FLOTSAM & JETSAM: Problems that helped create Trump: The Reagan years

Monday, January 04, 2021

Problems that helped create Trump: The Reagan years

 Sam Smith – While it is a terrific relief to anticipate the replacement of Donald Trump by Joe Biden, what is not so joyous is to reflect on the reasons Trump rose to the top in the first place, many of which remain powerful forces in our society.

It’s been 17 years since I first suggested that the first American republic was over and many aspects of that decline happened long before that. Today, I would cite the Reagan administration as perhaps the greatest first sign of collapse. For  the next few issues, we’ll offer a facts and reflections on this topic, beginning with some of the older ones:

The Reagan factor

Progressive Review, 2013 - Although there were signs of trouble as early as 1944, when the conservative Human Events magazine was launched, Republicans in general stayed within traditional American culture until the Reagan administration. There were exceptions, the most striking being Joseph McCarthy and his ilk, but on the whole Republicans represented a wing of American politics rather than, as at present, a political asteroid threatening to blow the whole place up. People such as Robert A. Taft and Margaret Chase Smith were like your grandfather and grandmother, out of touch with the times but still members of the family. Dwight Eisenhower was a moderate and Richard Nixon – for all his personal faults – was on domestic issues the last liberal president America has had.

That changed radically with Ronald Reagan, who applied principles he had used to sell Chesterfield cigarettes to hawk a toxic form of government described well by Robert Lekachman:

"Ronald Reagan must be the nicest president who ever destroyed a union, tried to cut school lunch milk rations from six to four ounces, and compelled families in need of public help to first dispose of household goods in excess of $1,000".

There is considerable evidence that the collapse of the First American Republic began in no small part with Reagan’s inauguration:

- The number of federal inmates increased from approximately 25,000 in FY1980 to nearly 219,000 in FY2012.

- From 1947 to 1979 family income of the bottom 20% went up 116% and those in the top 20% went up 99%. Between 1980 and 2009, the bottom 20% went up 15% while the top 20% went up 95%

- Hours worked per employees are the highest since the 1980s.

- Middle class debt is the worst since the 1980s.

- Personal bankruptcies are up 400% since the 1980s.

- Student loan debt is the worst since the 1980s

- In the 1980s there were 50 corporations controlling most of the major media. Now there are six.

- During the Reagan administration the number of families living below the poverty line increased by one-third.

There are other aspects of the Reagan years we tend to forget. For example, the Reagan administration was among the most corrupt in American history including, by one estimate, 31 convictions of top officials. By comparison 40 government officials were indicted or convicted in the wake of Watergate. 47 individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring during the Clinton administration itself.

David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, report that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted.

The Reagan administration also had secret plans for an unconstitutional takeover of the federal government under an ill-defined national emergency. Members of the government created by the coup had been selected and included Richard Cheney.

Reagan's policies also led to what was then the greatest financial scandal in American history: the savings & loan debacle which cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

And according to Steven Komacki in Salon, “By the summer of 1992, just 24 percent of Americans said their country was better off because of the Reagan years, while 40 percent said it was worse off -- and that more Americans (48 percent) viewed Reagan unfavorable than favorably (46 percent).