So once in a while I like to update this thread. Seems like one of the main reasons for Trump not being consistently voted worst republican president is that "well at least he hasn't killed that many people". What about now?
Reagan's still the worst because all of the wounds that America is seeing have a spotlight on them stemmed from the vision he entrapped America within. The fact we don't have universal systems of compassion - healthcare, housing, even UBI - all stem from the push he made on "welfare queens." Or to put it another way, he solidified the idea that black people would be an anchor in this country and made that the out-and-about conservative position. Almost every single attack on decent, all-encompassing programs and projects go back to the "obstacle" that they would cover non-whites. In case people have forgotten, and I apologize for quoting the word he has used, but Ronald Reagan referred to such people as "monkeys," and laughed about it. What is so different from that when Trump calls Mexicans "rapists?" This act of subhumanity, to infer people as unpeople, is central to the conservative movement, and in fact is the whole point of it now. This is a cornerstone to nearly half of the belief in our political system. Trump is a literal, living manifestation of those beliefs.
All Trump's done is remove the dog whistles and grandeur around that central vision of individualism as isolationism and really said the real goals and issues conservatism has without the spoiler tags around it. Openly wanting to abolish healthcare rulings in the middle of a pandemic. That protesters aren't "his supporters" in a way that disregards them in full. His response to the pandemic is appalling, but he won the ticket in a party that has been trying to sabotage the concept of government for decades. Him having a dogshit response, and let us not forget it, has been something Republicans have wanted to make as the default response
to any single situation facing America. It
all must be done better, or even "decently," in private hands. Katrina was the same thing. Flint was the same thing. It's almost as if it's the Republican thing.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan
Trump took that statement and made it a vision to manifest
as the government. The worst thing we can hear is how this dogshit government is ""helping"" by actively attacking all channels of genuine aid. It helps by harming, by isolating, by suggesting private, unaccountable hands are the only ones that can really solve it anyway, and that's the point of it in the current conservative vision. Better for Walmart to chip in and do the government's job, it seems. His Republican worshippers contributed because the idea has always been to make the government seem massively inefficient to do any fucking thing, so this was a hellish shared vision. Unless it's to bomb non-white in the middle east, or to do something with transferring that equipment to police, the plan has always been one of direct sabotage.
All the COVID pandemic has done, to be quite honest about it, is to manifest Reagan's quote as genuine policy. Never forget that Republicans straight up argued that "blue states" should be left to suffer, for this goes deeper than an egotistical con man who can never do anything right holding the Oval Office as a stage to advertise fucking Goya beans. It goes right back into seeing specific people as unpeople, that they don't deserve compassion, and any plan to confront that must be sabotaged. The same vision manifests in how it's dragged its feet, now to the back half of a month where meager benefits are drying up, and is going to argue on some level no more help is needed for regular people, but the real help is to protect companies from COVID-related lawsuits. This is, to hammer the point home here, to emphasize that companies always know best: the government can't help because the government is the villain.
What I concluded my post in this thread a few months ago still rings true. You do not get a Donald Trump without a Ronald Reagan. You don't get Trump's "run America like a business" without the neoliberal commodification of the public good, that business is always the answer to all questions, and to reference the Reagan quote directly, how the government is made to be seen as the worst option always and forever. What this means for the long-term that's dangerous is that Trumpism will create an entire generation of conservatives who adhere to him as the gold standard, only for yet
another famous senior citizen TV personality to run for office while their brain turns into toothpaste. Reagan
gave us Trump. And we've yet to have recovered from Reagan.