Trump was the loudest, but he was a big dumb animal who didn't know or care how the machine worked. Younger Americans especially don't understand the depth of the tangible damage Reagan did legislatively and culturally. History will likely remember His tenure as the root instigator of our eventual collapse.
He converted his former opposition into bribe taking neoliberals while legislating giving EVERYTHING to the rich with the lie of it raining down prosperity on all... someday lol. Almost all the economic pain most Americans are feeling today is due to Reagan's lasting changes to what our economy and tax structure rewards, and our warped, irrational cultural perception of the role of the economy and the need to regulate it.
If I could snap my fingers and undo either Trump or Reagan's presidency, it wouldn't be a contest. Trump is just yet another symptom of the cult of willful ignorance Reagan Republicans cultivated.
I mean, if we're finger-snapping people I'd have started with Nixon. Much of what Reagan was, Nixon paved the way for. Most of the modern GOP's playbook can be traced back to Nixon -- that includes the overt racism, the antisemitism, the warmongering, the proto-fascist behavior, the war on drugs, all of it.
Nixon is the original ratfucker. His second term was explicitly all about getting revenge on his perceived "enemies." Sound familiar? Nixon said in an interview, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal." Sound familiar? When he was under investigation regarding the Watergate break-in, he responded by firing the attorney general in charge of investigating him. Sound familiar?
It's uncanny. Where he faltered was just being so blatantly unlikable. If Nixon had managed to be charismatic in addition to remaining as much of an utter bastard as he was, I think the world would be an even worse place today than it is already.
Funny that we’d have never known he blew this shot without photographic evidence. Just like how he might not have had to resign if he hadn’t taped all his conversations.
That’s the other thing I blame Nixon for. Teaching the next rounds of scumbags to cover their tracks better.
I've heard it said, and I really believe it is true, that if you assume everything awful in the world is Reagan's fault you'll be right significantly more often than you are wrong.