Question for Older DUers. I was 6 in 1980 when Reagan took over after Carter.

[YOY]

I barely remember the early part of the 80s. Mostly in a child's way I recall taking care of my little sister and brother when mom had to go back to work unwillingly (ALL HAIL REAGAN!), hiding behind the couch during Bruce Banner's transformations in the TV show "The Incredible Hulk", and grandma coming over to cook for us every few days (she lived close).

I just don't remember the political feeling. The blame of the previous administration, unemployment, financial woes, the worries of what would happen, people talking about "the end of the world" etc... I have to ask someone who is older if the current situation is anything like the transition from Reagan to Carter?

If so, could we take this as the final "shoe on the other foot" that we have waited so long for. That is will indeed get better but we will have to persevere?

Am I wrong in feeling this?

[Skink]

1. I was conviced there would be nuclear war. Now our worries have changed..

to financial worries.

[NYC_SKP]

34. Reagan was the shift from fearing Russians to fearing Muslims.

And so much more sustainable, this new enemy.

As the cold war was winding down, and it was based on political and economic differences, we changed directions to a different kind of enemy, one based on theological differences.

And, as we know, these don't change much over time.

It's the far more perfect enemy for those who depend upon our having enemies, if you know what I mean.

I clearly remember the Iran Hostage Crises that ended Carters years and began the Reagan administration.

Curious how quickly the hostages were released.

Hmmmmm.

[begin_within]

2. The "Reagan revolution" was disguised as some sort of "renewal of America,"

in which you were invited to become proud of America again and proud to be an American, after the miasma of the 1970s (Watergate, inflation, disco, Three Mile Island, the Iran hostage crisis, and so forth). It was supposed to be when America was strong, free and proud again - that was the cover story. But in reality it was the beginning of a systematic dismantling of the social contract, detachment of the ruling class from any responsibility, and attacks on tax rates, regulations and government itself. Reagan's election was the first major victory in a phase of the class war which continued (despite Clinton) for 28 years as a triumph for the land-owning, stock-owning, money-owning ruling class, at the expense of everything else, including the public sector.

[avaistheone1]

41. Yes, the "Reagan revolution" was disguised as some sort of "renewal of America

I believe Michael Deaver was its chief propaganda architect and cheerleader.

I felt sick during the Reagan years with all their lies, propaganda and revisionism. Nothing felt real. Reagan's so called "good" economy was all a lie. Our treasury was wasted on needless defense spending that was placed on a credit card which created record debt for this country.

[Uncle Joe]

46. I always thought disco was purifying, a sign of inner strength and Reagen voters were those;

too damn afraid to get out on the dance floor, so they had to ruin it for everybody else.

[begin_within]

47. good point

I just put that in as a little joke

[WI_DEM]

3. I was almost 17, but the transition from Carter to Reagan was somewhat more hostile than

Bush to Obama. It was clear that Carter and Reagan didn't like each other and they didn't put any act to really hide it. I thought Bush, on the whole, seemed more gracious outwardly to the Obama's. But Obama is also doing what Reagan did in 1981, blaming his predecessor for all the ills. Of course, when the Reagan recession hit in 1982-83 he still blamed Carter for that, even though Reagan had been president for over a year. It was that deep recession that finally conquered the inflation of the Carter era, not Reagan's tax cuts for the rich which he said caused "Morning in America" and American's bought it in 1984.

[izquierdista]

4. Not the same

Carter's problems that kept him from being reelected were not because he and his party caused a lot of woe. The 1979 oil crisis was OPEC's doing and he could not reasonably be blamed for the price of oil. Also, his boycott of the 1980 Olympics was a principled stand, and he was fairly well supported for that. Carter really didn't lag in the polls until he put more and more energy into freeing the Iranian hostages, which kept him hostage in the White House and unable to campaign. Then candidate-for-VP Bush has some underhanded dealings with the Iranians, promise them a better deal the longer they keep the hostages and make Carter look ineffectual. Now had some FBI been trailing him and spilled the beans on his talks with the Iranians, that could have sunk Reagan right there.

Carter just had bad timing hit him all the way around: the Iranian hostages on the eve of a re-election year, the 1979 oil price shock, inability to get inflation under control (which is what got Ford dumped before him). And compared to today, the economic woes of the Carter times were much tamer.

[KansDem]

14. I remember a major network (ABC?, NBC?, CBS?) had its "America Held Hostage" campaign....

I forgot which one, but its evening news broadcast began with driving music and opened with a huge banner reading "Day ___: America Held Hostage," followed by the latest out of Iran. Every evening! When the 1980 election came around, we had been fed a daily dose of "helpless/weak America" for over a year. I think this also contributed to the election of Reagan...

[tech3149]

16. That was ABC's Nightline

They also did it on the nightly news but that was what made Nightline.

[KansDem]

18. Thanks!

...for refreshing my memory. :hi:

[FailureToCommunicate]

25. Of course it did. And the drama continued thru the Reagan inaugural which is

why the TV viewer numbers were so high for that "event"

[Uncle Joe]

49. I believe to this day ABC's Nightline held America hostage far more effectively

than the Iranians.

If Gotzbadez; or whatever his name was farted, they reported on it with breathless anticipation.

I also believe that program contributed to the length of time, the hostages were held, quiet diplomacy was subjugated to stretching the "initial" hostage taker's fame well past their 15 minutes. I believe this no doubt encouraged the new Iranian Government to support the initial student hostage takers as a means of bringing more fame and power on to themselves with the side benefit of damaging President Carter.

I believe this obscured to the Iranians that Carter as a humanitarian was far more sympathetic to their historical grievance of having been tortured by the Shah. Reagen would go on to arm Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction, while encouraging war against Iran as a reprisal, killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Iranians and Iraqis. Reagan's Vice-President Bush would later go on to send a yellow signal, not a red one to Saddam in regard to attacking Kuwait, this led to the first Persian Gulf War. I believe this was in large part, because Bush knew Saddam Hussein had too much incriminating evidence against Reagen/Bush. I also believe this is why Bush's unholy spawn; after coming to power through a legalized coup, would go on to suppress Reagan's records from being made public after their alloted time had expired.

Reagan was always a short term thinker; if he ever thought at all, likewise he set us back regarding energy independence and the environment. He reversed President Carter's attempts to wean us off the very product which would incite war; killing millions, destroy the Earth's climate threatening human kind, in-debt us to the largest communist nation on the planet, thereby exploding our national debt, and it would all be done with credit camouflaging to a large degree, his short sighted, incompetent policies

Reagen did have one strength, with the help of the corporate media, he knew how to play image, that's where the "Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall" speech to an already rotting Soviet Union played out, this was the equivalent of telling a dying horse to die.

[KansDem]

56. Excellent post!

...and a thorough analysis. We tend to forget that all these "loose" threads are tied together.

Thanks! :hi:

[WinkyDink]

61. It was ALSO Walter Cronkite at CBS. LINK:

http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Television-The-iranian-hostage-crisis.html

[marshall]

36. I was in Europe in 1980, and people pretty much hated America

I was there for six months with a group of students. We passed ourselves off as German because everyone seemed to be so down on America. We had planned on going to East Berlin but the US Embassy advised us not to. The boycotting of the Olympics made us even more unpopular. It was a pretty crummy time.

[Alcibiades]

62. And you would have been fine, had you gone to the East

I went to East Berlin plenty in 1980. We'd buy East German Marks for pennies on the dollar in the west, falsify the exchange documents by adding a couple of zeroes, and go shopping. Never had any problems as an American in the east--they were probably just instructed not to direct folks to go there on sightseeing trips. Rest assured, folks in the Berlin Brigade--and certainly at the Mission in the West and the Embassy in the east, went over plenty. More hostility at that time to the US from students and hippies in the west, but they were clearly hostile to Reagan, not to individual Amis.

Schultheiss, Apfelkorn and hashish. Good times.

[napi21]

5. Things were pretty bad during the Carter years. Interest rates were

enormous...18% - 20%, mtg. interest rates were 14%-17%, home sales suffered, unemployment was high. My son turned 16 in 1981 and he had a heck of a time finding a job, even in fast food! Then of course there were the hostigages in Iran. People were looking for a savior, and they saw that in Reagan.

He was a gifted communicator, (obviously the acting lessons helped!)and for a while, most people believed in him.

He did a lot of damage to our Country, and we're seeing the end results now. He deliberately destroyed the unions, beginning with the air traffic controlers, deregulated many businesses, and I believe eliminated the interstate banking laws. Banks could only operate within their own state. At the time, it sounded like a good idea to authorize inter-state banking, but we're seeing the end results now!

[CountAllVotes]

11. boy I remember those interest rates

I very badly needed to replace my old 1965 VW. A loan through the credit union was at 16.9%. I couldn't afford a new car with that type of a loan and a new car was about $4,000.00 at that time. So, no new car needless to say. I was making about $6.00 an hr. at that time and going absolutely nowhere fast.

And then came Reagan. :puke:

:kick:

[napi21]

35. The only upside to those interest rates were IRA's. My MIL passed away aroung that time, and

we inherited a whopping $4,000. I convinced my hubby to buy a 10 IRA, and the interest rate was 11.5% APR.

[CountAllVotes]

37. yes, I remember that

they practically guaranteed that ALL IRA's would pay 10% when I first began contributing to one. It was in the market briefly.

Luckily I still have all of it and then some due to a pension cash out. I was advised in 2006 to "leave it in there" so I'd get more more more more more. I said, "Cut me out a check and I'll handle it myself". That was another smart move in hindsight. I did not trust the BFFE any more then than I do now and yes, they are still holding lots of power in lots of some not so obvious positions right now.



:dem:

[cottonseed]

54. Question about interest rates

I've been wondering if those interest rates were related to personal bank/savings accounts. Was the interest one earned on their savings anywhere near those rates then?

[napi21]

55. I don't remembr for sure, but I think savings accounts were at around 6%..

If you had any money, times were good.

[cottonseed]

58. Thanks, I just saw the post above that said 10% for IRAs.

I suppose inflation eats up a lot of that, but 10% return on cash doesn't sound like a bad deal. I'm wondering with the possiblity of inflation coming in a year, 2 years or so if we'll revisit any of that.

[liberal N proud]

6. America was bamboozled by the "Reagan Revolution"

The Iranian hostage ordeal which amazingly was resolved within days of Reagan election.

Those were the days when liberal became a BAD word. Much of the political climate today is a result of the Reagan policies. Limbaugh hate radio was born and 24/7 news coverage was just an infant and easily branded.

[KansDem]

15. Also the so-called "Reagan Democrats"

He appealed to racist/sexist democrats who were already nervous about change during the 1960s, particularly in the areas of civil rights and feminism. I believe many of these voters felt alienated and identified with Nixon's "Silent Majority" in the wake of the 1960s riots and protests...

on edit: And I believe many of these "Reagan Democrats" went on to switch to the Republican Party...

[utford]

63. That happened because

The Iranians knew that Reagan would send the might of the US military to pound them - not a couple of helicopters on an ineffectual mission. Carter embarrassed the US with his response to the Iranian hostage crisis.

[Venceremos]

7. I was 18 when Reagan took office

and I was worried about nuclear war, too. Pretty much everybody was worried about it because Reagan played the cowboy role fairly well. There was a movie called "The Day After" and Sting released a song titled "Russians" - both were about the threat of nuclear holocaust.

The political feeling as I remember was "live beyond your means with gusto". That was prompted, in my opinion, by the Reagan's unapologetic lavish lifestyle, which was in stark contrast to the Carter's humble lifestyle. The new Reaganite attitude spawned very popular TV shows that glorified extreme wealth, like Dallas, Dynasty, Knot's Landing, and the one about the winery. A lot of people took it to heart, and regardless of their financial situation, the "looking wealthy" lifestyle (that has contributed to the current recession) got its foothold during the Reagan years.

[TBF]

51. I remember that god-awful movie. I was 14 that year. And I agree with

your assessment as well - the Reagan/Bush years glorified wealth and living beyond your means.

[DangerousRhythm]

60. A lot of new wave music was about nuclear war...

...before Sting's "Russians", but of course his is memorable. I could probably put together an amazing nuclear 80s playlist, actually. :D

Regarding "The Day After", if any of you were scared by that, Britain's http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/">"Threads" is even scarier to watch. :scared:

[terisan]

8. Carter raised human rights as an issue which was a big plus. However he pressed the Shah of Iran

on his human rights abuses and, I believe, inadvertently helped the cause of the Ayatollah Khomeini who took over Iran, committed incredible human rights abuses, and kept the American embassy employees hostage, thus damaging Carter's chances of being re-elected.

Carter would probably have been a much more successful president if he had been able to be elected later in his life.

[mrs_p]

9. i was 6yo too in 1980

but in the early 80's, i remember my single parent mother crying every night because she couldn't pay the bills and was going to lose the house. i remember counting pennies and looking all over the house for a few more to make 100 - enough to buy a bag of beans which is all we had to eat. i remember el salvadorians fleeing their country to come to my church where they found sanction so they too wouldn't be cut up and thrown onto their families lawns. i remember thinking we were all going to die from a big blast. i remember not understanding how people could EVER like those mean reagans (mr and mrs).

[YOY]

12. Never had it as bad as you.

Sorry if I dredged up old bad memories. Some memories are best left infrequently recalled but never forgotten.

[DangerousRhythm]

59. Wow, you and I were the same age AND in the same boat...

I remember seeing Carter on TV on the day of the bicentennial so I guess I have a bit of a long memory for politics, haha. Concerning 1980 though, I ate so much Campbell's tomato soup that I can't even LOOK at it today, even though I love tomatoes. I was lucky to be fed eggs and luckier to get milk. The government cheese was surprisingly tasty, I gotta say. I remember the Iran situation and I used to have frequent nightmares about nuclear war. What a time! :o

[mrs_p]

65. yeah, good times

:D i thought for sure we would never see our teens!

mom was too proud to get government cheese - she would even make us take back any food the nuns sent us home with (i used to hide some from her so my sis and i could eat)

[DangerousRhythm]

66. Same here! I was sure we'd be atomized.

:nuke:

When I was really young, maybe 5 or 6 years old at most, my mother taught me how to steal from the supermarket so I'd wind up with packages of meat or beans or something down my pants and looking back I feel bad about it but we were really, really hungry and weren't getting enough help from welfare so it was either survive or starve. :blush:

I still crave government cheese... I'd love just a small brick of it and kind of wish I could buy it somewhere. :rofl:

[OHdem10]

10. Not the same---People were angry over gas prices and inflation

(high interest rates) but Business and Wall
Street were still pretty much respected. The hostility
was more party to party. The people had not become
as aware as they are now. Of course GOP piled it on
Carter implying they had all the answers. Reagan had
the personality which instilled confidence(deserved or
not). The fact that Wall Street looks like a bunch
of greedy crooks who put the screws to the Middle
Class has created a much more general hostility in the
case today. There is much more underlying anger among
the populace today. Trade Laws--Exporting Jobs, Outsourcing
work, Bringing in Workers from other countries to work
at lower wages have been keeping Americans at a slow
burn--then this Housing Crisis just fuels the fires of
discontent..

Different conditions and different times.
I

[DCofVA]

13. It's not at all the same

American's were much better off under Carter than we were under Bush II.
I lost my job as a sales person for solar powered water heaters after St. Reagan took office. He pretty much killed all the efforts to establish energy independence. Just imagine how better off America would be now if we had just continued the conservation programs that had been started under Carter.

[MADem]

17. One word: MALAISE.

And here's a pile of other words to go with that!!

Of course, people were starting up on the "greed is good" meme under Reagan, and consequently, they paid less attention than they perhaps should have about politics. People were into the Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, Gucci, Pucci, Fiorucci lifestyle, and that was when fucking idiots suddenly started to really care about "brand names"--to the extent that they gleefully turned themselves into billboards for shit--"Members Only" jackets (bwahahahahahaha!!!), Ray-Ban sunglasses....!!! My GAWD, the absolute FOOLISHNESS!

Now, prior to that, in the Nixon into Ford into Carter era, it was MALAISE on steroids, with poverty, acid rain, rusty cars, the LOVE CANAL (Nixon actually was an environmental President of sorts, he started the EPA and recognized that the environment would be a future issue--one of the few things he did "right" even though he was politically motivated), rampant inflation that got really bad under Ford's short tenure, gas shortages and even-odd gas rationing under Carter with the "energy crisis" as the media termed it, along with a reemphasis on ethics and a paring back of wasteful spending, which was the best thing to come out of the era but unfortunately was tossed out the window when the DESERT ONE mess happened (failed hostage rescue) and Reagan came in.

Reagan talked a lot about shrinking government down (to the Norquistian size where it could be drowned in the bathtub) but while his administration classified CATSUP as a VEGETABLE in school lunch programs, he spent BILLIONS and BILLIONS on the Department of Defense, building up a six hundred ship Navy (that was quickly--and painfully, in terms of the number of personnel who were shitcanned-- cut in half as soon as his ass was out the door) and spending money we didn't have, hand over fist, on that fucking waste of money, Star Wars, and the B-1 bomber and a host of idiotic defense expenditures (while paying lip service to the troops, but not improving barracks or facilities for them in any meaningful way--CLINTON did that).

There's no "final shoe." There will be a period of equilibrium after we get through this mess, and then, years later, the same crap will happen, in perhaps a different way. My advice to you as a (relative)youngster--don't neglect the savings account, don't buy more house than you can afford, or more car than you can afford, if you invest in the stock market, look at it as legalized gambling, and be liberal in your thinking, but conservative, or at least sensible, in your investment practices. Remember--if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

A trip down memory lane, for some: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JZp215Bgyk

[YOY]

20. I'm already there financially.

Doing well enough. Never bit when I shouldn't have bitten. Know how to invest.

[TygrBright]

19. It was a perfect storm of economic, social, political, and cultural forces.

Economically, we were seeing the end of the post-WWII economic boom, combined with the mounting costs of subsidizing the war in Vietnam. The post-WWII economic boom was enabled by the huge accumulation of household savings during WWII, while defense spending transferred cash from the government (in the form of military spending) to the citizenry. War conditions and shortages, combined with the lingering fears from the Depression, and the War Bonds campaigns, resulted in a huge buildup of cash in the hands of the middle three economic quintiles of the population.

The spending of that cash on housing and consumer goods during the 50s and 60s, combined with continued high rates of government spending for the Cold War and the space race, created a boom which turned into a bubble. In the early 1970s when the savings were spent and taxes remained high due to continued spending on the Vietnam war, economic conditions began to deteriorate. They were kept manageable only because of the more progressive taxation structure, tighter fiscal regulations, and surprisingly progressive measures from the Nixon Administration (wage & price controls, etc.) But Wall Street hated them, and real people still felt a lot of pain.

At the same time, social change was restructuring American geography. Infrastructure investments during the go-go Fifties had resulted in a geography that combined highways and interstates with suburban residential development, and created the conditions for white flight as a response to the continued northern migration of minorities that had gathered steam during the war. Inner cities began to crumble, and as the baby boom generation hit adolescence in the late 60s and 70s, a demographic phenomenon occured: increasing crime rates.

Politically, the GOP had received a series of harsh kicks, starting with the close defeat of Nixon in the 1960 election. An attempt by conservative ideologues to swing the party sharply rightward in the 1964 election had been decisively rebuffed and sent those same ideologues and the plutocrats who funded them into the bunker to plan further mayhem over a longer time horizon. Nixon's victory in 1968 was a product of the growing polarization from Vietnam and a disorganized Democratic Party struggling with its own cultural and ideological changes. His re-election in 1972 was the product of criminal manipulation of the political and electoral processes, and the harshest kick of all was the 1974 repudiation of the GOP in the mid-term elections, fueled by the resignation of Nixon.

Finally, America was in the process of a spate of cultural changes happening at an increasingly rapid rate. Most of these cultural changes, in retrospect, can be seen as sensible structural adjustments to changing demographic and economic realities, but at the time they appeared to be largely ideological. And the Democratic Party accepted the credit for them --in some cases, justifiably (as in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that facilitated the march to racial equity) and in some cases, merely because it worked conceptually. Or because the Democratic Party was less vigorous in opposing the changes than the GOP.

By the middle of the 1970s, the economic downturn, the changing social geography, the political momentum built by the GOP conservative planners and a Democratic Party riddled with dissension and corruption, was a powderkeg waiting for a match.

The match was geopolitical change that produced, for the first time in decades, the awareness that America was not the sole master of the world's fate. Our growing dependence on developing theocracies and kleptocracies for energy, trade, and other key economic factors-- could be exploited, and was, to produce negative results for America.

All the while, the GOP conservative wing (by now, essentially, the Neocons, the cabal we know and detest,) had been working hard to attach Americans' outrage and pain with negative economic, political, and social changes, firmly to the Democratic Party. Like tying a tin can to a dog's tail. They coupled all of the tangible economic and social problems that citizens felt to cultural changes perceived as "Democratic" (in the partisan sense) phenomena.

THAT was what resulted in Reagan's victory and the resulting 30-year spree of looting the Treasury and shredding the Constitution.

I do not think you are wrong in your perception that things will, indeed, get better, but that we will have to persevere. We have thirty years' worth of very nasty mess to clean up, and while we have been having our little orgy, the world has changed considerably. And we have not been paying attention to it, because after all, we are AMERICA and when we pipe, everyone dances, right? so there is no point in pay attention to what all those other second-class nations out there are up to, because we'll bring them into line when we need to, anyway.

It's actually a much bigger job than the GOPpies faced in 1980. It's the difference between opening all the doors, unlocking the liquor cabinet, cranking up the stereo system, and vandalizing any neighbors who objected to the noise and mess; and coming home to the results of the party-- the trashed home and neighborhood.

I do think we are up to it. But it won't happen overnight.

discursively,
Bright

[8 track mind]

21. I was 8 when all of this went down

I remember most of the kids in school were brainwashed by their parents to believe that Reagan was perfect. All sorts of hell broke loose after he took office. My folks had just built a new house and i remember them complaining about the interest rate. My Dad worked in sales for an electrical parts distributor and they really started putting pressure on him to make his numbers. Nobody was buying jack in the early 80's. The stress started to get to him. He was a Vietnam combat vet and he started having bouts of PTSD at night. My brother and i avoided him as much as possible. Mom started teaching again and Dad started doing odd house repair jobs to get by.

It was around 1982 that hardcore poverty started creeping into the small town in the Ozarks that we lived in. Kids were coming to school in torn clothes, with no lunches, and no school supplies. Around this time, people got the idea that it was ok to flash wealth in front of everybody else, thus the yuppie was born. People were looking for an anger outlet at this time and the Neo Nazi's and KKK started gaining power in the south.

The biggest thing i remember from that time was that the Southern Baptists started gaining power. Rock music was evil, Ozzy Osbourne was just waiting to convert you to satanism, dungeons and dragons would make you want to kill yourself. The same thing went for Judas Priest. The hardest thing Rock 99 FM in Springfield would play was Donna Summer. We were proselytized at school constantly! I still have a huge collection of Jack T. Chick tracts from grade school.

Fast forward to 1988. We had moved to Texas by this time and my dad and i were going to cut firewood for the winter. We stopped at a gas station near the Texas/Oklahoma border to fill up some gas cans for the chain saws. We had three people approach us asking if we would employ them for the day. My Dad had to turn them away. as we were driving off he made a comment to the effect that he hoped the Reagan-ites were happy with the results of Reaganomics. The average guy couldn't get a job.

Thats the day i became a Liberal Union Loving Democrat.

[CountAllVotes]

22. only pukes thought Reagan was "perfect"

no one and I mean NO ONE in my family voted for Ronnie the Raygun. He did a lot of damage to Calif. when he was governor.

ENOUGH! was said a long long time ago re: this horse's ASS.

:kick:

[8 track mind]

23. My co-worker here was in Cali when raygun was Gov

He has nothing pleasant to say about him. However he does have a label on the side of his workbench that reads "The Ronald Raygun Memorial Workbench"

No one in my family voted for him either. It was scary to see how many people were just in LOVE with this dumb ass. It got worse during the dubya years.

Refresh my memory, didn't he cut a whole bunch of programs in the state of Cali?

[CountAllVotes]

26. yes he did

Because of this awhole, it caused tremendous hardship upon my family. I had a younger brother (now DEAD) that had a severe problem and required special help. Reagun knocked out all of the help for these types of children.

My father worked 3 jobs, my mother worked 2 jobs. My older brother and I were latch key kids coming home to no one in the house. I had to cook and clean the house at the age of 11 years old and iron my father's clothes for work. I still have a huge scar on my wrist from burning it with the iron as a reminder.

He was hated by many, believe me.

:dem:

[8 track mind]

31. Oh man!

Man i am so sorry to hear about your brother. You don't have to answer this if you don't want, but am i correct to assume that the cutbacks led to your brothers death? Do you remember what Reagan's justification was for all the cut backs? I ask because i know very little of what happened in Cali.

Latch Key Kid. Man that is a phrase i haven't heard of in a long time. That was huge problem where i was at in the 80's and the fucking Baptists blamed it on greedy parents and the lack of material possessions.

[CountAllVotes]

33. my brother did not receive the care he needed

being it couldn't be afforded they wanted to put him in the State Hosptial FOR LIFE! My late mother, a devout Catholic wouldn't allow it! Because of this, her and my father tried to do everything they could for him. This involved in giving him many very experimental treatments.

He died of cancer at the age of 42. He was not right in the head but managed to make a go of it anyway.

He was abused and experimented on and luckily had little memory of it. I blame REAGUN for his death, you damn right I do!

:dem:

[YOY]

24. But the myth they created was everlasting and planned.

I saw holes in it when I realized that they propped him us as "defeating the Soviet Union."

Ask a Russian what made the Soviet Union fall...they will inevitably answer "The Soviet Union." The "tear down this wall" comment made at such a time when he knew it would come down whether he said so or not.

Amazing how they played history to sing their praises.

[8 track mind]

27. exactly

The myth is so powerful that a group of people were wanting to put his face on the freaking dime and Mt. Rushmore a few years back. It was scary then and it's even scarier now.

[CountAllVotes]

28. some of us older folks remember him all too well

and yes, he was hated.

I'd happily do a dance on his grave in fact. He basically ruined my family's entire life. :nuke:

And the residuals we are seeing today with the corrupt stock market, these "401K's" that did not exist until the likes of Ronnie emerged, etc.

Anyone foolish enough to believe in the "trickle down" got trickled on by now. I hope they are enjoying ever stupid second of it!

:kick:

[Bread and Circus]

29. The Reagan revolution was a response to Peak Oil

The United States was the Saudi Arabia of oil in the 50's and 60's, that's why economics was so good back then. But in the 70's the U.S. oil production peaked and began it's inevitable decline. This was like a mid sized economic meteor hitting the United States and made a lot of things a lot worse. Carter, unfortunately, inherited this problem. His approach was to confront this like adults and change our ways, trying to set the stage for transitioning to a non-fossil fuel future. However, the American people weren't ready for hard truths and looked for easy answers. Reagan came along and blamed it all on liberals, welfare queens, and the like. He offered an alternative reality of easy answers, cheap oil by way of perpetual war in the mideast, and jingoistic bromides. Seeing as how there still was a lot of cheap oil in the world, it kind of worked but at great cost. Like others have said, the last 28 years have been a coordinated effort to dismantle the new deal and take us back to the gilded age. Furthermore, nothing was put in place to deal with the greater threat, world Peak Oil, which we are now at the dawn of.

Had Carter been able to serve for 2 terms and had we faced our problems as adults instead of like 2 year olds looking for easy answers, we would be better off right now driving electric cars, fueled by our own electricity and buying products and vehicles made by our fellow Americans.

Instead we are at the brink on so many fronts, slave to foreign oil, foreign money, and our average American worker in direct competition with peasants that have no choice than to work for pennies and work in bad conditions.

We are all peasants now.

[polichick]

43. Good summary!

[Burma Jones]

30. We were depressed (Malaise), we had two big Energy Price Increases

Nixon, The loss of Vietnam, The Fuckin' Eagles, Japan was surely going to overtake the US as the largest economy, Iran Hostages, just a general sense that our best days were far behind us........

So we hired an Entertainer to make us feel better..........

And now we have a hangover that was put off for too long by staying drunk......

[Vinca]

32. Reagan was a real sweetheart. That's when ketchup became a vegetable

for kids getting lunches at school.

[Karenina]

40. I was 30 and witnessed his dismantling of the solar panels

:mad::cry::mad::cry::mad: 'Nuff said.

[polichick]

38. One of the first things Reagan did was to remove the solar panels Carter installed...

...from the White House ~ everything went to hell from there imo.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

39. The Most Important Thing

The most important thing to take away from the experience from a strictly electoral standpoint is that Reagan successfully blamed Carter for the recession for the first year or so of his administration. Then the electorate blamed him and the Republicans got thumped in the 82 mid-terms.

[benld74]

42. Reagan, Bush and Bush were PLACED into the WH in order to carry

out the GOP policies. They did as they were told, with nary a brain cell between them. The real power layed somewhere else.

[southernyankeebelle]

44. In 1980 I was

In Heilberg, Germany with my husband and my child living on the military base. I didn't vote for Reagan but I will say that he did bring pride back to the military. He didn't do much for vet's though. Carter came into office and did leave with honor. He wasn't a good president but he didn't try to screw the middle class and plus he was a Naval Academy graduate which says alot. People can honestly say Carter was a good man. Reagan was a good speaker. He was an actor playing a president. He really didn't do anything for the middle class. I don't remember getting much from our income tax any time during Reagan's administration or any republican for that matter. This last income tax refund I received has been the first time my husband and I actully got close to $1,000 back. That is because of the democratics in power. Reagan was the one that started deregulation starting with the aircraft controllers. That is when republicans started demonisizing unions. Although Reagan courted the religious right he kept them at arms length. Honestly the religious right loved Reagan yet he had a very dysfunctional family. You didn't see the Reagan's go to church. It was a myth. Reagan made the country feel better but really we needed that at the time. Obama in some was is like that but is more for the people than Reagan was.

[Jennicut]

45. YOY, I was born in 1975. I don't remember anything either.

[mimitabby]

48. this was when I realized how bad it was

That the GOP would package a bad actor to play president. I cringed every time I heard him speak. I was outraged that my husband (partially) believed the SOB was doing a good job.

Those of you who saw through W would have seen through Ronnie too.

[goodgd_yall]

50. I saw Reagan as the end of any progress we had made

I was not a fan at all. But I was in the minority apparently. I now see Obama as the administration that can overturn all the bad policies--the laissez-faire for business policies---that Reagan instituted. It's the end, hopefully, of a particular mindset of deregulation and hatred for government.

[catnhatnh]

52. The MSM and the Killer Rabbit....

or how the media helps cement the image of Democratic Presidents.

On a fishing trip in Plains, Georgia, President Carter had an encounter with a "swamp rabbit". This seemingly trivial event was seized upon by the press and became a sort of Rorschach test of the Carter presidency: reporters and commentators saw in this story whatever they wanted to see in Carter's administration. Jody Powell, Carter's press secretary, described the affair in his 1986 book The Other Side of the Story: (snip)

The President then evidently shooed the critter away from his boat with a paddle. The scene was captured on film by a White House photographer.
The incident might have died of natural causes but for the fact that Powell himself later passed the story along to the press: (snip)

The Washington Post, exercising the news judgement that we in the White House had come to appreciate so keenly, headed the piece President Attacked by Rabbit and ran it on the front page. The more cautious New York Times boxed it on page A-12. That night, all three networks found time to report the amazing incident. But that was just the beginning.
It was a nightmare. The story ran for more than a week. The President was repeatedly asked to explain his behavior at town hall meetings, press conferences, and meetings with editors. (snip)

Shortly after the Reagan administration took office, they stumbled upon a copy of the picture -- apparently while searching for a foreign policy -- and reopened the old wounds by releasing it to the press. (snip)

For the rest of the story and the "Rabbit Photo":
http://web.narsil.org/index/peopl/jimmycarter/killerrabbit

[historian]

53. fear and prejudice

Reagan was an ignorant scum bag. When he noticed that he could profit from the red scare and mc carthyism he began turning in hollywood script writers, ruining their lives. Well, never mind but he was ignorant and knew nothing but baseball (sound familiar)? He went ndto Germany to honor the Gis' who had invaded during ww11 and found himself standing in front of the graves of dead ss soldiers and hadnt a clue where he was till he was nudged away. Anyway, as soon as he came to power he immediately began to attack welfare mothers (queens as he called them) claiming that they went in their cadillacs to pick up their welfare checks. He pitted one against the other, mostly the wealthy against the poor and middle class (sound familiar again)? It was the era in which greed and corruption went through the roof and where the phrase "greed is good" came from. He encouraged companies to move overseas with tax breaks etc...To make a long story short, he played on the average american's ignorance. He was personable and likeable so he could get away with anything which he did. During his tenure, the S & L's collapsed (papa bush his vice president was in charge of supervising the sl's encouraged them to engage in practice banking, something they were not suited for). His son Neil made a killing with a failed colorado sl.
Reagan didnt actual use fear as numbnuts bush did; but he divided the country, turning poor against wealthy and middle class against everyone else. He was the "gipper" riding into the sunset on his horse and boy did people feel good. What was the reality? It was the age of mergers - private companies buying others, splitting them up, selling off the pieces and firing everyone. But he was the gipper and what did the average joe idiot know? As usual, nothing.
It seems that the republicans excel at offering us either ignorant dishonest bigots (nixon) plain blithering fools (dan quayle) war mongers (papa bush who also couldnt speak english as son numb nuts does) and then of course we had the crowning glory of the biggest fool in history W.
Why did he win? Because carter used a phrase (which was true then and true now) that there was a malaise in the country which had to be addressed. Reagan dismissed that as pessimism, got on his horse and rode off into the sunset singing "It's morning in America!"

[appleannie1]

57. Only time in my almost 50 yr marriage that my hub was laid off for 3 straight yrs

was during the Reagan years. My brother worked in a public office and had a sign made for his desk that said "Don't bitch to me - I didn't vote for him" because he got tired of people complaining. I still had kids at home and they qualified for free lunches. We lost everything we owned except our house. Our bank let us make a lot of interest payments, something banks today won't do. After our car was repossessed, my hub made a car out of two wrecked ones he got for $20.00. One was wrecked in the front, the other in the back. He put them together to make one car, cream color in the front, dark brown in the back but that old Plymouth ran. But I think things are worse today. It took years for the bubble to burst so it is going to take a while to get things turned around. A lot of people are going to learn a different set of values in the meantime and what the really important things in life are. If they cannot accept that, they are the ones that are doomed. Those of us that can acclimate and change how we live, will end up stronger in the end.

[santamargarita]

64. It was a silent coup to get rid of the middle class

The 70's scared the elite, so they needed some self-described charismatic asshole to trick the public into believing anything.

[otohara]

67. Cocaine

that's how I remember the 80's.

I worked in the record business at the time...but everyone was getting high.