Don’t forget the war on drugs
Another great president on the right, this time a fucking actor… A DAMN ACTOR!
The 13th amendment created the legal groundwork for transforming a free people into a nation of de facto chattel slaves. Reagan accelerated this process massively.
Mental patients 🖐️ (눈‸눈)
“Prisoners with jobs” 👈 (♡ω♡ )
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The 13th amendment banned chattel slavery, but turbocharged penal slavery.
Deregulation in general and of the for profit prison industry in particular has made it so that there’s more slaves in the US now than there ever was before the 13th was passed.
Granted, penal slavery is of course nowhere near as bad as chattel slavery was, but it’s still slavery, which is morally repugnant barbary and outlawed in every civilized legal system i the world.
Go read it again; the word “except” is doing the heavy lifting here.
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The working context here is larger than what is visible. You will find this to be generally true with human interactions. Best of luck.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
That except. Though their wording about free people seems misguided in the context.
In (very) broad strokes, the US basic current modern collapse timeline is like: Nixon --> Regan --> Fairness Doctrine --> Glass-Steagall --> Patriot Act --> bank bailout --> tea party to maga --> current fubar lyfe
goddamn fucking reagan
You don’t have citizens united in there, which I would argue is one of the largest modern causes of our current situation. Had citizens united not been vomited into the world, we might have been in a slightly better place without a decade and a half of practically unrestricted corporate propaganda shoved down our throats. I’d bet that trump wouldn’t have won in 2016 if it wasn’t for the unlimited funding he got (along with billions in free advertising from the “news” media).
Need to squeeze Citizens United in there
I was going to post something similar but yeah. Almost every Behind the Bastards episode that touches these topics, there is a straight line from Nixon to Trump.
The TL;DR: Republicans hated how people generally agreed with the facts surrounding Nixon and decided to do something about it. Instead of reporting conservative-slanted opinions, they instead wanted to get rid of facts all together.
The deinstitutionalization and movement to prison was something that began long before Reagan. Really goes back to the end of ww2 and Kennedy. though reagan definitely accelerated it by a great deal by decreasing budgets substantially and increasing incarceration rates significantly
Reagan was a monster though. What a great day it was when he died
He wasn’t elected until 1980. Look at your graphs again.
Yes, the massive fall of deinstitutionalization began in the 60s as indicated on my graph? And as I said it began long before him? I don’t understand what you are disagreeing with
Even the incarceration rise started before him in the early 70s. He just is the one that turned this to a million with the war on drugs
My bad I didn’t even see the text above it. Just underneath it. Ignore my statement.
Thanks for that info
For more information, lookup the impact of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on mental health services in the United States.
TBH, some of that deinstitutionalization could be written off to being gay no longer being a mental health issue, etc.
That’s actually inverse to this. Homosexuality formally entered the dsm in 1952 which made institutionalization for it more common, not less, although institutionalization certainly existed beforehand (eg ww2 draft would decline for homosexuality and basically refer to conversion therapy)
This is the “lavender scare”. Much of the anti lgbt rhetoric today roots back to this era - that homosexuality is something to be pathologized, it can be cured, it is deviancy, a threat to national safety (lavender scare and red scare being analogous, thought process being all the men turning queer would make us a nation of sissies ripe for being taken over by the commies, basically. Lesbian erasure from this narrative was totally a thing (although they still got the abusive treatment)
As a result they got shock treatment, aversion therapy, and even lobotomies. This was through the early 60s and it wasn’t until 1973 that the diagnosis was formally removed. Obviously conversion therapy still happens today but the state sanctioned institutionalization form was mostly over by the mid to late 60s, though it took some time to die out in certain regions
A blight on our country and on the history of our mental health system. Disgusting
The shock treatment thing never fully went away it’s just used on gay teenagers at concentration camps their parents send them to now as opposed to being a state ran thing
Yes conversion therapy never fully went away although some states have banned it and others have banned the use of shock as aversive despite allowing conversion therapy to continue
To clarify: there are several things people refer to as shock therapy
Ect or electro convulsive therapy is sometimes called shock therapy. This is not conversion therapy. This is evidence based for treatment resistant depression and bipolar disorder. This has an ugly history but the modern version can be very helpful if you’ve had years of no success with treatment. That said this should be something that you discuss and consent to
Conversion therapy is a form of Aversive conditioning. Shock therapy in this context is using electricity as the aversive stimulus. This is a behavioral conditioning technique to pair stimuli. It is theoretically simple and essentially based on the work of Pavlov. I take a thing you like and consistently pair it with something aversive. Eventually you associate the thing with the aversive.
So I may show you gay pornography and give an electric shock. But any aversive can theoretically work: I could show you two screens: gay pornography on one and gory death shit on the other. I could get one of those air horns and blast it to surprise you. Etc. modern conversion therapy goes way harder than this, they’ll do weird fucking shit like put a pressure sensing ring on your cock and show you hot guys, then introduce the aversive when you tingle.
Do you see the issue here? They believe they are making gay pornography aversive to you. But what’s really happening is that they are making expression of sexuality aversive. In the weenie monitor example it becomes getting an erection. This is because the people doing this are not only monsters, they are shitty at their job. They do not understand (or more likely willfully misunderstand) basic risks of what they are implementing and they also do not plan for basic realities like generalization (eg if I make homosexual erotic content aversive to you what’s to stop you generalizing that disgust to all erotic content? That’s a risk they’re willing to take, apparently, and a part of informed consent I bet money they do not explain (amongst many many other things))
Conversion therapy is torture. Aversive conditioning in general is. Anyone who does it should be in prison. They are monsters who care more about their agenda than their clients well being (which they likely do not care about at all)
True, although nasty Christians are going to court to try to overturn bands on conversion therapy because it’s their religion so they shouldn’t have to follow the law. Yeah that’s where at is a country. And people wonder why I have a firmly negative opinion of Christianity and don’t buy the excuses people give and it’s defense
i think executive order 10450 was the last vestige of this era to be removed from our governing bodies and it lasted until 2016; 2 years after it bit me in the ass.
i also think that this was the reason why we didn’t enact the equal rights amendment; to keep access to this kind prejudice alive as evidenced by the incrementalism that project 2025 advocated since the '80s.
Let’s not forget the treason of letting Oliver North! Besides everything else, North’s Contras were drug smugglers who brought in so much cocaine that coke went from being a luxury to a street drug in just a few months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_States
Youtube video https://youtu.be/Mb1GfP5Rwys
He was terrible, and perhaps worse: he was so popular. He got two terms, then his vice president got a term. So popular it seemed to be (to me) that he was the reason we ultimately got stuck with the “Third Way” democrats, which is when the working class was finally completely abandoned.
He really screwed us all
His administration was when the republicans really started running with the idea of fucking with people’s minds. “Morning in America” turned a shitload of former Democrats into republican voters who voted themselves and their children into a shithole they’d never get out of.
See also; “The Southern Strategy”
Yeah, maybe. I mean, the republicans at this time did start to resonate with the public, but I think it had more to do with the times and with Reagan himself.
Reagan was much more likeable than the likes of Goldwater, Buckley, or any other figure at the time. And he was attractive to the evangelicals, which became a whole new arm (with issues) of the party.
Also, of course, the economy of the 70s was just right for a party that could lean into hate, fear, & greed.
Reagan, though. He could sell all of it in a way that few others would have been able to pull off. I remember wondering at the time how he could draw so many in. People just liked him, horrible as he was.
Oh there’s no maybe about it. Reagan - “an actor?!” was the perfect foil for photo ops and propaganda. His lickspittle Michael Deaver created them such that as wikipedia says,
As Deputy Chief of Staff, Deaver worked primarily on media management, forming how the public perceived Reagan, sometimes by engineering press events so that the White House set the networks’ agenda for covering him.
Which was a quantum leap from the flashbulb-handshake photo ops of the earlier presidents.
He coincided with Mtv, cable television, and the nascent seedlings of Fox News. In every demented rapist presser where Orange Julius presents stacks of binders filled with blank paper is drawn from the work Deaver did with Reagan.
Also remember that while Reagan had more public office experience than the demented rapist, he wasn’t trained on anything - he wasn’t a lawyer, didn’t study foreign policy, wasn’t in the military - he was an actor. And so while he was a conservative at heart most of the ridiculous idiocies were pitched to him and pending any kind of ok were run by evil toadies, just as it is today.
So yeah, he was probably nice enough as a neighbor or something, but as a President he created huge waves of evil we’re still getting hit with today. (And which were called out at the time, btw.)
Reagan broke the unions. The group that literally funded labor and the Democrats for decades upon decades. Third way Democrats arose out of necessity from the fall of the unions. They didn’t abandon the unions anymore than the unions abandoned them. The unions became unable to fund them like they used to. And Democrats now be holding to corporate donors became unable to support humans like they used to.
Yes and no, I’d say on that. Reagan really worked against unions, I agree. And democrats are always worried about how they are going to get paid. But there was a real turn toward “market solutions” for problems that had traditionally been addressed by government during this period, and I don’t believe it was entirely due to corporate bribes or financing. When Bill and Hillary attempted to change healthcare with corporate partners, I think it was more from their genuine belief that that was a new, better way forward. They were wrong, and I am sure that they benefited in terms of contributions, but I think it came as much out of their beliefs about the unpopularity of former democrats and the perception of economic malaise in places like England as it did from union weakness. The democrats could have helped rebuild the unions. They did not (and here I think you are right, because as time went on they really began to be paid well to forget the unions)
It was due to the success of fascist propaganda and Reagan’s overwhelming win. It rattled Democrats badly. Causing them to change their tac a bit. That and labor abandoning Democrats thinking they would teach them a lesson as well. It was a culmination of really bad choices that people still make to this day. Because they haven’t learned.
It’s the power of propaganda.
The homelessness crisis is not about mental health, it is about housing affordability. This also plays into societal biases against the mentally ill.
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Having mental illness makes homes affordable tho for those that struggle to maintain employment because of said mental issues.
It’s both.
Yes, however there are many people who are homeless because they are unable to “properly” function in society due to untreated mental illnesses, part of Reagan’s budget cuts reduced public health funding, shuttering public mental health facilities. Granted, some had horrendous conditions which has a lasting reputation for “Insane asylums”.
Don’t forget his campaign for governor led to the massive student loan issues we have today. College was just starting to be accessible to everyone that wasn’t a white man, and they just couldn’t have that!
and we love (/s) what he did to sunny CA slashing property taxes by slashing the public education budget helping lead to a continuing decline in our education system.
Increasing the government “debt” isn’t bad in itself though.
Republican
presidentspoliticians are a pox on this country.What a fucking hero
To quote the poet Killer Mike: " I’m glad Reagans dead"
And don’t forget ending the fairness doctrine, one of the contributions to the polarization of US politics.
That’s a big one
