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Don't forget the war on drugs
The deinstitutionalization and movement to prison was something that began long before Reagan. Really goes back to the end of ww2 and Kennedy. though reagan definitely accelerated it by a great deal by decreasing budgets substantially and increasing incarceration rates significantly
Reagan was a monster though. What a great day it was when he died
For more information, lookup the impact of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on mental health services in the United States.
Thanks for that info
TBH, some of that deinstitutionalization could be written off to being gay no longer being a mental health issue, etc.
That’s actually inverse to this. Homosexuality formally entered the dsm in 1952 which made institutionalization for it more common, not less, although institutionalization certainly existed beforehand (eg ww2 draft would decline for homosexuality and basically refer to conversion therapy)
This is the “lavender scare”. Much of the anti lgbt rhetoric today roots back to this era - that homosexuality is something to be pathologized, it can be cured, it is deviancy, a threat to national safety (lavender scare and red scare being analogous, thought process being all the men turning queer would make us a nation of sissies ripe for being taken over by the commies, basically. Lesbian erasure from this narrative was totally a thing (although they still got the abusive treatment)
As a result they got shock treatment, aversion therapy, and even lobotomies. This was through the early 60s and it wasn’t until 1973 that the diagnosis was formally removed. Obviously conversion therapy still happens today but the state sanctioned institutionalization form was mostly over by the mid to late 60s, though it took some time to die out in certain regions
A blight on our country and on the history of our mental health system. Disgusting
A lot of younger people simply don't know that the age we all consider the golden age of middle class America (40s-70s) was so because we TAXED THE FUCK OUT OF THE WEALTHY. As we should.
If we do not return to doing so, our quality of life is going to continue to decline indefinitely.
TAX. THE. FUCKING. RICH.
DON'T VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT DOESN'T RUN ON TAXING THE RICH.
Conversely, I think most of the county would rabidly support anyone who ran on that platform... Even most Trump voters
He was terrible, and perhaps worse: he was so popular. He got two terms, then his vice president got a term. So popular it seemed to be (to me) that he was the reason we ultimately got stuck with the "Third Way" democrats, which is when the working class was finally completely abandoned.
He really screwed us all
His administration was when the republicans really started running with the idea of fucking with people's minds. "Morning in America" turned a shitload of former Democrats into republican voters who voted themselves and their children into a shithole they'd never get out of.
See also; "The Southern Strategy"
And he sold those missiles because Congress had made it illegal to fund rape/murder squads in Nicaragua.
The money was off the books and then sent to the death squads killing innocent farmers.
Unlike Nixon, Congress was not willing to impeach, so Regan denied everything and only a few staffers were prosecuted.
Bush Sr pardoned them.
Republicans: not even once.
They also were smuggling Crack into the states to fund the contras (who are terrorists)
Almost every problem america has to date, you could blame on Reagan.
And you would be right far, far, faaaar more often than you'd be wrong.
“National debt” obscures the practical consequence. National debt is just money that has been added into the economy but not taxed back out.
It’s not necessarily bad to ramp up spending, if that new money has somewhere healthy to go. (Mega projects like Medicare For All or the Green New Deal would be prime candidates.)
So where did it go?
Well, take a look at Reagan’s reign from 81-89…
There’s the problem.
...and this chart stops at 2012
precisely. the distribution of wealth is a more important indicator of economic health than simply looking at the national debt or total tax revenues. imo we need to increase taxes on the ultra rich, not because we need to reduce the deficit but because taxes prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth (and the resulting regulatory capture epitomized by modern American oligarchy).
Did anyone else know that they recently made a film about this fucking filth?
They were obviously trying way too hard to control the narrative of this fucking piece of shit, but to also spark some kind of patriotism in all those old fucks who fell for reagan's bullshit lies, and now trump's bullshit lies.
I almost wanted to go and rip their little signs they had for this movie straight out of the ground. Ugh. Disgusting.
Don't forget his campaign for governor led to the massive student loan issues we have today. College was just starting to be accessible to everyone that wasn't a white man, and they just couldn't have that!
The 13th amendment created the legal groundwork for transforming a free people into a nation of de facto chattel slaves. Reagan accelerated this process massively.
Mental patients 🖐️ (눈‸눈)
"Prisoners with jobs" 👈 (♡ω♡ )
Trump is just the Result of Reagan's transformation of American politics and culture to greed first and only.
Trump is a vulture picking this nation's corpse clean. Ronald Reagan and Jack Welch killed us half a century ago.
In (very) broad strokes, the US basic current modern collapse timeline is like: Nixon --> Regan --> Fairness Doctrine --> Glass-Steagall --> Patriot Act --> bank bailout --> tea party to maga --> current fubar lyfe
goddamn fucking reagan
Need to squeeze Citizens United in there
I was going to post something similar but yeah. Almost every Behind the Bastards episode that touches these topics, there is a straight line from Nixon to Trump.
The TL;DR: Republicans hated how people generally agreed with the facts surrounding Nixon and decided to do something about it. Instead of reporting conservative-slanted opinions, they instead wanted to get rid of facts all together.
You don't have citizens united in there, which I would argue is one of the largest modern causes of our current situation. Had citizens united not been vomited into the world, we might have been in a slightly better place without a decade and a half of practically unrestricted corporate propaganda shoved down our throats. I'd bet that trump wouldn't have won in 2016 if it wasn't for the unlimited funding he got (along with billions in free advertising from the "news" media).
On one hand, it does make sense to lower taxes if taxes are notably harming the economy or harming economic recovery, and under Reagan we DID have a long economic boom. Dropping taxes on the rich by 40% was likely unnecessary, as even ~20% would have been enough for a stable recovery.
The flip side to that is that it installed in Republicans the idea that taxes go down == economy go up, which is nowhere near the truth (as shown by the Kansas Experiment ) and is one of (IMO) the three major shifts in the GOP that has turned them into the absolute shitters they are today. The others FWIW are Gingrich's Contract with America, or more particularly the idea he presented to the GOP that they can never let the DNC have a win even if it would benefit the GOP, and the Southern Strategy.
Trickle down economics, contract with America, and the southern strategy. The new unholy trinity.
I was here but barely too young to vote at the time (not that it mattered since he had so many people enthralled like trump has done). No, I will never forget how he (along with some others like Newt Gingrich) ruined everything, so just as I was getting started in adult life, things were already starting to go to hell and it hasn't stopped since.
Reagan really was the beginning of the end for this country, and though a couple times it looked like we might, we were never able to turn things around. And now here we are, experiencing the culmination of his work of turning America into a kleptocratic oligarchy.
The homelessness crisis is not about mental health, it is about housing affordability. This also plays into societal biases against the mentally ill.
Yes, however there are many people who are homeless because they are unable to "properly" function in society due to untreated mental illnesses, part of Reagan's budget cuts reduced public health funding, shuttering public mental health facilities. Granted, some had horrendous conditions which has a lasting reputation for "Insane asylums".
Reganomics. Trickle down economics. Only thing that trickles is piss and shit.
formerly known as the horse-and-sparrow theory: the idea that feeding a horse a huge amount of oats results in some of the feed passing through for lucky sparrows to eat.
I will never know what it is like to be in pre-Reagan America and for that alone that man should burn in hell waiting for heaven to trickle down.
And don't forget ending the fairness doctrine, one of the contributions to the polarization of US politics.
Let's not forget the treason of letting Oliver North! Besides everything else, North's Contras were drug smugglers who brought in so much cocaine that coke went from being a luxury to a street drug in just a few months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_States
Youtube video https://youtu.be/Mb1GfP5Rwys
Not to glorify mental institutions, which are often vehicles of state oppression and state violence.
Having both been homeless and in a psych ward, I preferred being homeless (granted I could sleep in public transit).
To quote the poet Killer Mike: " I'm glad Reagans dead"
and we love (/s) what he did to sunny CA slashing property taxes by slashing the public education budget helping lead to a continuing decline in our education system.
TBH, the mental hospitals were a mess and rife with abuse.
But rather that invest money into improving them, he got rid of them by branding it “de-institutionalization”. Made it sound like he was freeing people.
I'm willing to bet that trump beats those numbers
Republican ~~presidents~~ politicians are a pox on this country.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - CIA Director William J. Casey to President Ronald Reagan, in 1981
Leeja Miller on Youtube has a great video about how shitty Reagan was. She also has REAGAN RUINED EVERYTHING t-shirts! https://youtu.be/l7dHvqA-WB4
"Ronnie Raygun
Perhaps the most charismatic leader of recent times, Ronnie is completely out of touch with reality. He started his career as an organ grinder. Ronnie's partner was a super-intelligent chimpanzee, named Nancy, that he rescued from a genetic research lab. The chimp ran every aspect of Ronnie's life, the superior intellect clearly asserting itself. Nancy wanted revenge against genetic researchers and forced Ronnie to run for national office. Soon after Ronnie assumed power, Nancy died, leaving Ronnie without guidance. Under Ronnie's tenuous grasp, his country no longer heads anywhere."
"Warmonger
This is a straight-forward personality. Warmongers will be your friends so long as you help them nuke their enemies. Use wimpy propaganda or attack them or one of their friends, and they will happily nuke you until only swirling, radioactive dust clouds inhabit your cities.
The two Warmongers are Ronnie Raygun and Prime Minister Satcher, and they are both relatively easy to control."