New Reagan documentary unveils ugly reality

[misanthrope]

I can't wait to see this, but most of us who weren't blind knew it anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/nov/12/the-reagans-showtime-docuseries

[Sherman A1]

1. Thanks for posting

I will check it out.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

I'll watch. I can re-live it from a safe distance. Still, the anger lingers.

[mountain grammy]

37. Agree

[Solly Mack]

44. I can already see myself feeling fresh anger as I watch.

But then I don't ever want to forget what he did.

[mountain grammy]

47. As long as it's the whole ugly truth

I'll watch.. Glad to read RR Jr. is part of it. That alone will be interesting. The 80's, some of the best and worst parts of my life.

[Solly Mack]

54. I agree. Needs to be the all of it.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

3. Reagan eventually begat Trump

[Caliman73]

28. If we want to go biblical with the begats...

Eisenhower (good man individually but...foreign policy was piss poor) begat Nixon and Goldwater, Nixon begat Reagan, Reagan begat G W Bush, Bush begat, Palin, Palin begat Trump.

Nixon and Reagan BOTH committed treasonous acts to win their elections. Bush and Cheney, committed war crimes. Palin was just a descent into right wing populism and personality politics. Trump is just the culmination of stupid.

The scary part is that out there, there is a person with Nixon's political savvy, Reagan's faux folksy demeanor, and Trump's complete lack of morality, and that person is biding their time to step up and do some real damage.

We got Trump because LBJ did not want to "tear the country apart" by exposing Nixon's treachery in Vietnam. Because Bill Barr convinced GHW Bush to "close the loop" on Reagan's treachery with Iran-Contra, and Bill Clinton did not want to revisit that era. Because the Democrats did not investigate Bush and Cheney for war crimes because we needed to "move forward".

If we do not hold Trump to account, as well as other Republicans, for what they did from 2015, and continue to do to this very minute, then we are providing clear path for that person I described above, to make their way into politics and run on "Biden's failure to fix everything Trump broke" While that is a completely bullshit narrative, you better believe that is what Republicans are going to run on in 2024. They broke the shit out of the country, and will campaign on the Democrats, not having done enough to fix the problems they created. The media, loving the narrative of "conflict on both sides" will gladly ask the questions about why Biden and Harris, and Pelosi, have not done enough to make changes as we crawl out of the incredible hole dug for us in the last 4 years and with McConnell's very likely obstruction (obviously if Republicans keep the Senate, but also if he is minority leader).

[tblue37]

40. Obama also was blamed for not *immediately* fixing all the damage done by Bush 43.

[Caliman73]

42. Oh that has been a strategy for a long time.

President Obama even called it out regularly on the campaign trail with his analogy of "Republicans driving the bus (economy) off the road getting is stuck in a ditch. Then, after the Democrats spend time digging it out and putting it back on the road, they're (Republicans) demanding the keys again.

The thing is that Republicans think that they are entitled to rule (not govern, rule). They truly believe that they have a mandate from god to be in charge. This is what enables them to lie, cheat, and try to steal elections, because they are fulfilling some kind of mandated from on high, destiny.

Without really addressing the toxic legacy of right wing media, we are going to be stuck in this loop for a long time. We have a good 40% of the population that are brainwashed and radicalized by right wing media and Trump. So much so, that now, even Fox News is being seen as an enemy because it would go full on Q-Anon with them.

[CrispyQ]

67. America's Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent

America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent
Trump was ineffective and easily beaten. A future strongman won’t be.

NOVEMBER 6, 2020
Zeynep Tufekci
Contributing writer at The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trump-proved-authoritarians-can-get-elected-america/617023/

snip...

Make no mistake: The attempt to harness Trumpism—without Trump, but with calculated, refined, and smarter political talent—is coming. And it won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president.

more...

At the moment, the Democratic Party risks celebrating Trump’s loss and moving on—an acute danger, especially because many of its constituencies, the ones that drove Trump’s loss, are understandably tired. A political nap for a few years probably looks appealing to many who opposed Trump, but the real message of this election is not that Trump lost and Democrats triumphed. It’s that a weak and untalented politician lost, while the rest of his party has completely entrenched its power over every other branch of government: the perfect setup for a talented right-wing populist to sweep into office in 2024. And make no mistake: They’re all thinking about it.

[MuseRider]

4. Dunno if I want to relive this

but I bet it is interesting. I might watch but I hated that administration especially Reagan and his head shaking, everyman, welllll acting while he did nothing for the everyman.

[murielm99]

9. I relive it all the time because I live

ten miles from his home town. We work with their Democrats and the local Indivisible group. We are a noisy minority, and growing.

[MuseRider]

16. Keep at it!

That would be hard for sure. ((big hug)) for you continuing on with your noisy minority. It is growing and thank you for that!

[murielm99]

32. What used to be great fun was when

the Democrats had their headquarters right across the street from the statue of Ronnie on a Horse. It made a statement! They have since moved to a larger building on the main drag. A loyal Democrat donates this space. It is a larger building, too.

On the weekends the drunks stand on top of the Ronnie statue and pee into the nearby river.

[MuseRider]

43. Maybe they should pee on the statue?

I always felt that RR and pee seemed a good combination!

Cool that you got a bigger place.

[mountain grammy]

49. Thank you.

can't tell you how good this makes me feel ..

[llashram]

5. I knew this from when he was guvner

of California. The man has, like John Wayne, ALWAYS been a racist. He was good at peddling laundry soap though. Just like here in the 21st century the Republicans are good at peddling bullshit.

[UTUSN]

6. Some meaty excerpts:

********QUOTE*******

.... ... In one scene, we hear Reagan, then a sitting governor on a private call with Nixon, refer to African UN delegates as “monkeys”. As he conducted his research, the director was surprised by how open the uglier sides of Reagan’s personality were permitted to be. “It was very informative about how the press covered Reagan that all the archival materials – even the unflattering ones – were on the record and quite available,” Tyrnauer says. ....

... The most lasting, deleterious lesson of the Reagan tenure was that it doesn’t matter if something is true or not, so long as enough people believe that it is. As daily life continued to worsen for every American not lucky enough to be on Wall Street or run a business, Reagan’s own words assured his constituency that they were actually enjoying the greatest surge in prosperity that the nation had ever seen. In conversation, Tyrnauer speaks more candidly about Reagan’s failures than the professional decorum of his work can allow.

“He knew what he knew,” Tyrnauer says. “He wasn’t intellectually curious. He wasn’t a deep thinker. He was, at heart, a reactionary. He was given the nuclear codes and the Oval Office and the greatest bully pulpit in the world, and what did he do with it? He tried to short-circuit the federal government in really detrimental ways. He implemented policies that hurt African Americans and economically disadvantaged minorities. He believed things that weren’t true and repeated them publicly. He was into science denial, he was a seeming believer in creation theory over evolution, he ignored and denied the Aids pandemic. He said trees cause pollution, which reminds us now of Trump saying wind turbines cause pollution.”

The actor who became the most powerful man on earth remains a potent Republican fable, in part for how it suggests that a lack of experience can be a strength rather than a weakness. The inexplicable ascendancy of Trump re-established that a total absence of political bona fides will pose no impediment to success, instead plowing through criticisms and obstacles a more knowledgeable candidate would be expected to address. A noisy, ultraconservative, often racist razzle dazzle proves more than sufficient to get the job (of hoarding and exploiting clout, not safeguarding American citizens) done. ....

*********UNQUOTE******

[mountain grammy]

51. James Garner

?w=640

[UTUSN]

52. Nice!

[Grins]

7. Terrific article! Going to be a terrific documentary!

I knew much of it but there are some real gems in there.

[lunatica]

8. I remember that I would cringe every time he was about to speak

Literally. I would cringe because I was expecting him to say something that would make us all look really stupid to the world. I cringed because he did that a lot.

I’m going to watch it because I want to see him and the entire Republican Party exposed for the sake of our history.

[bucolic_frolic]

10. Perceived strength means underlying oppression

It was done with Lincoln too in the 50 years of historians afterward, mostly because history was just viewed as a record of what happened back then, no revisionists, not much interpretation, all of them a product of private funded higher education that reflected those economic interests. So yes, image can be its own end game, at least until the masses have the tools - digital records and communication - to know otherwise.

[Pepsidog]

11. As an 18 year old know nothing high school kid I loved Reagan.Looking back since then I cab see the

appeal of a get the gov’t out of my face candidate. But like I said, I was young, dumb, ignorant , spoiled kid from a very successful family. It was notuntil Bill Clinton that I turned away from the Rs because I realized they offered nothing.

[tnlurker]

12. for later

[hunter]

13. Ronald Reagan is now a chew toy for the hounds of hell.

I always knew he would be.

Trump didn't cost me any relationships with friends or family since my very explicit loathing of Reagan scared those pathetic creatures off a long time ago.

Reagan was a venal incurious fool who would do or say anything for a blow job.

When his brain began to rot not much changed.

[Tikki]

30. reagan was A King Sized Asshole.

I was there, I remember.

Tikki

[AllaN01Bear]

14. reagan ruined california . took us 30 years to recover from his governorship.

he ruined screen actors guild . a sister hated him

[Politicalgolfer]

15. Ronnie, W, Don...GOP likes morons as prez....

They don't want a decisive, strong prez because they work for the money men who want a fool who can be manipulated.

[DENVERPOPS]

25. Agreed

All Republicans want is a front man or puppet to keep the people watching them rather than all the skulduggery they are doing in the shadows and behind smoke screens. They seem to have perfected that with Trump........

[groundloop]

17. I hope they discuss how he stole the election from Carter by coordinating with Iran.

[SunSeeker]

24. Right from the Nixon playbook! nt

[ProfessorPlum]

18. Grew up in a Reagan household in the 80s. My eye's were opened by Paul Slansky's book

"The Clothes Have No Emperor". An amazing chronicle of the Reagan presiduncy, and my first step towards having my eyes opened.

https://www.amazon.com/Clothes-Have-No-Emperor-Chronicle/dp/0671673394/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Paul+slansky&qid=1605218402&sr=8-1

[mountain grammy]

53. Another good one was 'While Reagan Slept'

by Art Buchwald

[Boomerproud]

65. On Bended Knee is also a great read.

It calls out the medias complicity in Reagan's reign. "Republican Revolution" anyone? Blitzer still says that phrase.

[hibbing]

19. I remember where he announced his run for president n/t

[TygrBright]

20. I remember the song I composed when it got through to me that he'd won, in 1980...

I was completely blindsided by that victory because I didn't think a washed-up has-been actor with two failed runs for President behind him could get elected dog catcher in any jurisdiction even with his experience as CA Goober.

But when it sunk in, this song lyric rose immediately into my consciousness:

The good old days are back, are back!
Re-open your fallout shelter, Jack.
Welcome back Joe McCarthy,
Welcome back, Cotton Mather,
Welcome back to the barons of the mills...

Let's go to El Salvador
And start ourselves another little war,
For the good old days are back, they're back again.

There was more, but I've forgotten it.

And every word came to pass... it was the end of the world as we knew it back then.

If you look at any statistical measure of well-being for the middle three quintiles of the American population, we pretty much reached our peak of prosperity, freedom, and security in about 1976 or 1977. Annual income adjusted for current dollar value, the prevalence of defined benefit retirement programs, all the prosperity produced by unionization of the workforce... Pell Grants and federal student aid, the cost of land-grant University educations, state-to-state tuition reciprocity, health insurance coverage, medical bankruptcies, home ownership... all the standard measure points were at their peak for the American middle class, and... (and this was the kicker...) the well being of racial and ethnic minorities was beginning to rise as well.

The Civil Rights movement and the War on Poverty programs had made it over the speed bump of the Vietnam War, which had finally wound down, and black and brown people were making solid gains in organizing for farm workers' rights, affirmative action, etc.

It wasn't yet the best of times but it was headed there, the most progress we'd made in that direction as a nation, ever.

Obviously it had to be brought to a screeching halt and Ronnie was just the patsy our Oligarchs needed to begin the smash-and-grab takeback.

I watched it happen. I was devastated, but at the time I always assumed that somehow we'd reverse the tide again and get back on track... until the Democratic Party chose Clinton and his GOP-lite agenda and his "welfare reform" policies and his NAFTA buttkiss to the oligarchy.

History does not repeat, but damn' it rhymes MEAN.

sadly,
Bright

[SunSeeker]

21. It's way past time for some reality to be brought to the St. Ronnie fraud. nt

[Ferrets are Cool]

22. I am glad that someone is showing the evil what was Ronald Reagan.

This all began with that bastard.

[tenderfoot]

23. I always felt Trump was the poster boy for Reaganism.

And NBC helped promote him.

[DENVERPOPS]

26. I remember the day

I became politically aware of the shit storm that had just descended on the citizens of the United States.
It was about the second month of Reagan's administration.

Some of us became aware then.......Sadly, too many woke up only about two weeks ago........

[ShazzieB]

27. I can't wait to watch this!

Thanks so much.

The Reagan myth needs to die. I know it'll take a lot more than this, but every little bit helps!

[dalton99a]

29. "Reagan gave the press the televised presidency they had been waiting for."

“Media, and how the Reagans manipulated it, forms the central part of this story,” Tyrnauer explains. “As the academic Jason Johnson says in the series, Reagan gave the press the televised presidency they had been waiting for. That’s irrefutably true, and there are other aspects of the Reagan legacy more attuned to the American psyche. Voters vote on perception and feeling, which the Reagans knew how to tap into.”

The Reagan administration’s insistence on documenting its every move supplied Tyrnauer with a treasure trove of archival footage, some of it rather damning. In one scene, we hear Reagan, then a sitting governor on a private call with Nixon, refer to African UN delegates as “monkeys”. As he conducted his research, the director was surprised by how open the uglier sides of Reagan’s personality were permitted to be. “It was very informative about how the press covered Reagan that all the archival materials – even the unflattering ones – were on the record and quite available,” Tyrnauer says. “It shows you how selectively he’s been cemented in the public’s memory, that what he said on hot microphones would be shocking today.”

The documentary gains a more intimately exposing vantage point on Reagan through commentary from his son, Ronald Jr, who sat for an eight-hour interview in which he paints a picture of his mother as the power behind the throne. When the cameras stopped rolling, she advised her husband on the nonexistent response to the Aids crisis, a punitive “war on drugs”, and the deregulatory bonanza known as Reaganomics. A brazen West Wing redecorator at steep taxpayer cost, she supported her husband’s preoccupation with appearance over all else. “I really do think Nancy had a greater sway than keepers of the flame would like us to think,” Tyrnauer says. “It’s also interesting to look back at her through a post-Hillary Clinton lens, which hasn’t really been done. They both wielded enormous influence as first lady, but Nancy was determined to hide that.”

A dutiful cataloguing of the harm the two Reagans did in the black and LGBTQ+ communities segues into an illustration of how the damage he did has trickled down into present-day politics. Though no one utters the name of Donald Trump in any of the four parts, his presence looms over the Reagans’ speeches and rallies, the separate generations joined by their shared Make America Great Again catchphrase. “Reagan opened the door for Trump,” Tyrnauer says. “He used dogwhistle racism to gain political power.”

[kskiska]

31. I'm old and remember Reagan very well.

He let all those evangelicals into the tent. In more ways than one he begat what we are suffering now.

[ancianita]

33. The Republicans cultivated their voters' attraction to fakery starting with, and ever since Reagan.

[JHB]

34. In 1980 I was still a little short of voting age...

I grew up in a conservative household (of the Bill Buckley fan variety), but that influence always ran up against my sense of fairness. And one of my first political epiphanies was that was that communists weren't the big threat to this country, because too many people couldn't get on board with it. The real danger was the fanatical anti-communists, because they lumped everything they didn't like into "communism". They were the ones who really had the ability to bait-and-switch people, to get them supporting an agenda that was a lot more radical than they realized.

I contend that the past 40 years have proven my youthful insight correct.

Plus, I was a complete science nerd. Once he played footsie with creationists, he'd burned any "charm" he might have had with me.

[kairos12]

35. He begat Trump. He is completely vile.

[ailsagirl]

36. I'd be curious to know Steve Schmidt's take on this

After all, he'd been a staunch republican all his adult life...

[burrowowl]

38. He and Bush I were evil!

[llmart]

39. Reagan was the beginning of the end of the middle class in America.

The irony is that so many of the middle class were taken in by this guy. I was not. I did not vote for him and despised him, especially his war on unions, starting with what he did to the air traffic controllers.

[Jspur]

63. Like always I think this guys dog whistling when it came to racism seemed to work

on a lot of the white middle class. I remember reading and watching some clips of this guy hyping up a welfare queen getting six digits a year from the government and living it up by buying multiple cars. Obviously the welfare queen was a reference to black women.

[Zorro]

41. I hated that MFer ever since he was the governor of California

Dems had FDR as their champion, and the Pukes desperately wanted someone they could elevate as their own sainted paragon of conservatism. And they have been cramming that phony Reagan hagiography down everyone's throats for decades now. Blech.

[themaguffin]

45. Rotten to the core. Southern Strategy with style, kicking off his campaign in Phila. Mississippi

as a nod to racists.

Fucking piece of shit.

[Jspur]

46. I'm 37 years old so I feel I grew up in the America that Reagan

Last edited Fri Nov 13, 2020, 01:43 AM - Edit history (1)

created. If you think about it I was born in '83 and got to see throughout my life the decline of America over the years due to Reagan's policies. I was protected from worshiping this guy because my father who is a democrat had influence on me at a young age. He would always tell me that Reagan was garbage and would explain why. I didn't buy Dad's reasoning until I got to hschool and learned about Reaganomics in a US history class. I remember at the time thinking "Whoa what a stupid idea to believe lowering taxes on the rich actually helps the government." Just having common sense at that age made me think how can increasing debt by lowering taxes be a good thing for the government.

I do get annoyed always hearing older people talk about this guy as a legend. They talk about him the way I talk about Michael Jordan when I talk to younger people about basketball. It's always "Oh Ronnie was amazing. He brought America back. Won the Cold War and made America a great place blah blah blah."

I get frustrated as I approach middle age that America can't escape this man's legacy and that as an adult I never got to live in an America where labor protections/unions and the middle class is strong. It feels like 1980 sent the tone politically and economically for this country for the rest of my life. I still hold up hope my generation can finally end Reagan's legacy and put it in the dust bins of history but we'll see.

One thing I have to say to the older duers I can't imagine what you guys were going through having to deal with a republican president who had god like popularity across the board. I only dealt with that briefly with Bush after 9/11 and I hated it.

[misanthrope]

58. I recall during the Obama years

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seeing some high school or college aged kid whose newish pick-up truck was emblazoned with an "I miss Reagan" sticker.

The first thing through my mind was, "You don't even remember Reagan and likely weren't alive then." But he was a white guy in a smaller Deep South town so chances are he was parroting what he had been raised to believe that was then amplified by the presence of an African-American in the White House.

[Jspur]

60. I live in NC which is a former strong red state that Obama flipped into a purple

state. It's still the south but not as radical as the rest of the south due to the influx of people who moved here from the North. I live in Raleigh which is a strong blue area but I remember seeing during Obama's second term quite a few young white kids who would wear Reagan-Bush '84 shirts and hats every now and then around here. I remember once walking into a gas station in '16 during the summer time and seeing two young white guys who probably 18-20 in age wearing that garbage and giving me intense angry stair downs while they were in line. I'm Indian American by the way so I suspected they were probably racist. Didn't give a shit since they didn't say anything to me. I just thought they looked like clowns. Anyways I think when you see real young people wearing that trash it's usually influenced by their parents or by racism or a combination of both.

[mnhtnbb]

48. Ronnie's signature as Governor was on my undergrad

degree from UCLA. So I lived through the destruction he started to the State of California, particularly to the UC system.

My first husband's father was a cameraman in Hollywood. One of his best friends was at one time Reagan's agent. I remember having dinner once with my in-laws and this man and his wife, and the conversation got around to Ronnie. His one time agent was not complimentary to him and dismissed him as a not very smart guy. I think he was being polite.

[BobTheSubgenius]

50. Is there a more over-rated President, at least in the minds of the public?

I can't think of one, but I'm hardly a Presidential historian.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

55. So damaging in so many ways.

And the right-wing media propagandists kept holding him up as some great leader in the years that followed, often to mythical proportions. Then the ditto-heads obediently repeated it.

I'll never forget my father's reaction to Reagan beating Carter. He was very sad, saying the USA just elected a fraud like John Wayne.

[Skittles]

56. it was the first time I realized how stupid people could be

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Reagan made greed and idiocy fashionable and the stupid, greedy people voted for him in DROVES

[Jspur]

61. Republican presidents tend to do that

for you. I know for me at age 17 G.W Bush was the first president in my lifetime that made me aware how stupid people are in America.

[Skittles]

64. OMFG

don't even get me started on Dubya

too late

I actually laughed when he was governor, wondering why someone that stupid wanted to be governor......I still remember the chill that washed over me when I realized, aw hell, they're gonna make him PRESIDENT

[Jspur]

66. As a senior in hschool I was rooting for him to fail and wasn't even political

at that age. I just felt he was a very stupid man and because of that he shouldn't be president. Just common sense in my thinking which was to be president you should be an intelligent person. I just remember the stupidity in the media and his supporters which was "Gore is a boring guy. Bush is someone you can have a beer with and that's why he should be president". I was shaking my head at that time thinking "I can't believe this that this dumbass who I feel is less intelligent than the average hschooler is going to win due to some hschool vanity popularity type of garbage."

[Skittles]

68. you were a very smart senior

smarter than a LOT of people

[H2O Man]

57. Recommended.

Great! Can't wait to see it!

I think we all knew back then. Yet, Haynes Johnson's book documenting the extent of the corruption was eye-opening.

[smirkymonkey]

62. K&R