Opinion of Ronald Reagan?

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

I tried to think of one problem in contemporary American governance and public life that couldn’t trace it’s origins to this administration and his little plutocratic revolution.
I came up with ‘Well we probably can’t pin Covid on him.’

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

The fact that the Democrats on this board are calling the 7th best president ever (according to independent analysts) a HP show they aren’t as objective as they think.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/19/opinion/how-does-trump-stack-up-against-the-best-and-worst-presidents.html

You can’t have objective analysis of a subjective question. That why these lists are going on generic ‘was he a successful politician’, as in how much did he accomplish not whether his accomplishments were positive or negative. Because academic historians aren’t in the business of value judgements.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

Reagan made mistakes, but honestly, if the communists in Guatemala were anything like the ones in China, I can’t get too mad at him for supporting the opposition to them.

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

Reagan made mistakes, but honestly, if the communists in Guatemala were anything like the ones in China, I can’t get too mad at him for supporting the opposition to them.

Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a military coup in 1982 and during his 17 month reign killed anywhere between 10,000-20,000 people and destroyed 600 villages, in a campaign to reduce the Mayan population, who he claimed were naturally susceptible to communism due to their immaturity (his words), in the bloodiest part of the Guatemalan genocide.

Anyway, in 1982 and 1983 Rios Montt's army received millions of dollars in United States aid, which had been suspended by Carter was resumed by Reagan, claiming that the human rights situation was being improved by the new regime. He also provided propaganda support to the genocidaires, personally flew down to Managua in December of '82 to meet with Rios Montt, giving him a big photo op and giving an glowing interview where he calls him a man of great integrity and commitment who was committed to democracy (NB, Montt was a general installed by military coup) and was getting a bum rap. In case you are thinking this is a mistake, declassified CIA documents in Fed of 82, shortly before Rios Montt's coup, reports that the army was conducting massacres in a specific Mayan province, was meeting no substantial resistance, and that the army considered all Ixil (an indigenous) tribe to be insurgents and were giving no quarter, so he knew that 'fighting guerillas' was code for killing Mayans, and in February of 83, noted the rise in right wing violence and that bodies were piling up in rivers and gullies in the countryside. His financial support for the regime continued until it fell and through Mejia Victores (also convicted of genocide) regime.

Also, in El Salvador, where the civil war against the commies bankrolled by the Reagan administration killed 75,000 people. The UN sponsored Truth Commission would latter find that 85% of all offenses were committed by government (ie. anti-communist) forces. I'm not going to go into to much here, because reports of the specific conduct of the state department personnel are mixed, but the army that carried this out was funded and trained by the US and the Reagan administration claimed reports of massacres (later confirmed by the post war UN investigators) were guerilla propaganda to the Senate and conducted a campaign to discredit human rights groups reporting on the Salvadoran situation. As Reagan's Assistant SoS for human rights put it 'it was more important to prevent a communist takeover [than to promote human rights'. Again, 85% of the killing was from government forces.


Also of note, Rios Montt was a convert to evangelicalism, personal friend of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who believed that Catholic priests (who kept trying to tell him to stop the organized mass murder of the Mayan community) in particular were targeted for extra-judicial killings. To the point where his own brother, a bishop, had to flee the country.
Of course in all these dirty wars, priests and nuns, particularly in rural areas, were targeted for summary execution by right-wing paramilitaries as a matter of course. (Not that left-wing militants were all that much better, before you get into the what about game)
I'm bringing this up in particular because you insist on putting the Holy See in your avatar and it's incredibly offensive.

HP. He ushered in the neoliberal era that we are in today.

Lmao what???

LBJ was the first Neolib president, no question.

What are you even talking about? Do you even know what neo-liberalism is?

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

A president can be an HP and still be a good president.

I don't think Reagan was an HP. But I also think he wasn't a great president. He is very much overrated and gets too much credit and not enough blame for the things that happened during (and right) after his time in office.

He’s overrated by Republicans, but the Democrats on this Thread are acting like he’s the reincarnation of Hitler.

Well he was funding a genocide.

On the domestic front, I'll let other people take it, but suffice to say I can't think of single policy in that area that had a positive impact.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

Reagan made mistakes, but honestly, if the communists in Guatemala were anything like the ones in China, I can’t get too mad at him for supporting the opposition to them.

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

Reagan made mistakes, but honestly, if the communists in Guatemala were anything like the ones in China, I can’t get too mad at him for supporting the opposition to them.

Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a military coup in 1982 and during his 17 month reign killed anywhere between 10,000-20,000 people and destroyed 600 villages, in a campaign to reduce the Mayan population, who he claimed were naturally susceptible to communism due to their immaturity (his words), in the bloodiest part of the Guatemalan genocide.

Anyway, in 1982 and 1983 Rios Montt's army received millions of dollars in United States aid, which had been suspended by Carter was resumed by Reagan, claiming that the human rights situation was being improved by the new regime. He also provided propaganda support to the genocidaires, personally flew down to Managua in December of '82 to meet with Rios Montt, giving him a big photo op and giving an glowing interview where he calls him a man of great integrity and commitment who was committed to democracy (NB, Montt was a general installed by military coup) and was getting a bum rap. In case you are thinking this is a mistake, declassified CIA documents in Fed of 82, shortly before Rios Montt's coup, reports that the army was conducting massacres in a specific Mayan province, was meeting no substantial resistance, and that the army considered all Ixil (an indigenous) tribe to be insurgents and were giving no quarter, so he knew that 'fighting guerillas' was code for killing Mayans, and in February of 83, noted the rise in right wing violence and that bodies were piling up in rivers and gullies in the countryside. His financial support for the regime continued until it fell and through Mejia Victores (also convicted of genocide) regime.

Also, in El Salvador, where the civil war against the commies bankrolled by the Reagan administration killed 75,000 people. The UN sponsored Truth Commission would latter find that 85% of all offenses were committed by government (ie. anti-communist) forces. I'm not going to go into to much here, because reports of the specific conduct of the state department personnel are mixed, but the army that carried this out was funded and trained by the US and the Reagan administration claimed reports of massacres (later confirmed by the post war UN investigators) were guerilla propaganda to the Senate and conducted a campaign to discredit human rights groups reporting on the Salvadoran situation. As Reagan's Assistant SoS for human rights put it 'it was more important to prevent a communist takeover [than to promote human rights'. Again, 85% of the killing was from government forces.


Also of note, Rios Montt was a convert to evangelicalism, personal friend of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who believed that Catholic priests (who kept trying to tell him to stop the organized mass murder of the Mayan community) in particular were targeted for extra-judicial killings. To the point where his own brother, a bishop, had to flee the country.
Of course in all these dirty wars, priests and nuns, particularly in rural areas, were targeted for summary execution by right-wing paramilitaries as a matter of course. (Not that left-wing militants were all that much better, before you get into the what about game)
I'm bringing this up in particular because you insist on putting the Holy See in your avatar and it's incredibly offensive.

Neither the left-wing or right wing in this situation was ideal, but Reagan was terrified of the Domino effect, and rightfully so.

We are talking about a literal genocide.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

A president can be an HP and still be a good president.

I don't think Reagan was an HP. But I also think he wasn't a great president. He is very much overrated and gets too much credit and not enough blame for the things that happened during (and right) after his time in office.

He’s overrated by Republicans, but the Democrats on this Thread are acting like he’s the reincarnation of Hitler.

Well he was funding a genocide.

On the domestic front, I'll let other people take it, but suffice to say I can't think of single policy in that area that had a positive impact.

So 88 months of straight economic growth isn’t positive to you?

And Reagan was no more genocidal than FDR, who forced hundreds of thousands of people into interment camps (mass imprisonment of an ethnic group is arguably a genocide by loose terms).

I'm going to skip out on why I think his economic policy was horrible because it would be allot of linking and looking up things and I just am not down for that right now, but I'm sure someone else will pick this up ok?

But I do feel the need to respond to the second point. No a campaign of mass murder is not the same thing as Japanese interment. And these aren't loose definitions, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores were convicted of genocide in a court of law.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

TheReckoning is on a roll this week.

What the amount of threads he's steered and the amount of posters refusing to let go of his bait

Yeah, genocide apologia will do that.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

A president can be an HP and still be a good president.

I don't think Reagan was an HP. But I also think he wasn't a great president. He is very much overrated and gets too much credit and not enough blame for the things that happened during (and right) after his time in office.

He’s overrated by Republicans, but the Democrats on this Thread are acting like he’s the reincarnation of Hitler.

Well he was funding a genocide.

On the domestic front, I'll let other people take it, but suffice to say I can't think of single policy in that area that had a positive impact.

So 88 months of straight economic growth isn’t positive to you?

And Reagan was no more genocidal than FDR, who forced hundreds of thousands of people into interment camps (mass imprisonment of an ethnic group is arguably a genocide by loose terms).

I'm going to skip out on why I think his economic policy was horrible because it would be allot of linking and looking up things and I just am not down for that right now, but I'm sure someone else will pick this up ok?

But I do feel the need to respond to the second point. No a campaign of mass murder is not the same thing as Japanese interment. And these aren't loose definitions, Rios Montt and Mejia Victores were convicted of genocide in a court of law.

Not convinced the communists in Nicaragua were any less genocidal, considering what the communists in Mongolia did (and you being up my flair. Have communists been very friendly to Catholics? Ever?)

Anyways, Reagan was scared of the spread of communism, and rightfully so. I think this fear made him do things that he wasn’t very careful about, like supporting the Contras, just because they were anti-communist. But the idea that this thing alone makes him a terrible president- despite all the good he did- sounds like revisionist history that a vast majority of political scientists (including Democrats) disagree with.

I keep bringing up your flair because you are defending people that murdered priests and nuns as a matter of policy. In one case defending a violent anticlerical madman sponsored by anti-Catholic bigots in the US. And also, you know, genocide.

I hate to repeat myself so often, but Rios Montt and Mejia Victores were convicted of genocide in court.
When that happens to any of the Sandinistas you are terrified of, I'll concede your point.


I don't have any other comment on communists other to note that in all of the dirty wars that Reagan sponsored in Central America the vast majority of human rights violations were committed by anti-communist forces.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

TheReckoning is on a roll this week.

What the amount of threads he's steered and the amount of posters refusing to let go of his bait

Yeah, genocide apologia will do that.

You’re defending the atrocities committed by the FSLN just because they were anti-Reagan.

No I'm not.

I haven't said a damn thing about Sandinistas until my very last post. And that was only the academic point that none of them have been convicted of genocide.

Aside from which, FSLN doesn't have anything to with the Guatemalan genocide other than as an excuse.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Why was this thread even started if your just going to repeat that in an unscientific survey in the NYT of political scientists list him well if you only look at the ones who don’t identify with either major party?

I want to know your opinion on Ronald Reagan, but consider that anything but ‘awesome’ is objectively wrong.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Why was this thread even started if your just going to repeat that in an unscientific survey in the NYT of political scientists list him well if you only look at the ones who don’t identify with either major party?

I want to know your opinion on Ronald Reagan, but consider that anything but ‘awesome’ is objectively wrong.

TFW a study must be wrong because it doesn’t confirm your bias.

A cutesy survey of political scientists asking them to rank the best Presidents is not a study.

Also, do you know what political scientists do? It’s not sitting around debating who the best President was.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

ITT:

What do you think of (genocide financing) chocolate ice cream?
It sucks!
I'll have you know this survey of food scientists ranked it the 9th best flavor. Why are you so biased?

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

What do you think a political scientist does TheReckoning?