• Hanrahan@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      indeed

      good articles here

      https://aeon.co/essays/why-western-democracy-is-ailing-and-how-to-fix-it

      We entered this era of an unjust social order, political malaise and destabilisation almost half a century ago when the US president Ronald Reagan and the UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher introduced libertarian reforms that were embraced globally.

      At his first cabinet meeting as president in 1981, Reagan distributed copies of Mandate for Leadership, whose 3,000 pages came out of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, DC. This became the ideology of neoliberalism, which advocated a smaller state, industry deregulation, tax cuts, strengthened defence, and roll-back of social engineering. A year later, 60 per cent of the Mandate’s proposals had been adopted by the Reagan administration,

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      104·
      1 day ago

      Just like Trump, he just abuses the holes in the rules that have never been fixed. Reagan was the first to do that large scale, but in reality nothing out of manners or some moral code was preventing things like that happening before, and as we currently see, the americans haven’t fixed anything in the last decades - it rather seems many have forgotten more than they ever learned.

      The US is a joke - we can see how much their constitution and democratic institutions are worth in reality. Outside of an outsized ego and megalomaniac tendencies, there’s not much to see there.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
        29·
        1 day ago

        Yeah they didn’t solve every single aspect of moral public governance on day 1. What a friggin joke of a country.

        • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
          51·
          1 day ago

          Noone expects it to do it day one. But they ignored obvious flaws for hundreds of years now, and that makes them the butt of the joke for sure, and they deserve the fallout of their glorious empire becoming an autocracy.

            • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
              51·
              1 day ago

              You know, civil society? The millions of people who neglected updating the basic rules their country is running on? That’s the problem when you write down that state and religion have to be separated, but at the same time adopt a civic religion - because at that point, changing the constitution becomes akin to blasphemy.

              • foodandart@lemmy.zipEnglish
                5·
                1 day ago

                Here’s the problem with that… It starts with education, and in the late 70’s when Texas became the school textbook publishing capital in the nation, all bets were off.

                There’s a reason that in 1980 my 11th grade High School US History textbook was from 1967.

                What started being published come that Texas capture of school textbooks, changed the course of the country.

                NGL, sad as it is to admit, the boomer generation that came of age (now being called “generation Jones”) just as Reagan was in his first term was the last generation to get an education that included civics lessons as if they mattered. Afterwards, it all apparently went to hell.

                It’s our older generational siblings that came of age in the mid-60’s (before Vietnam hit) who became the insufferable reactionay MAGA jackasses the generation is known for. The change they saw post-Vietnam scared the hell out of them, and they’ve been reactionary ever since.

                My mom (who’s a Silent) has younger 'boomer cousins - whom I’ve tanged with online - that are MAGA diehards and bigoted as fuck - and they are unreal. Don’t wanna know… Don’t care and they live in such fear they vote to deliberately hurt other people. Horribly lost, terribly damaged Americans, and typical of the reactionary boomers born before 1958.

                The Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z got the shit end of the stick WRT education and civic and engagement as an obligation of being an infored citizen.

                Which sucks as it’s led us here.

    • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
      71·
      1 day ago

      He helped, but was hardly the principal person. Its a large movement fueled by hatred and bigotry, led by a small wealthy few.

      • danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        So much happened under his watch though. And he gets so much credit from republicans for the economy doing well too.

        I think what makes me the most mad about him is he paved the way for the ultra rich that we have now. Massively cut taxes on the wealthy and cut regulations. The tech boom started under his watch, but was paid for by government sponsored research and colleges. They took ownership and now we’re all worse off for it.

      • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        He was the face and completely on board with pushing the agenda of those wealthy few, just like Trump is now.

            • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
              2·
              9 hours ago

              When they find a play that works, they run it again.

              Because we let Iran/Contra blow over with Ronnie’s “i meamt well, and what i said was true, but the facts say different”, Oliver North taking the 5th, and everyone else singing in the “I cannot recall, Senator” choir - government has ZERO accountability.

              In the 80s the allegience with the Moral Majority somewhat tempered the corruption and abuse of the poor/disenfranchised.