Reagan Made Us Weak [DOT 7/3/22]

Sacrifice is for suckers

Truth.

This is going to be brief, for two primary reasons.  The first is that I’m pinch hitting because Meg needs a well-deserved break.  The second is that we all have lives and don’t have a fucking hour to burn in the morning.

Anyway, I was watching CBS Sunday Morning, and there was some discussion about the war in Ukraine and—while discussing the possibility of even tougher sanctions on Russia—someone said something to the effect that Russians are quite used to hardship, but that Americans most certainly are not.  This reminded me of the fact that it wasn’t always that way.  Hello, Great Depression.  Hello, World War II.  Hello, The Entirety of our Existence in the 19th Century.  But, at some point, we started really letting go of the idea that it is our shared commitment to each other as a people which enabled this nation to pull through crisis after crisis without completely going to shit.  By the time of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the economy was essentially in the toilet, there was a major energy crunch due to a conflict with OPEC (and Nixon’s decision to engage in a federal policy of price fixing), and inflation was soaring.  So, President Carter decided to get on the TV and talk to the nation about how we’ve put more importance on acquiring material goods and other superficial pursuits of affluence, than on maintaining our commitment to each other.

The story we hear today is that Carter’s “malaise” speech was a total flop.  The reality is that it was actually very well received—his approval numbers jumped by 11 points after that speech.  But Carter made a number of tactical errors afterward—such as shitcanning his entire cabinet—which eventually soured the polling bump.  Then, he found himself besieged on the left by Ted Kennedy and on the right by Ronald Reagan—both of whom made a point of telling the public that we didn’t need to make no stinkin’ sacrifices, and that we should feel free to live without any concern for the consequences of our actions.  Basically, they were saying “YOLO, motherfuckers!” and this country ate it up and asked for seconds.

Our problem, ever since then, is that every single candidate for president has accepted Reagan’s premise as Gospel.  If you want to win the election, the last thing you can do is tell Americans that maybe they should think twice before telling their personal surveillance system of choice to order more crap, or be more concerned about Kim and Kanye than they are about our 3rd World infrastructure.  No, no, no.  If you’re a Real American, you need to buy, buy, buy!  Live your life without any fear of needing to sacrifice anything for anyone—certainly not any of those dirty, undeserving poors.  We just came out of the longest period of uninterrupted war in our nations history, and at no point did the vast majority of this country ever have to concern themselves about changing a single habit or making one solitary sacrifice.  To point that out is the kiss of death for any politician in this country.

So, don’t tell me how Reagan single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War and Made America Great.  He set us all up to be a bunch of soft, whiny, entitled assholes, who will absolutely go totally apeshit the very moment that a Russian cyberattack, or a US sanction that actually means something, results in our inability to have unfettered access to our bread and circuses.  Once something like that happens, we will collectively turn on President Biden (or, really, any White House occupant) and kick our rhetorical solidarity for Ukraine to the metaphorical curb.  Reagan made us weak—and that’s just how we like it.

Sports!

Nobody knows what this asshole is thinking, including him.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/packers/2022/03/05/aaron-rodgers-has-packers-putting-their-future-hold-till-he-decides/9393772002/?gnt-cfr=1

Stocks! Bonds, because they tell you shit you don’t get from stocks!

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-06/bond-market-sees-a-recession-in-the-oil-shock

War!  (Huh!) What is it good for?  Twitter, apparently.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60608222

Puppies!

This is definitive proof that dogs are so much better than cats, because no fucking way would this happen if the tables were turned.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/cat-being-embraced-by-two-black-puppies-on-the-street-is-too-cute-to-miss-101646571582738.html

Enjoy your day—but not too much, because you’re a bunch of selfish bastards who need to rethink your life choices.  Vote, Butcherbakertoiletrymaker, 2024!

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 595 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

26 Comments

  1. The military spending spree and weapons upgrades began under Carter. The near bankruptcy of the US Navy and stupid unrealistic expensive 600 warship Navy was the fault of Raygun (the USN only hit 600 warships at the peak of WW2 which was a different kind of war than what the Navy faced in the Cold War.)

    Also thank Team B which was mostly made up of the neocon clowns who brought us Iraqinam 2003. They equated Soviet coastal low tonnage patrol boats with much larger blue water warships like destroyers and cruisers in order to scare the shit out of Congress for money. Outside of their subs and missile armed bombers, the Soviet Navy has proven to be more of a threat to itself than the Free World.

    • The autobiography of his budget director, David Stockman, is one of the few political memoirs worth reading. He’s fairly candid how much of supply side economics was absolute BS, and how happily the DC press let itself be spun by Reagan’s PR team.

      And it’s striking how, even after he lifted the lid, the DC press closed it and refused to change their narrative that supply side was serious and valid.

      Reagan and his PR team knew how desperately the political press wanted narratives and how predisposed they were toward right wing ones. As long as they hit their marks and said their lines, the press was never going to give liberals — or the truth — a fair shot.

    • I was wondering how that was going. I crossed the picket line and clicked on to the Jezebel website yesterday I think, or maybe Saturday, and the last post was for 7 PM from the previous Monday. I idly wondered if Spamfellow would just leave it like that, no future postings, no explanation, like someone’s personal blog that had been abandoned years ago but still somehow online.

      I doubt that the concessions would include efforts to revive the once thriving, rambunctious comments sections, because I’m sure the bloggers are as opposed to that as he is.

    • They actually got a decent amount of press that was reasonably neutral — which was bad for Spanfeller and Great Hill.

      It will be interesting to see if this was a case of the people in charge of the money deciding ending the reputation hit was worth overruling Spanfeller for once. Or in an ideal world, kicking Spanfeller to the curb for good.

      He did a lot of casual evil that did nothing for the bottom line, and probably hurt it in minor ways that could be papered over in the accounting.

    • Reagan’s legacy literally lives on. He got Anne Gorsuch in as head of the EPA. She was such an asshole (even many Republicans then thought that clean water and breathable air might be a good thing, rather than putting a coal mine and/or an oil well on any piece of land deemed fit for purpose) that she carries the distinction of being the first to get booted out of his Cabinet.

      All is forgiven and forgotten. Her son Neil now sits on the Supreme Court. The gangrene didn’t grow far from the suppurating wound.

      • Neil Gorsuch is a great example of how principle-free activist judges benefit from affirmative action programs for conservatives, but the narrative for Ketanji Bown Jackson will be that she is the one with unfair advantages.

  2. I am going to disagree with your basic premise that Reagan made us weak.

    Reagan made boomers fucking weak.

    Reagan’s policies and their enablement by those same fucking boomers has fucked over gen x, millenials, and gen z. Don’t tell people fucked over for decades by student loans that they aren’t used to material hardship. Or who will never be able to afford housing. Or think “wow can I Uber to the hospital, I can’t afford the ambulance.” etc etc.

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