General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Did anyone else realize this country was finished on January 20, 1981? [View all]MuseRider
(34,060 posts)To me it seemed like everything that had come about beforehand that was good and positive for people both as a society and individually stopped. It just stopped. Our baser instincts were celebrated and here we are. We have declined continually since then.
The hostage crisis was obviously used for Reagan to be elected. Hardly anybody was paying attention but those who did knew that the hostages would be saved only by Reagan.
The way Carter was savaged over his energy saving ideas and the way we went headlong to use everything and anything without thought to the future. After all we deserved it NOW, right? Greed? Well if you are greedy that is OK, that is just the way you are. Same with anything else, no reason to lift up all because some people don't deserve good things and they especially don't deserve your hard earned money. Tough luck for some is good luck for others.
We lost our desire to achieve greatness. We lost our desire to perfect ourselves. We lost our desire for enlightenment. We stopped wanting to help others so that all could be educated well and live the best to their ability. I believe the bumpersticker He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins came out of those days. <----not certain but it explained exactly where we were shortly after his election. It is just another outrage I remember seeing around that time.
Yes Don. I was hardly paying a lot of attention at that time but I was stunned and shocked, but not surprised by how things changed and how quickly it did. Once we unleashed ourselves and celebrated our most base characteristics we were done. Difficult to raise ourselves back up, after all Limbaugh (I believe he came about during the Reagan administration) and all the others who have crawled out from under their rocks make that seem pure silliness.