I was real young when Nixon was around, so maybe he had that effect.
Reagan, he blew, but he didn’t threaten the existence of the foundation of our government.
I don’t think Reagan threatened the existence of the foundation of our government so much as he undermined it completely and created a culture of inculcated fear. He slashed entitlement programs while changing public opinion of entitlements, brought overbearing religiosity into conservatism, embraced the Southern Strategy and the bogus War On Drugs, helped to create the Taliban, appointed Greenspan to head the Fed and help destabilize banking, etc. He caused the end of the Soviet Union, but only because he outspent and out-crazied the Soviets. He created the type of environment that made a Trump presidency a possibility. However, I think the only way Trump could do worse is if he legit becomes a dictator. I don’t buy into the hype that this will happen, though. Bad shit will happen, but (I hope!) only on the level of George W Bush to Reagan.
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from your lips to God’s ears…
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He also introduced the concept that a brainless narcissist is a great President just because he’s good on TV.
Trump ain’t a Shrub/Reagan, though, and the climate situation is not one in which backtracking is survivable.
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Are you addressing Cory or the editors who wrote the article at N+1? I’m not familiar with that magazine. Have they generally been supportive of or silent on executive expansion under Democratic administrations?
I think the slight confusion over your comment came from trying to figure out if the you you used was generic, or merely directed at the author(s) you quoted.
Lots of people on the left have been opposed to executive expansion for a number of reasons, that it would eventually fall into even worse hands chief, though not sole, among them.
Specifically this was a bit confusing…
Wasn’t it before?
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I’m not much of a Reagan fan but he WAS governor of the most populous state in the Union. That’s a totally legit resume builder for someone seeking the Presidency.
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Arf.
It will be, and already is, worse. Not because of Trump alone, but because of the sort of people he’ll appoint in an era where racial and sexual discrimination are steeply rising along with hate crimes while white nationalism is going mainstream.
Well, him and rest of the alt-right and some of the center-right Dems.
I was initially wary at him being chosen to take over the Daily Show due to some comments he’d made in past disparaging atheists, but the more I see, the more I’m glad I gave him a chance. He was the right choice for host.
Not to forget the media themselves. Decades of vacuous crap, cheerleading Bush’s wars, hours of footage of Trump’s empty podium…
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Grover Norquist. And yes, exactly. The Right has been fantasizing about dismantling the government for decades. Because they love America, I guess.
And just think how happy—how cozy and beloved—we’ll all feel when we’re raised in a Skinner box by the chicken-wire-and-burlap mother of the Free Market!
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To be fair, that was one hell of a podium. The best podium. It’s unbelievable.
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That was quite the evocative image/reference!
Except for military and law enforcement, of course. For all the talk from the Right about protecting Americans from jack-booted government thugs it seems that there’s no such thing as too many uniformed people carrying guns.
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Yes, I did care about that before election day.
As for Godwinizing, I challenge you to show a president in living memory who more warranted the comparison.
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