Just thinking back about the last half century

[1-Old-Man]

I'm old, it shows.

No matter which segment of our society I look at there seem to be deep rooted problems and when I look at them with an eye to when they began invariably it takes me back to 1980. That had to be the darkest year in our history. Franklin D. Roosevelt said that December 7, 1941 was the day that would live in infamy, but to my mind the most infamous day in our nation's history was November 4, 1980. That is the day that, to paraphrase Lincoln, most of the people were fooled some of the time. Ronald Reagan was elected President. As I said, nearly all of our structural problems, the systemic rot that infects the country, it all began that day.

Rotten as Reagan was he did not poison a clean well. The Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower railed about was deeply entrenched in Government by the time the host of Death Valley Days arrived in Washington via an arms sales to Iran arrangement.

I began this intending to try to make a link between the vets who came home from the second world war to their grandchildren, today's 'captain's of industry'. I gave it some thought and decided I will have to gather my thoughts (and some facts too) before I approach that argument but the lead in to it will be the same as the first paragraph above. The worst of all we see began with Reagan. For now though let me ask a more chilling question.

If Ronald Reagan would have had the tools available to him that are currently in the hands of the Homeland Security and Intelligence apparatus what would our nation look like today? I suggest it would look like Russia under Stalin.

Edited for typos

[BumRushDaShow]

1. K&R

Although the history of this country has had cycles (and we're in one), this iteration is a bit more insidious given the proliferation of the types and intensity of the media to enhance egregiousness of the propaganda machine.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Reagan made it cool to be a selfish, uncaring, ignorant ass

Until then, folks had to wear a mask.

He really legitimized a lot of the poison that flows through people. Freedom, ya know.

[1-Old-Man]

3. That is where I was originally heading

The other argument I plan to make is that the audience Reagan was playing to, the national ethos if you will, had changed, or was in the process of changing, and if you follow it out it sort of explains the greed and willingness to overlook greed we have today. I guess a lot of it has to do with our short memories as anything or maybe the fairy tales that are fed to us under the guise of being history.

[Magoo48]

15. Thanks for your thoughtful post....

Not intending to simplify too much: I feel like the election of 1980 was a fearful response by the then PTB to a number of popular social and political ideas rooted in the late 60s and early seventies. These trends, though difficult for me to articulate, scared the shit out of big business, big religion and politics as usual. Their response was Raygun.

[Blecht]

8. Nicely stated

This really captures the phenomenon in a few words. I think I'll be borrowing it -- with attribution, of course -- "I read it on the Internet."

[BeyondGeography]

9. With pleasure

[lunatica]

4. I remember his Inaugural Speech and how sick it made me feel

I had hoped that the years of Carter's being forced to deal with the Hostage problem and the worsening plight of the Vietnam Vets would have forced this country to see itself in a more mature way. In essence to grow up and take responsibility for our chosen role in the world. We were about to do it too, having to take a really hard look at ourselves and understand that we, as a country were failing ourselves and the world by insisting on being a military superpower instead of true leaders in a world of equals.

The total sugar coated, flag wrapped, jingoism on display on Reagan's Inauguration day with the camera cuts to the Iran Hostages being returned was sickening. Propaganda was on full frontal display that day. Even Bush 'landing' on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln with his sock heavy flight suit wasn't as bad. But it was in the same vein. Anything to whip up uber-patriotism into a dizzy froth was the goal. It worked too.

So we didn't grow up. The general maturation mentality of Americans is still that of an angry 13 year old pubescent teen still playing with war toys. If anything we seem to have regressed.

You're right. I agree with you. And I feared it would happen then and it did.

[DURHAM D]

5. I agree.

It was a major shift as middle and working class voters for the first time bought into the notion that their enemy was the poor and disenfranchised. People started looking below their class instead of up. It continues.



Reagan was nothing more than a Boraxo spokesmodel.

[oldhippydude]

16. i too remember that day..

when i knew we had lost the war however was sometime later.. when i heard Madonna sing Material Girl I knew we had lost a generation..

[annabanana]

6. "If Reagan had the tools"

I honestly don't know. During his first term, I think he pretty much deferred to his corporate buddies. They would have done the same then as they are doing now.

The difference might have come during the second, when his Alzheimer's disease started kicking in. Rumsfeld and Cheney would have had free reign ...


yes, chilling

edited to add: Welcome to DU

[rhett o rick]

7. Well written, however I dont believe it is the "tools" we need to worry about.

Tools like the Patriot Act can be obtained quickly. In fact Bush II arrested and detained American citizens without due process, detained them indefinitely and tortured them (in my opinion), all without any "tools".

What is most important IMHO is the acceptance by the American public of the intrusions on our rights.

This link is a must read: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

This is what is happening. Bless OWS for starting to push back.

[Blecht]

10. It was the first election I voted in

At at our election night party, which had the atmosphere of a funeral, we all knew that it was the beginning of the end for our country.

I really wish we had been wrong.

Edit: Fingers not doing what the brain is telling them to do.

[H2O Man]

11. Very interesting.

I think that it can be taken back a decade, to the Nixon administration. Too often overlooked or forgotten was the Huston Plan, which was the original "Patriot Act." It created the multi-layered domestic spying program, which violated fundamental Constitutional protections.

A number of Watergate witnesses suggested that Nixon stopped the Huston Plan, due to the objections of FBI Director Hoover. But John Dean correctly testified that it didn't end .... Hoover's only objection was his agency being tasked with all the "black bag" jobs. The infamous Plumbers provided evidence, once caught, of how Nixon got around that single FBI objection.

The Huston Plan created the local -to- state -to- federal spying and disruption of "enemies" that the Patriot Act continues. The technology has changed, as you noted, to allow far greater (and faster) communications between the layers.

[coalition_unwilling]

22. Interesting side note: Karl Rove was investigated by the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office

for dirty tricks he may have committed as one of Donald Segretti's "dirty tricksters." The investigation into Rove died still-born on the vine with Nixon's resignation.

Senator Sam Ervin said the Huston plan revealed a 'Gestapo mentality.' Ervin therefore loses because he triggered Godwin's Law

[pscot]

25. We were already deep in the swamp

when St.Ronnie was annointed. I remember watching in utter dismay on Cspan as the Congress voted to give him a license to kill in Nicaragua. I think that was when I understood that we were totally screwn. And the pary was just beginning to warm up.

[RKP5637]

12. Well said!!! The US remains a bunch of immature squabbling children considering

itself a world leader because of weapons to blow everything off the face of the earth ... And creating tools to place everyone under totalitarian authoritarian rule and surveillance. ... not much of a leader, just an oppressor and bully ... thanks to Reagan.

Yes, Reagan took the evil side of the MIC, greed and selfishness and raised it to a level of acceptance and then glorified it ... and the MSM is highly complicit in ensuring the US populace remains ignorant. And corporations run the gov. for their personal profit, and the hell with the citizens.

I shutter to think what the next 50 years will bring.

[Faygo Kid]

13. Many dark days. 1963,1968, and 2000 come to mind.

JFK killed. RFK killed, and Nixon elected. Then Bush selected over Gore, perhaps the last time we could have at least slowed what is happening now.

Fox News and their allies, along with the wealth of the Kochs et al, are pushing us toward a totalitarian state in which a few oligarchs control the rest of us. If (when?) they destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, their victory will be complete.

[RKP5637]

14. And sooo many Americans remain clueless. Voting in those that

have absolutely no interest in the majority of Americans.

[Egalitarian Thug]

17. America came out of WWII a much different nation than the one that entered

that terrible time. A small minority, hardly any of whom participated in that struggle, got filthy rich or richer and rekindled the flame of Empire. The majority were exhausted and thankful for surviving this horror and wanted nothing more to do with war, and from this sprang the counter-culture. Another minority diametrically opposed to the Empire builder whose strength came not from the power of wealth, but from the power of 'No'.

This scared the crap out of the war profiteers and it was during this time that plans were made. As the saying goes, follow the money. Who revived Nixon's career? Who bankrolled Reagan's political career? Who profited from Vietnam? Etc., etc.

Reagan was the beginning of the implementation of those plans. Nov 4th 1980 was indeed a dark day, but without the years of laying the groundwork, little that he did would have been possible. We all know that Nixon went to China, but we rarely note who went with him or why. Look into it.

[bvar22]

18. DURec.

I am old enough to remember.
There is a BIG difference between now, and the 60s and 70s.
There were exciting Democratic Party achievements back then:
The Civil Rights Act, Medicare, The extension of FDRs New Deal with LBJs Great Society.
We were moving the ball in the right direction,
and there was HOPE and Excitement for the future.
It was FUN and Fulfilling to BE a "DEMOCRAT".

Now, not so much.
We are steadily backsliding.
Even with Democratic electoral victories, Democratic Administrations, and Majorities in Congress,
we are slipping steadily to the Right.

...and the OLD Democratic Party that FOUGHT for the Working Class Values of the New Deal & The Great Society, Civil Rights & Protections, and Organized LABOR that made our Party GREAT,
and built the biggest, wealthiest, and most upwardly mobile Working Class the World has seen?
Pfffft!
Ancient History.



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
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[PlanetBev]

19. My sentiments, exactly

I cried for a week after Reagan was elected. I instinctively knew where we were headed. It was a trajectory, a velocity, and like an arrow flying, you knew it couldn't be stopped. It would destroy anything in it's path.

I turned 30 that same month, then on December 8th, John Lennon was murdered. By the end of that year, I felt a lot older.

[coalition_unwilling]

20. Emphatic K&R. I trace the beginning of the end to Reagan's strike-breaking of PATCO and

the passivity with which the move was greeted by American organized labor.

Our commander in chief had become a 'union buster' and no one, aside from a few crazy kooks like me, said or did anything about it! Absolutely incredible.

[tabasco]

21. This is a country of zombies

lapping up propaganda and voting how the 1%ers tell them to vote.

The Reagan hero worship is a victory of propaganda over truth.

[Gregorian]

23. Can we go back?

This is the question I often ask, and continually seek to answer.

It pains me. I yearn for what was. And yet I am living with what is. If it can be called living. I have a wonderful life, but I'm removed from the disgusting mess. That's my personal situation. I look with amazement at the people all eating up the messages they're fed. Meanwhile the planet is melting. And it's as if there never was a yesterday. I combine economic, political, and environmental into one subject. They cannot be separated.

This happened a long time ago. I have bought enough farms and ranches to have met people who had stories to tell. Just one of them stuck with me. Farmers were conned into (partly due to financial troubles) using commercial fertilizers. And the rest is corporate history. I hate to keep harping on population, but I think it's safe to say that when we reached a certain level, small business changed into corporate business. And politics followed. And then the environmental problems. It may seem like I'm diverting from the topic at hand, but this is how we directed this society to where it is today. Big companies servicing big populations. Reagan was just the hood emblem that went on to the completed product. Now we're driving it down the road to destruction. I don't think there is any easy or comfortable turning back. I sure would like to be wrong.

edit- I want to add that I agree with what has been said above regarding how we were going in the right direction in poliitics at some points before Reagan. We can do that. But what I'm describing is a contextual problem. Within that context we can make life better for the poor, old, sick. But until we take the pressure off, and start returning to a world that lives within the planet's natural equilibrium, we're going to be at the mercy of the powerful more than we would otherwise.

Another edit- If i had to sum up the situation that has aided and even caused the situation we're in today it would be "petroleum".

[randome]

24. I remember an episode or two of Get Smart.

When they ridiculed the possibility of an actor becoming President -a clear reference to then-governor Reagan and his aspirations for higher office.

The groundwork was being laid back then. His 'ascendency' to the Presidency did not happen overnight. Society was changing in the late 60s to make 1980 possible.

[boomerbust]

26. 1930's Germany is more apt

Today they smell blood and full blown fascism is the goal.