General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt started with Reagan, not Trump
Trump is the result (an UNnatural progression, sort of) of over 40 years of the hate of the Republican party.
Please don't forget they started their villany a LONG time ago
MANative
(4,113 posts)I think it was Barry Goldwater who really started the engine. The evil has been around for a very long time.
Just_Vote_Dem
(2,820 posts)Someone posted Eisenhower's policies recently and they sounded fairly reasonable, so they would be unacceptable to Repugs today.
MOMFUDSKI
(5,736 posts)yesterday that Eisenhower was the last decent repub pres. He was actually pretty much neutral but labels happen.
True Blue American
(17,995 posts)Interstate based on what the Autobahn was like in Germany. Good President, but even he gave us Nixon who did a few good things but turned out to be corrupt. The rot in the party began then.
Ponietz
(3,044 posts)The US had no major foreign enemies. Nixon and Republicans turned to political foes. And because they were busted the Democratic Party has been enemy #1 for the GOP since. 50 years of their shit.
Duncanpup
(12,933 posts)TexasBushwhacker
(20,228 posts)There were no HMOs before Nixon.
MayReasonRule
(1,463 posts)Goldwater was a fascist - Goldwater was not a nationalist "Christian" fascist.
Fascism is a delusionally malevolent far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist ideology. It's characterized by:
* Autocratic dictatorship
* Militarism
* Suppression of opposition
* Indoctrination of forced social hierarchy
* Subordination of individual interests
The theory of political "religion" is that governmental ideologies with strong cultural and political backing can attain power equivalent to a state "religion".
Religion requires one to set aside reality's objective analysis.
Religion requires one to embrace delusion as "truth".
Fascist ideals have been embraced by the Abrahamic blood cults ever since their have been Abrahamic blood cults. These "closely held beliefs" have been the cornerstone of fascism within our society since our society's inception.
Reagan was merely a fascist talking head. Fascisms roots are as old as human society itself.
Today we see those roots feeding Y'all Qaeda's Spanish Inquisition courtesy of the Nat-C GOP.
Nat-C or Nazi no matter the name their evil depravity's always the same.
Stardust Mirror
(360 posts)what I was thinking in response to this question, only saying it more clearly and well argued than I would have.
MayReasonRule
(1,463 posts)misanthrope
(7,432 posts)Wasn't he very leery of evangelical Christians and folding them into the GOP mechanism?
Midnight Writer
(21,819 posts)with Prayer Breakfasts, inviting Billy Graham and others to the WH, adding Under God to the Pledge.
rubbersole
(6,744 posts)paulkienitz
(1,296 posts)RocRizzo55
(980 posts)Someone finally gets it.
summer_in_TX
(2,766 posts)Virulent.
Conspiracies galore.
Bigoted.
Hateful.
raising2moredems
(641 posts)but I will concede Goldwater played a part. Nixon's "southern strategy" along with seeing the Vietnam War as an opportunity for ethnic cleansing so to speak.
Raygun knew he'd never get elected without crawling into bed with the religious "right". Hence no more moderates in the party but plenty of f-ing nutcases.
KentuckyWoman
(6,697 posts)Now the even farther right is trying to get to the middle and the Goldwater types are being branded as RINO.
Walleye
(31,105 posts)SouthernDem4ever
(6,617 posts)2naSalit
(86,875 posts)elleng
(131,240 posts)gab13by13
(21,455 posts)Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.
Farmer-Rick
(10,219 posts)They gave that idiot who promoted murder and fascism in Chile a Nobel prize. And people to this day think that tool was so intelligent and an economic genius. Friedman encouraged Pinochet to murder Union leaders and liberals on the factory floor.
They served the billionaire class and were rewarded for it ... except for old Ayn. Afterall she was a woman. In the end she allowed a social worker to sign her up for Medicare and Social Security. She wouldn't have allowed that if she were rich like the people she enabled. She eventually died of a heart attack as a result of her lung cancer, she was a constant smoker.
betsuni
(25,725 posts)Last edited Thu Sep 28, 2023, 08:46 AM - Edit history (1)
BlueMTexpat
(15,374 posts)to make political speech hateful and hate-directed, IMO, and to begin "normalizing" the truly unacceptable.
Trump and the Seven Dwarf Idiots pissing all over our democracy are the result.
Polybius
(15,514 posts)And was much further to the Right.
BlueMTexpat
(15,374 posts)So many GOPers, so much hate!
ExWhoDoesntCare
(4,741 posts)What do you think the "welfare queen" crap was all about?
He never missed a chance to trash Democrats, liberals, minorities, people who cared about the environment--
It's frightening how people forget all the hateful filth that spouted out of that scumbag's face anus.
drmeow
(5,031 posts)and I've never forgiven!
VGNonly
(7,517 posts)kickstarted his campaign with a long windy stump speech on "state rights" in Neshoba County MS, which only 16 years earlier was the sight of the KKK sanctioned murders of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman.
BlueMTexpat
(15,374 posts)It is difficult to keep track of all the haters who are/were GOPers.
TSExile
(2,504 posts)...read the book "Jesus and John Wayne" by Kristin Du Mez. It really opened up my eyes, especially about the Reagan presidency.
Basic LA
(2,047 posts)I'm still pissed about the Reagan era.
TSExile
(2,504 posts)...to really be aware of what was going on. I remember hearing the name Oliver North over and over in the late 1980s, but this book really goes into so much detail.
The book is basically a timeline of how politics and the church in America collided. I recently loaned my copy to a lady from my church (!!).
Martin Eden
(12,881 posts)Thanks, that wasn't on my radar.
TSExile
(2,504 posts)Be sure to get the 2021 version with the updated preface. The original version of the book was published in 2020, before the pandemic and election.
Martin Eden
(12,881 posts)Unfortunately, the people most in need of reading this book probably won't.
TSExile
(2,504 posts)Sad but true!!
ExWhoDoesntCare
(4,741 posts)Try Reign of Error by Mark Green. It was full of nothing but stupid and hateful filth that the fascist pig vomited onto the nation.
AverageJoe
(2,292 posts)But we should also give a shoutout to one of the most evil little American fascists ever to draw breath, Lee Atwater, who helped make modern Republican villainy happen.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
Mickju
(1,807 posts)yonder
(9,683 posts)BlueMTexpat
(15,374 posts)Reagan, although Reagan REALLY stepped on the gas. It definitely began with Richard Nixon in 1968, if not before.
Too many of the worst people who have turned up time and time again in GOP administrations got their starts in Nixon's day.
He was downright EVIL, IMO.
jaxexpat
(6,865 posts)was a Nazi sympathizer? Or that the Robber Barons at the turn of the previous century were Republicans.
IbogaProject
(2,848 posts)He was with Harriman before it merged with Brown Brothers. He was the funnel of Wall Street money to Hitler, 50 million Marks. Prescott also helped look launder Nazi corporate holdings and took that money and had his kids wildcat oil in Texas in the 50s.
jaxexpat
(6,865 posts)The conservative soul was created in the 1930's while the people were scared for where their next meal was coming from. The Great Depression was like a feudalist state reboot. A country composed of people drowning in hopeless desperation were ripe for the harvest in the biggest MIC swindle in history. So many angles, so many triangulations. Great wealth was there to be made by anybody with a healthy nest egg and a ruthless attitude.
BlueMTexpat
(15,374 posts)No, I haven't forgotten. It just slipped my mind for a moment.
Even Prescott Bush had predecessors, though. I, for one, STILL believe that GHWB was involved to some extent with the Kennedy assassination. Remember too that GHWB was appointed CIA Director under Nixon.
And his son REALLY screwed us ALL. Terrible awful family!
IbogaProject
(2,848 posts)That was before CIA was banned from operation inside the USA. Then he was South East Asia Station chief, right when the heroin flooded in. And of course he was chairing the National Security during the Iran Contra Coke crimes.
quaint
(2,586 posts)Products could change one itty bitty thing, put New/Improved on their label and raise the price.
appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)ExWhoDoesntCare
(4,741 posts)And before him, all of the evil traitor thugs who opposed the New Deal. Traitor thug Senator Thomas Schall calling FDR a Communist, the American version of Hitler or Mussolini and Satan.
A few of the old school r party were reasonable, but the vast majority were pretty much a cabal of venomous hatemongers--and have been such ever since. They weeded out any decent people from the party, long ago.
gab13by13
(21,455 posts)where he said government was the problem, not the solution. Reagan started the attacks on government. Well Ayn Rand was out there too.
underpants
(182,962 posts)Where the three young men registering voters were murdered.
Lee Atwater made sure that was his first stop. Reagan (not) jokingly said Im from the government and Im here to help. Message sent, message received. Racists and polluters- thats their true base.
paleotn
(17,990 posts)Lots of places in Mississippi to kick off one's campaign. This was no coincidence.
misanthrope
(7,432 posts)He used the right-wing quip that "the nine scariest words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
What he used for a dog whistle in Philadelphia, Mississippi was his reiteration that he backed "states rights."
underpants
(182,962 posts)misanthrope
(7,432 posts)dog whistle is a lot more alarming than the "government" line. It was used by segregationists and those subscribing to Lost Cause mythos.
4lbs
(6,865 posts)Social Security and MediCare. They claimed that both programs would bankrupt the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Speaks_Out_Against_Socialized_Medicine
Then, they proceeded over 40 or 50 years to try to enact policies that would essentially attempt that. Then they blamed Democrats for it.
It's like an arsonist saying your house is in danger of burning down, you should do something about it, like move or do what he says to prevent it, and then getting inside and setting it on fire with gas and kerosene. Then, as it is burning, turns to you and says "see... I told you. Maybe if those firefighters had responded and gotten here sooner. Why are we paying them all this money again?"
Umm....
appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)Last edited Thu Sep 28, 2023, 11:50 AM - Edit history (1)
At the time I was living in DC. It was a shock that he was elected over Jimmy Carter in Nov. 1980, and it took weeks (then years) to try to recover.
DENVERPOPS
(8,866 posts)Reagan was NOT elected, he was "INSTALLED" by HWBush and his cronies, who used a TREASONOUS ACT, to defeat Carter and have Reagan "INSTALLED" as president.............and that is now known as FACT. That group went on to commit other TREASONOUS acts during their time period. Selling arms behind our government's backs to our enemy Iran, and remember the IRAN/CONTRA affair????
vlyons
(10,252 posts)How about the 1940-50s with Ayn Rand and her "virtue of selfishess?" She was the philosophical justification for anti-gov, labeling gov workers as moochers, who stole your money to subsidize poor people.
Or we can look back even farther into slavery and all the evils it fostered.
sanatanadharma
(3,742 posts)When seeing, knowing, accepting, living within the karmic-model of 'what-it-is', we can understand that the roots are immeasurably long, in time and desire.
People are born with (as though) instincts, imbued with impressions of previously chosen trajectories towards either the one-we or the many-ME.
Politics seeks to balance dharmic desires within identities, true realities within the mythologies of societies.
William769
(55,148 posts)Efilroft Sul
(3,585 posts)appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)- Powell Memorandum, 1971, "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." "A Neoliberal Call to Arms."
.. On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum for the chamber entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist and anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America. It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement.
Powell saw it as an undermining of the power of private business and a step toward socialism.
His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths. He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' 1st Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry. The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. It inspired wealthy heirs of earlier American industrialists, the Earhart Foundation (whose money came from an oil fortune), and the Smith Richardson Foundation (from the cough medicine dynasty) to use their private charitable foundations?which did not have to report their political activities?to join the Carthage Foundation, founded by Richard Mellon Scaife in 1964.
The Carthage Foundation pursued Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimally government-regulated America based on what he thought America had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
The Powell Memorandum ultimately came to be a blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and inspired the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.
CUNY professor David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo. Historian Gary Gerstle refers to the memo as "a neoliberal call to arms." Political scientist Aaron Good describes it as an "inverted totalitarian manifesto" designed to identify threats to the established economic order following the democratic upsurge of the 1960s. Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.
Powell urged conservatives to undertake a sustained media-outreach program, including funding neoliberal scholars, publishing books, papers, popular magazines, and scholarly journals, and influencing public opinion.
This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections by independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti. Although written confidentially for Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce, it was discovered by Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson, who reported on its content a year later (after Powell had joined the Supreme Court). Anderson alleged that Powell was trying to undermine the democratic system; however, in terms of business's view of itself in relation to government and public interest groups, the memo could be alternatively read to simply convey conventional thinking among businessmen at the time.
The explicit goal of the memo was not to destroy democracy, though its emphasis on political institution-building as a concentration of big business power, particularly updating the Chamber's efforts to influence federal policy, has had that effect. Here, it was a major force in motivating the Chamber and other groups to modernize their efforts to lobby the federal government. Following the memo's directives, conservative foundations greatly increased, pouring money into think-tanks. This rise of conservative philanthropy led to the conservative intellectual movement and its increasing influence over mainstream political discourse, starting in the 1970s and 1980s, and due chiefly to the works of the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,511 posts)see first link in my 'sig'
appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,511 posts)Since then, it seems to be an all-out cold war on liberal democracy, complete with billionaires' proxies. Murdoch provides the tools to manipulate deplorables and sucks in otherwise non-deplorables.
appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)on the American Free Enterprise System. Powell and others laid out the plan, and the far right went to work implementing policies and changes that have been in effect for 40+ years. As Powell wanted, a return to The Gilded Age, pre FDR, LBJ and all that 'society stuff,' no taxes on the wealthy and 'job creators,' and attacks on public education and affordable college tuition. The harsh and regressive neoliberal- libertarian ideology of the Free Market was adopted by Reagan, Milton Friedman, Thatcher and many others.
The strategy included funding powerful right wing think tanks, dominating the media - Am Radio, Fox, Murdoch on 3 continents; influencing legislation nationally and on the state level through large numbers of well paid lobbyists; demolishing regulation on business; eliminating the Welfare State; shifting higher education from progressive ideology, the humanities and liberal arts, toward business, law and tech.
As well, build up the Moral Majority, Christian nationalism, reduce rights for minorities, fear monger about soshialism!, 'welfare queens,' urban crime hell, racism, immigrants, LGBTQ, non Christians - The Others.
And look where we are now.
As John Kenneth Galbraith said, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a moral justification for selfishness."
summer_in_TX
(2,766 posts)Craig R. Smith details how they achieved it with great pride in "The Campaign To Repeal The Fairness Doctrine," his academic paper on just how he and others achieved that.
After all, it was not so many years after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Fairness Doctrine in 1969 in The FCC v. Red Lion.
Worth a read.
Want to read it? Contact me by DU Mail. Otherwise it only seems to be available through university libraries that subscribe to Rhetoric and Public Affairs
Vol. 2, No. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 481-505 (25 pages)
Published By: Michigan State University Press
appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)paleotn
(17,990 posts)Destroying the moderate and socially liberal wings of the Republican Party. What use to be a "big tent" like the Dems. Hard to believe this day and time that LBJ needed Republican votes to pass the Civil Rights Act.
NBachers
(17,155 posts)My theory is that we could go to any point in human history and see this same struggle played out.
Dawgman49
(226 posts)The gop southern strategy .appeal to racists with covert phrases without having to use the N word
moondust
(20,017 posts)Trailrider1951
(3,415 posts)Nixon's White House was every bit corrupt as TFG's residence.
ExWhoDoesntCare
(4,741 posts)The guy who was campaign manager for TFG in 2016.
Trailrider1951
(3,415 posts)Thanky kindly!
liberal N proud
(60,348 posts)ck4829
(35,094 posts)JI7
(89,281 posts)Lonestarblue
(10,120 posts)Murdoch and Roger Ailes. Murdoch stated Fox in 1996 and gave a national voice to Republican racism and misogyny. Fox made it easy for Republicans to spread their lies and to stoke anger and hatred of minorities. Without that national voice, which also led to similar voices on hate radio and eventually the internet, Republicans would not have been able to sway the masses as easily.
AllaN01Bear
(18,578 posts)hated him as ca gov.
LostOne4Ever
(9,290 posts)Nixon is the source of all rightwing evil in the USA
Old Okie
(146 posts)What I find curious is that we hear a lot about the public face of the party; we almost never hear about the money-men who are funding them. Even MSM will not mention them. At least ProPublica has identified some of them in their expose of Clarence Thomas. We need more public discussions of the who is funding Bannon, Stone and Trump.
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,771 posts)the same people funding the M$M?
Trailrider1951
(3,415 posts)spike jones
(1,691 posts)8/24/2020 by BELVA DAVIS
Never In My Wildest Dreams: A Black Womans Life In Journalism.
"Suddenly Louis and I heard a voice yell, Hey, look at those two up there! The accuser pointed us out, and several spectators swarmed beneath us. Hey ni**ers! they yelled. What the hell are you ni**ers doing in here?
I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck as I looked into faces turned scarlet and sweaty by heat and hostility. Louis, in suit and tie and perpetually dignified, turned to me and said with all the nonchalance he could muster, Well, I think thats enough for today.
Methodically we began wrapping up the cords to our bulky tape recorder and packing it and the rest of our equipment into suitcases. As we began our descent down the ramps of the Cow Palace, a self-appointed posse dangled over the railings, taunting. Ni**ers! Get out of here, boy! You too, ni**er bitch. Go on, get out! Im gonna kill your ass.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)The modern Republican is the product of the Southern Strategy, popularized by Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips.
marble falls
(57,399 posts)RANDYWILDMAN
(2,678 posts)was the beginning of the end of economics that benefitted everybody
"voodoo economics" and we have been paying the price ever since
calimary
(81,550 posts)through the front door, into the living room and den, kitchen, downstairs and upstairs bathrooms and all the bedrooms. Nixon got things started but I mainly blame reagan, who could sweet-talk you into eating a plate of shit and calling it macaroni.
My enduring hatred for ronald reagan knows no bounds, heights or depths. Go all the way down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and you still wont be down deep enough to find my burning hatred.
enigmania
(112 posts)and the Dulles brothers.
Seinan Sensei
(369 posts)Convicted of lying to Congress in 1991, about Iran-Contra.
Appointed by Biden in 2020 to the bipartisan US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
What is that about ...????
unc70
(6,122 posts)Senator Helms taught Reagan how to play the race card and gain control of the GOP. Helms was already a constant RW demagogue on TV when he took Reagan under his wing during the 1976 GOP primaries. Helms had over 30 years honing the racist messaging of the Southern Strategy using his prominence in radio and TV news. you remember welfare queens and all the rest.
While there wasn't enough time to win in 1976 against Ford, the constant negative attacks were maintained after the election of Carter. By 1980, the cumulative attacks elected Helms to the Senate, Reagan to the White House.
Helms is a major link from the anti-FDR fascist of the late 1930s to the current Republican Party.
Polybius
(15,514 posts)If Helms were alive and in the Senate today, he'd be the most right-wing Senator, not Cruz, Tuberville, Hawley, or anyone else.
ExWhoDoesntCare
(4,741 posts)The traitor thugs have been foaming at the mouth ever since.
appalachiablue
(41,184 posts)Mr.Bill
(24,344 posts)but George Wallace emboldened a lot of assholes in the country
Arthur_Frain
(1,866 posts)But thats like arguing after the horse left the barn, then the barn door closed, the barn caught fire, burned down, was swallowed in a sinkhole that then turned into the equivalent of the LaBrea Tar Pits, which then swallowed the entire town and killed everyone.
Horse still gone, no more barn.
Do we need something else to argue about these days?
barbaraann
(9,165 posts)niyad
(113,682 posts)Kid Berwyn
(15,008 posts)Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3743890
Oopsie Daisy
(2,723 posts)Pacifist Patriot
(24,654 posts)Caliman73
(11,755 posts)Conservatives had been reeling since their decades in the wilderness after the debacle of the Great Depression.
We need to understand that FDR enacted progressive policies in the New Deal and Keynesian economics to save the US from a socialist revolution, but also because he had much more progressive ideas in mind. Had he served his 4th term, as the war was winding down, he was pivoting toward the Second Bill of Rights, which were MUCH MUCH more socialist in nature, not full in "worker of the world unite" but Freedom From Poverty, The right to leisure, etc... that meant a HUGE shift in government's role in people's lives.
Remember that Conservatives were trying to orchestrate a COUP against FDR, AND many Conservative politicians actively worked with the GOVERNMENT OF GERMANY (the Nazis) during WWII to instill a right wing government here. Eisenhower, though hawkish in foreign policy (with his adventures in Central America and the installation of the Shah in Iran) was still relatively progressive with funding infrastructure through the government. He was likely a HUGE disappointment to Conservatives and he warned us about the Military Industrial Complex and diverting money from the people to War.
Nixon was instrumental in the rightward shift. He brought in people like Roger Ailes, Pat Buchanan, and had both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in his administration. Nixon absolutely HATED the press and was working with Ailes and Buchanan on building infrastructure for a Conservative press.
All throughout the late 60's and 70's, think tanks were working on how to stop the accelerating social movements that were challenging the old order. The Powell Memo came out in 1971, and detailed a strategy for business interests and Conservatives to infiltrate government and use media to promote Conservative and pro-business ideas into the mainstream.
As I said, Reagan with his 3 legged Stool of Conservatism, focused the project, bringing people into his administration with the purpose of trying to GUT the New Deal and to destroy the administrative departments like the Department of Education from within. He GREW government despite all the bullshit about "small government" from Conservatives. Only, he grew Defense and the surveillance state while simultaneously gutting social programs. Again, as I have said many times, Conservatives do not give one shit about the size of government, ONLY ITS FUNCTION. They are okay with a HUGE government for the purposes of protecting the wealthy and regulating the behavior of the disgusting masses (us). They do not want ONE penny spent on helping poor people. Poor people in the eyes of Conservatives, deserve the torment in which they live. If they were worthy human beings, they wouldn't be poor after all.
Trump, is just what you eventually end up with after a decades long project of courting the worst elements of society. Trump is an incompetent clown. His only real talent is conning people and being a PR person. He is the epitome of where Conservative ideology will get you, just like the inbred Habsburgs, Tudors, etc.. of the era of absolute monarchy (from which Conservatism sprang).
We aren't looking back far enough if we only stop at Reagan. Conservatives have been looking to establish their reimagined feudal society for a lot longer than the 1980's. Reagan was a big step forward in their plan, but this goes back past the 1930's and has been focused on destroying the progress made by BOTH Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, and others.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,163 posts)I don't think anyone brought up Reagan's war against our government. By stating in that snappy slogan ....
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are Im from the government and Im here to help.
- At a press conference on August 12th, 1986, US President Ronald Reagan.
Mysterian
(4,597 posts)Republicans are fascist traitors.
sakabatou
(42,186 posts)tiredtoo
(2,949 posts)Velshi mentioned this a few days ago. Personally I saw it, and switched from rugged individualist to hard core Democrat when Saint Ronnie fired the PATCO workers.
elleng
(131,240 posts)(Sorry for the memory.)
PurgedVoter
(2,220 posts)This not only pegs it, it reveals a lot and connects it. My own origin for this would be the lost cause and all the lies it told to keep the right wing of the day from having to face the truth.
RocRizzo55
(980 posts)When they tried to overthrow FDR.
mahina
(17,724 posts)Who wouldve thought they could find somebody stupider than George W. Bush? Or more corrupt? Could they possibly find somebody stupider and more corrupt than Donald Trump?
God in heaven I hope not.
mwb970
(11,369 posts)BOY was I wrong!!
B.See
(1,333 posts)... of reich winged ideology, The Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society, their varied and sometimes obscure offshoot entities, and dark monied (so-called) 'non-profits' as well as their megawealthy administrators, backers, supporters and sychophants.
They've been writing and dictating policy for the right for DECADES.
Look up The Heritage Foundation, "A Blueprint for a New Administration" The Federalist Society etc.
an old article with an interesting diagram:
Some Unsettling Facts About the Koch Brothers - Headcount.org
and another image I'd saved long ago (source unknown):
Polybius
(15,514 posts)He'd be considered a GOP hero to these guys today.