. But if we don’t do it, we’ll keep sliding right till there’s no more elections. I don’t think progressives are going to be able to take over the Dem party, I think there’s going to have to be an actual party split for a real solution.

                I just hope people start planning more than one election ahead before it’s too late.

                We’re fighting people that plan decades ahead. We’ll never win unless we do the same.

                • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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                  5 months ago

                  we really need someone outside the two parties

                  I love when it comes around to this part of the cycle, right after “one party is cruel and the other is stupid” and before “but if we split the vote we could lose our right to vote”.

    • sudo42@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      don’t forget to hate the other people who were actually the ones in control. Because that machine is still running, it’s the one behind project 2025, not trump’s dumbass.

      These words should be inscribed on a monument somewhere.