3 Reasons Why Ronald Reagan Was an Absolutely Terrible President

[Waffles731]

In today's political landscape some conservatives not only like Ronald Reagan but consider him to be an absolutely phenomenal president. Newsflash, HE WASN'T.

1. Unemployment Rates, People act like Reagan Created Jobs

He didn't, in fact he did some serious damage to the economy. This is especially evident in the 1980s recession, People act like unemployment is at its highest rates since the great depression. When that's actually wrong. The highest national unemployment rate since the great depression was in 1982 10.8% and as of 2015 is still the highest rate since the 1930s (https://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.aspx)

2. Gave funding and weapons to would now become Al Queda

Yes the Reagan ended up creating the group that Hardcore conservatives are willing to use extreme force across an entire region to stop, all while somehow remaining the idol of those hardcore conservatives. Just to hammer this home, HERE IS A PICTURE OF REAGAN IN THE OVAL OFFICE WITH THE FUCKING MUJAHIDEEN

3. Iran Contra

Yes, all these people who idolize ronald reagan and bitch and moan about the iran deal seem to forget that Reagan Actually gave them fucking weapons For.... Reasons.

Not only that the way that Reagan did this, he did not seek congressional approval WHICH IS FUCKING HIGH TREASON. RONALD REAGAN WAS A FUCKING TRAITOR. This Man, this ineffective slimy cowardly president committed an act of High Treason which I may remind you IS A CAPITAL CRIME.

[noisette91]

That quote from point 2 made me cringe!! did he really say that? I always thought he was the last "popular" president of USA... Thank you for this take

[Waffles731]

I recently found out he was talking about the Contras in Nicaragua so its not as bad but still pretty bad

[Waffles731]

Younger people tend to really dislike him

[Waffles731]

Also libertarians sometimes and liberals so like 40 percent of the population likes him

[noisette91]

So who do you think was the last good president then?

[Waffles731]

Okay, that's a question with several answers, Our last president who was both A decent person and effective was JFK
Now we have had presidents who were terrible at being president but decent human beings,
Like Jimmy Carter
And since JFK we have had two presidents who were INCREDIBLY effective yet not a good person. Bill Clinton was one and the other was actually Richard Nixon as what most people don't realize is that while yes, nixon should have been shot for his crimes,
He also
1. Ended our involvement in Vietnam (do they talk about that in french schools? The Vietnam war I mean, since it was just as much part of your history as ours)
2. He put men on the moon
3. Opened up relations with red china
So while he was scum he was probably the most effective president we have had in since JFK.
Obama isn't bad per-sey and he has done some incredibly great things and he is an alright guy but to me he is just kinda average.

[Waffles731]

Your president Hollande had an Affair which cost him his relationship
JFK and Jackie Kennedy had an open marriage, they loved each other, they just agreed that it was okay to fuck other people

[noisette91]

Yes Vietnam is included in our history, People say the Appolo landing was fake though (no offense) ... As to the affair Hollande had, honestly, he can sleep with anyone if he wants and we couldn't care less, but if only he had managed to acheive the promises he made before being elected.. Rate of unemployement is high, class differences are more and more significant, terrorrisme and immigration are getting out of control..

[Waffles731]

People want to believe crazy shit, the apollo landings happened.
We have moon rocks to prove it,
in forty years nasa wants to have landed on mars

[Waffles731]

Tell me you are not voting for la penn

[Waffles731]

Last time we let terror attacks so grossly influence politics, we got the patriot act and two drawn out wars in the middle east for our trouble.
Trust someone who has lived through that kind of fear based politics, it isn;t worth it

[noisette91]

I honestly don't know who I'll vote for.. it's particularly sad when you don't like any of the candidates and people think they should just vote for the "least" bad :( Marine Le Pen has a lot of supporters though..

[Waffles731]

That is fucking scary

[noisette91]

Why? because she's a woman? lol

[Waffles731]

No because she is a fascist

[noisette91]

Hahahaha, she is kind of a fascist, and I personnaly don't think I'll vote for her.. but I still might be persuaded. Like I said, I don't know who I'll vote for.. who are YOU gonna vote for?

[Waffles731]

Well,
At this rate I'm probably going to vote for the third party candidats gary johnson or jill stein or as protest write in john dillinger, a bank robber who has been dead for seventy years

[jacquesvol]

Some Europeans remember that. I didn't meet Americans who remember all that.

Excellent take.

[Waffles731]

depends on where you are in the country

[jacquesvol]

This is a 'golden' Reagan quote:
www.legitgov.org/graphics/reagan_taliban_1985.jpg

[yucel_eden]

Americas media is not free. They write according who pays them. And usually it's republicans. In Europe it's not heaven but it's 1000000x better

[BusinessBasketball]

I agree. You did miss two other great arguments against him. He was the one that cut funding for the mental hospitals. Now we have so many crazy homeless people with mental problems. He also was the one that started the War on Drugs. Now our prison population is very full and most of prisoners are non-violent. Also costing us tons of money.

[Waffles731]

The War on drugs needs to end.
Drug addiction is a medical problem and viewing it as a criminal on just causes trouble

[bluenose1872]

Most doughnuts get caught up in propaganda and take it as gospel. Reagan was a corporate bitch. The big companies shaped his policies like every other president. He delared war on industrial america and privatised all social infrastructure and allowed corporations to export manufacturing jobs to avoid taxes and minimum wage. Why not cut out the middleman and have voters nominate their favourite corporation. They own the politicians anyway

[evenlift]

Reagan was a terrible President. Reason 4. He brought the religious right into U. S. politics, as Ayn Rand points out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4196WvmEcYM

[Waffles731]

Ayn Rand was also a terrible person Like that 'heroic' Character Ragnar (Not even gonna try spell his last name), who steals aid shipments from people who needed them,
You know the same thing we sent the military into somalia to stop

[evenlift]

I remember you. I rebutted your criticism of that. Remember?

[Waffles731]

No, You didn't, You tried to but to be honest, Objectivists are completely incapable of recognizing they are wrong

[evenlift]

Virtually no people ever admit that they are wrong about anything fundamental.

Your criticism of Objectivists is therefore ironic. Very few Objectivists were raised Objectivists. Almost all of us, in accepting the philosophy of Objectivism, thereby admitted that we had been seriously wrong about very fundamental matters.

[Waffles731]

Objectivism is essentially a fiscally based version of social darwinism.
I find it ironic that you are an objectivist and live in a country where you have universal healthcare whereas we here in the U. S have seen the opposite, where we let kids die because their family cannot afford chemo,
And its too bad the religious right took the wrong message from religion,
"the love of money is the root of all evil"

[Waffles731]

Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. Now, where's the girl? I want the only daughter I've got left. As you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.
Jake Gittes: Who do you blame for that? Her?
Noah Cross: I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING.
That is what objectivism is,
Those lines of dialogue sum of that whole philosophy perfectly

[evenlift]

If by 'social Darwinism', you mean 'might is right', then that's socialism or democracy or any other variant of collectivism. If 60% want to rape, to murder or to steal from the other 40%, for example, then that is allegedly OK. Objectivism, by contrast, holds that each individual has rights, and that therefore it would be wrong, and ought to be illegal, to initiate force against him or her, even if all the other people in the world agreed that it ought to be done.

As for health-care, there is no such thing as 'universal health-care'. People unnecessarily die in this country too. The National Health Service would probably have been sued out of existence a long time ago, if it were a business.

[evenlift]

I don't know how its existence is ironic, though. I think that you mean that I am being hypocritical for, presumably, using government health-care, when I oppose it, which, as I think I pointed out to you in our last debate, is like saying that it would be hypocritical for someone to claim that burglary is wrong while taking the opportunity to accept compensation from a burglar. By the way, even before ObamaCare, U. S. health-care was hugely regulated and hugely socialized, with one in three Americans on government-provided health-care.

Faith is not a means of knowledge. Only reason is. Therefore there are no right messages from religion.

It is the collectivists who are obsessed with money. That is why they want it, even if it costs them their dignity through welfare provided by government theft. That is why they are obsessed with 'inequality'.

[Waffles731]

"It is the collectivists who are obsessed with money. That is why they want it, even if it costs them their dignity through welfare provided by government theft. That is why they are obsessed with 'inequality'."
Its because in todays society, money is a dependency.
Seriously do you actually care about other human beings or just your own greed

[Kinstrome]

Evenlift, you are absolutely, one hundred percent wasting your time. Once somebody brings up "greed," "inequality," and that most abused of terms "social darwinism," they are giving you a giant red flag that says "I don't know anything about how economics works."

[QuestionMan]

Ayn Rand has a very beautiful mind.

[badboy666]

Boy, sure is easy that you have no concept of the years you are writing about.

Though I guess by your argument Obama must pretty much be the worst president ever eh?

As for me, worst in the last century would be Wilson. Best would be Coolidge.

Let me know if you have ever heard of the cold war. Or how the US government sometimes had to align itself with evil regimes (1941-1945 comes to mind) in order to fight worse evil.

[Waffles731]

I know damn well about the cold war,
My father was an air force officer in the electronic warfare division,
He worked with satellites and nukes and he says that Reagan was a fucking traitor.
9/11 wouldhn't have been able to happen if that fucking traitor hadn't armed the mujahideen who would then form Al queda when the russians would have lost the afgan war regardless and were economically breaking down.
Coolidge was an awful president who helped contribute to the occurance of the great depression, it took FDR and a world war to bring us out.

[Waffles731]

But what reagan did was completely unnecessary when plain old espionage, satellite recon, and economic warfare would have done the job just fine,
He has done more damage to this country than ANY other president in the last hundred years

[idiotmanchild]

I'm not saying he's the greatest president of all time, but I do have a problem with the first argument. The recession in the early 1980s was intentionally induced by the Federal Reserve by reducing the money supply to curb the sky high inflation of the late 70s. The Federal Reserve chairman of the time was Paul Volcker, a Carter nominee. Given that the economy rapidly recovered and inflation stabilized, it was a fairly successful policy even though it was politically unpopular.

[Anonymous]

Very nice take. It's amazing how short 'mericans memory are.

[John_Doesnt]

He was also a poor actor.

[Waffles731]

Yeah, I was going to add that but it just seemed to easy

[John_Doesnt]

"Ronald Reagan the actor?" -
"No Peter you're the one from the future you're supposed to- aww forget it it's just easier to call you stupid".

[Anonymous]

Iran is not a terrorist nation. That's incredibly offensive for you to say that. Way to only make yourself seem like a bigot.

[orphan]

you weren't even alive when he was pres... da fuck do you know

[ConsultantIsBack]

Agreed, great take!!!

[Omar5881]

I saw a documentary about thay guy , agreed