In this thread we put the myth of Saint Reagan to bed!

He was a senile drug dealing, tax raising, gun banning actor from California.

But people on the right have this myth surrounding him, that he was the last great American president.

Seriously, not sure why so many on the right worship him the way they do. Reagan did more to dismantle 2nd amendment than any president before or since.

@bmanva: As a Republican whose policies and actions few can recall clearly but who led during a time of general prosperity (after the initial recession), he is a convenient avatar for Republican policies in general. His canonised legacy is being used as a pawn.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/03/nancy-reagan-refused-help-dying-rock-hudson-get-aids-treatment

Ronnie and his wife were pure evil.

I think that's a fair assessment.

lol it's official this forum is full on communist propaganda.

Sorry but i will take actual experts over your side´s opinion any day of the week. Also i thought your side was in love with experts and their word was like the bible to you?

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. George Washington

3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

4. Teddy Roosevelt

5. Dwight Eisenhower

6. Harry Truman

7. Thomas Jefferson

8. John F. Kennedy

9. Ronald Reagan

10. Lyndon Johnson

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015a-4d99-d5b6-a35f-ffff4eae0001

Raising taxes and banning guns and legalizing drugs? Dont democrats love that stuff? And the hollywood connection?

His policies definitely started the slide down for the middle class. Most over rated president ever.

So that means you also share the experts opinion that Obama economic policies were much better than Reagan's (Obama ranked 8th while Reagan landed 16th)?

he was a scum bag, an actor without an ounce of education or qualifications that ultimately brought about the fall of the US middle class. The only idiots that worship him are found on the right.

I've not read a ton on the eighties or his presidency, but my general sense is that he projected strength, talked about the typical "conservative values" bullet points, and had that lovable idiot vibe that conservatives go ga-ga over. Plus the whole "tear down this wall" thing gave them a hard-on that persists to this day. Oh, and the whole Cadillac queens thing. Just everything he did and said fit into the conservative paradigm so perfectly, who cares what actually happened?

I really hope you're being sarcastic.

First it must be stated that Ronald Reagan presided over a period of relative economic prosperity. Dude was a GREAT speech maker as well, very amicable and sociable. Hard guy not to like.

Having said that, he championed(began?) trickle down economics. Additionally he went whole hog regarding the war on drugs. The dirty little secret is that the war on drugs wasn't really about drug suppliers or pipelines...it was about convicting/harrassing impoverished and underprivileged drug addicts. Basically it gave the government carte blanche to destroy the moral/communal fabric of minority communities in the inner city.

Finally, this is when Nancy Reagan chose to get involved with deriding music and helped create and demonize the term 'gangsta rap'. NEVER MIND that NWA and other were speaking from a place of truth(I mean who the hell could be that detailed/inventive about police brutality against someone without personal experience). I was always dumfounded even as a kid that Pres. Reagan or Nancy never took time to determine if the lyrics were actually true. Never mind that scores of musical performers far more popular(and far less black) than NWA have had explicit lyrics and rallied against the police.

Just writing this makes me hate the ideological war the Reagans waged against poor people a little bit more.

They did more than that. Busted unions. Yeah I know here unions are the bag guys because they get things for the working class instead of handing that over to the wealthy CEOs. Removed the deduction for interest paid but keep the one for interest earned. And who making ketchup be a vegetable for cheap school lunches. Hell of guy. NOT.

@n64dd: Yeah, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

@blaznwiipspman1: Something tells me you were probably swimming around in your daddy’s nutsack when Reagan was making America great again before fuckheads like the Bush clan, Billy Boy and Obama set us back.

There are shitloads of people on the left who loved Reagan. You’ve seriously never heard of the term “Reagan Democrat”? There was a whole sect devoted to him.

No there isn't shitloads of people on the left that loved Reagan.

Well, there were back in Reagan's day. Then Reagan came along and tried to make the case that all of America's problems were due to [black] people on welfare, [black] drug dealers, and inner city [black] crime. All of the sudden most of the closeted racists in the Democratic party started voting Republican. That he's praising people who cared more about coded anti-black messages than actual policies speaks volumes about frank_castle, as does the fact that his arguments consist mainly of insults and references to genitalia. Make America great again, indeed.

@LJS9502_basic: Yes, there were. A pretty big portion, in fact.

@theone86: After the monumental pussy otherwise known as Jimmy Carter was out the door, Reagan brought hope back to America.

What his critics labeled as impossible, Reagan made look easy.

Restored the US military to prowess and had the Ruskies shaking in their fucking boots, thus ending the Cold War.

Vaulted the US into a national surplus and major economic growth spurt after the shitastic mid-late 70’s.

Inspired and united America at a very tumultuous time.

Yeah, he was pretty damn great.

Reagan was like the Zika virus.

We didn't see the full effects of his policies until after he left.

I mean... there was that whole Iran-Contra thing.

@kod: I’m sure every president has taken part in some shady shit for what they perceive as the greater good.

He did wonders for the lower-middle class/middle class American people in the 80’s and made people respect America again, once again establishIng us as the big boys on the block.

To me you have to consider him one of the Top 10 greatest Presidents of all-time regardless if you’re conservative or liberal or somewhere in between. I’d personally put him behind only Washington, Lincoln, Teddy, and FDR.

Ya he did great things in the 80's. Only problem is, his economic polices turned out to be a disaster for the lower and middle class in the long run. That is a fact that you people always seem to forget. Reagan started what will be the downfall of this country if it isn't corrected soon.

Dude, what gives? Why do you create this character for yourself. Are you mentally disturbed? Do you sleep with fox news on?

So, Iran Contra was a fairly unique "shady shit" situation. I don't like saying "evil", but there's no other way to describe that situation.

As for your critiques on RR and the other things he did, he was the one who got the ball rolling on the sale of America to corporations. Actions that continue to get worse and that we will never recover from without hitting the reset button. There is nothing about his actions that suggest hes a top 10 president, in fact, due to his treason (which is what Iran contra was and one could argue the sale of America was) i would not even put him on any list.

Reagan was the beginning of the end for the middle class, general faith in your fellow man, and charity.

He started our blind faith in ruthless capitalism, forgetting about brotherhood and the greater good (funny how "greater good" is a dystopian term for many conservatives now), and worse. In California, and later the country, he pretty much neutered whatever good work we were doing with the mentally ill, which is why now we have so many crazy, sick homeless people shitting on our front doorsteps.

I mean, Reagan is a textbook example of why you don't vote Republican: because they think they can fix things by doing nothing or defunding things, and they promise things ("no new taxes!") and fail to deliver (raise taxes).

I never understand why the general population think Reagan did them any favors. Seriously cannot get the disconnect there. Also Iran Contra was terrible. If North hadn't taken the fall for him.......he'd have been out.

Saint Ronald Reagan the Absent Minded invested billions in pseudoscience. I have 0 respect for the guy.

@frank_castle: Your argument has all the sophistication of an eight year old reviewing a pro wrestling match. Come back when you can make an argument without throwing around insults (not to mention baseless claims about what senile old Ronnie actually did).

Oh, and the presidential top ten goes Lincoln->FDR->Obama->Wilson->Washington->Jefferson->Roosevelt->Quincy Adams->Kennedy->Johnson. Sorry, no room for St. Reagan. He fits in better with Van Buren, Jackson, Johnson, Hoover, W. Bush, Ford, Grant, Nixon, and Trump in the bottom 10.