One can hardly enter a political discussion without the name of Ronald Reagan being invoked. Sometimes it’s positive, as in, “he was the greatest President of all time!” Sometimes it’s not so favorable, like, “he was a corporate shill puppet that destroyed the middle class and helped lay the roots of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”
Then there is the guy who steps in between and talks in real general platitudes about “pros and cons” and “the good and the bad.” Yeah, we’ve all been there in that perpetual circle of a conversation where everyone eventually “agrees to disagree.”
It’s time to end the debate. And this short film, less than five minutes in length, does just that.
This clip focuses on how Reagan was really just a spokesperson. It shows how Don Regan, Reagan’s treasury secretary, was really the brains of the operation. It also shows how back in 1984, people who supported and rallied behind Reagan did so on general platitudes and “happy talk.” When you really look at what happened, namely the deficit exploding, the wealthy and corporations being generously relieved of at least half of their tax burdens, and the beginning of an age of stagnant wages for everyone else - that is the story of the Reagan presidency. It was a time when the White House was hijacked by Wall Street and big business.
And, that’s not even getting into the foreign policy disasters like when Reagan essentially sentenced hundreds of U.S. Marines to be executed in Beirut. Scandals from the Middle East to Latin America which led to record numbers of indictments and convictions. And oh yeah, that was the decade foreign competition really socked it to us but as the film shows, that wasn’t exactly by chance or accident.
And America hasn’t been the same since.
Check out the brilliance HERE:
But wait, you say, “Sean, you said Reagan destroyed America in less than five minutes. Not that the film was less than five minutes in that headline. I cry foul!”
My reply? Reagan’s swearing-in took less than five minutes. That was all it took to set the wheels in motion. Wheels that would make Americans no longer be able to sustain their standard of living on just one income. Wheels that would turn us from a creditor nation into a debtor nation. And, wheels that would crush unions and organized labor so the billionaires could get back to calling all the shots like they did in the Gilded Age.
I’ll stand behind the headline, on more than one level.
Featured image via video screen capture
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