I'm old enough to remember that some the embassy staff managed to evade capture and were hidden by the Canadian embassy staff until they could be smuggled out.
Then Hollywood made movie about it and gave Ben Affleck all the credit.
Terrifying. Thanks, I just looked up this topic. Comes back to the same as orange man saying " the educated dont like me" being just general GOP ideology I guess.
So much happened under his watch though. And he gets so much credit from republicans for the economy doing well too.
I think what makes me the most mad about him is he paved the way for the ultra rich that we have now. Massively cut taxes on the wealthy and cut regulations. The tech boom started under his watch, but was paid for by government sponsored research and colleges. They took ownership and now we’re all worse off for it.
When they find a play that works, they run it again.
Because we let Iran/Contra blow over with Ronnie's "i meamt well, and what i said was true, but the facts say different", Oliver North taking the 5th, and everyone else singing in the "I cannot recall, Senator" choir - government has ZERO accountability.
In the 80s the allegience with the Moral Majority somewhat tempered the corruption and abuse of the poor/disenfranchised.
Just like Trump, he just abuses the holes in the rules that have never been fixed. Reagan was the first to do that large scale, but in reality nothing out of manners or some moral code was preventing things like that happening before, and as we currently see, the americans haven't fixed anything in the last decades - it rather seems many have forgotten more than they ever learned.
The US is a joke - we can see how much their constitution and democratic institutions are worth in reality. Outside of an outsized ego and megalomaniac tendencies, there's not much to see there.
Noone expects it to do it day one. But they ignored obvious flaws for hundreds of years now, and that makes them the butt of the joke for sure, and they deserve the fallout of their glorious empire becoming an autocracy.
You know, civil society? The millions of people who neglected updating the basic rules their country is running on? That's the problem when you write down that state and religion have to be separated, but at the same time adopt a civic religion - because at that point, changing the constitution becomes akin to blasphemy.
Here's the problem with that.. It starts with education, and in the late 70's when Texas became the school textbook publishing capital in the nation, all bets were off.
There's a reason that in 1980 my 11th grade High School US History textbook was from 1967.
What started being published come that Texas capture of school textbooks, changed the course of the country.
NGL, sad as it is to admit, the boomer generation that came of age (now being called "generation Jones") just as Reagan was in his first term was the last generation to get an education that included civics lessons as if they mattered. Afterwards, it all apparently went to hell.
It's our older generational siblings that came of age in the mid-60's (before Vietnam hit) who became the insufferable reactionay MAGA jackasses the generation is known for. The change they saw post-Vietnam scared the hell out of them, and they've been reactionary ever since.
My mom (who's a Silent) has younger 'boomer cousins - whom I've tanged with online - that are MAGA diehards and bigoted as fuck - and they are unreal. Don't wanna know.. Don't care and they live in such fear they vote to deliberately hurt other people. Horribly lost, terribly damaged Americans, and typical of the reactionary boomers born before 1958.
The Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z got the shit end of the stick WRT education and civic and engagement as an obligation of being an infored citizen.
Well he didn't start the Iran thing that happened in the 50's when the US and Britain ousted Iran's democratically elected leader called [Mossaddegh](Mohammad Mosaddegh https://share.google/oHyWn3GiAmqHRIz0l)
We entered this era of an unjust social order, political malaise and destabilisation almost half a century ago when the US president Ronald Reagan and the UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher introduced libertarian reforms that were embraced globally.
At his first cabinet meeting as president in 1981, Reagan distributed copies of Mandate for Leadership, whose 3,000 pages came out of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, DC. This became the ideology of neoliberalism, which advocated a smaller state, industry deregulation, tax cuts, strengthened defence, and roll-back of social engineering. A year later, 60 per cent of the Mandate’s proposals had been adopted by the Reagan administration,
After dropping off their load of illegal weapons, the smugglers that Oliver North hired to smuggle the weapons down to Central America found themselves with an empty plane, a fistful of cash, and CIA protection, so what do you think they did?
That's right, they loaded their planes with cocaine, and flew them back to America, over and over and over again, starting the crack epidemic that killed millions, a lesser know outcome of the Iran-Contra Treason.
Nixon did the same thing with the North Vietnamese so he could get elected in 1968. He didn't offer to sell them weapons, but he encouraged them to not negotiate with the Johnson administration, telling them that he'd give them better terms. Then he kept the war going for YEARS, until North Vietnam finally won it, chased the Americans out.
And when the hostages-until-election deal was discovered the corporate news sewers were fine with it. Less so than now, but they could have stuck it to them, but they were outplayed by Michael Deaver.
His “Morning in America” bullshit is what we called MAGA back then. Flags. Trucks. Racism.
Don’t forget, Iran was a democratic nation in the early 1950s until America fucked it up for corporate profits. We created the conditions that brought about the Iran regime to capitulate to corporate interests.
And now even the US is up to being couped, in a "constitutional" manner. (Fidesz'es rise to power is often being called a "constitutional coup" by some scholars.)
Obama had record bombings, Biden sucked Bibi's dick, and that's just recently. You don't want a solution to American imperialism, you don't care, you just don't wanna look as ugly as the Reds make America look (who are monsters but at least they're honest about it).
To be clear, the henchman who constructed this outrageous evil was former CIA director George Herbert Walker Bush who called the FBI when JFK was shot to let them know he totally wasn’t anywhere near Dallas that day okay so don’t even bother looking.
Funny, that book. I went to find it on Wikipedia to see if it's something I'd read and there's recurring disagreement on the talk page about it. One gets the impression there is an effort to discredit the entire work, with an overt emphasis on calling it conspiracy theory along with the omission of anything positive.
I went to one of the review sources used, and it's true: the wiki author really did only quote the first line of the paragraph from the Boston Magazine article. The rest of the Boston Magazine article supports the praise, but the Wikipedia author chose to include only this:
Family of Secrets was trounced by the mainstream media: “There are more crutches in these pages,” wrote the Washington Post, “than in the grotto at Lourdes.”
Here's the rest of the source paragraph, the part they left out (emphasis mine):
And yet it’s an impressive feat of reporting, its pages filled with constellations of intriguing and often troubling facts. Baker’s editor, Peter Ginna, told the New York Observer in 2009, “I worked at Oxford University Press for 10 years and published several Pulitzer Prize–winning historians, and I have not published any book that was more extensively documented and more impeccably footnoted than this one.” Gore Vidal called it “one of the most important books of the past 10 years.”
Interesting editorial choices. It's almost like someone doesn't want anyone to take it seriously. But if it's that well researched and documented, and it appears to be, then it's not just an unfounded conspiracy theory, is it.
I'd read it just to find out what someone's so upset about in there that they have to try to make it look like a hack job. And Gore Vidal, for all his personal foibles, was prescient about what was going on in this country long before the rest of us had any idea the fascists were taking over, and a recommendation from him was high praise: I'd read it just for that.
Fuck the Gipper. Don't forget he also gave us Trickle-Down Economics, which I've been calling Trickle-Downs Syndrome for the last 30 years because you have to have an extra chromosome to believe that bullshit.
As the older brother of someone with DS, my brother Daniel, I am glad that people like you are suffering. It is comments like yours that make me feel a little less bad about everything that is happening to Americans, including the "good" ones like you yourself probably proclaim sometimes. You really have no idea the amount of violent intrusive thoughts people like you instill upon us. I actually wrote one of my massive comments insulting you so heavily, I had to remove 90% of it because I'd have gotten permanently banned. Don't worry, though, people like you always end up paying the toll.
"War I've been told to support is legal, other wars are illegal (we don't talk about morals here because I'm American and morality is decorative at best, but usually shunned as weakness)."
he also got himself a deal from sag-aftra seperated from the rest of the union i believe too where personally benefited more by snitching on them. he likely had early onset alzheimers the whole time he was president too.
80 Comments
DrBob@lemmy.ca · 75 pts · 1d
I'm old enough to remember that some the embassy staff managed to evade capture and were hidden by the Canadian embassy staff until they could be smuggled out.
Then Hollywood made movie about it and gave Ben Affleck all the credit.
vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 22 pts · 1d
The guy that writes the book takes the credit and sells the rights to Hollywood. Tale as old as time.
At least Tony Mendez seems to enjoy a fair bit of esteem with his former colleagues. That’s not always the case.
danc4498@lemmy.world · 54 pts · 1d
I blame Reagan for everything that sucks today.
dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net · 42 pts · 1d
I was just telling my kids about how public universities charge tuition because of Reagan.
danc4498@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 23h
Holy fucking shit. I learn new things every day about how he fucked things up.
https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/
ProjectPatatoe@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d
Terrifying. Thanks, I just looked up this topic. Comes back to the same as orange man saying " the educated dont like me" being just general GOP ideology I guess.
Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk · 8 pts · 1d
And you’ll probably be right most of the time.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
He helped, but was hardly the principal person. Its a large movement fueled by hatred and bigotry, led by a small wealthy few.
danc4498@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 23h
So much happened under his watch though. And he gets so much credit from republicans for the economy doing well too.
I think what makes me the most mad about him is he paved the way for the ultra rich that we have now. Massively cut taxes on the wealthy and cut regulations. The tech boom started under his watch, but was paid for by government sponsored research and colleges. They took ownership and now we’re all worse off for it.
snooggums@piefed.world · 2 pts · 19h
He was the face and completely on board with pushing the agenda of those wealthy few, just like Trump is now.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 15h
2nd term reagan was a dementia fueled circus.
Papazoo@piefed.ca · 1 pts · 6h
Everything old is new again.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2h
When they find a play that works, they run it again.
Because we let Iran/Contra blow over with Ronnie's "i meamt well, and what i said was true, but the facts say different", Oliver North taking the 5th, and everyone else singing in the "I cannot recall, Senator" choir - government has ZERO accountability.
In the 80s the allegience with the Moral Majority somewhat tempered the corruption and abuse of the poor/disenfranchised.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus · 6 pts · 1d
Just like Trump, he just abuses the holes in the rules that have never been fixed. Reagan was the first to do that large scale, but in reality nothing out of manners or some moral code was preventing things like that happening before, and as we currently see, the americans haven't fixed anything in the last decades - it rather seems many have forgotten more than they ever learned.
The US is a joke - we can see how much their constitution and democratic institutions are worth in reality. Outside of an outsized ego and megalomaniac tendencies, there's not much to see there.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · -7 pts · 1d
Yeah they didn’t solve every single aspect of moral public governance on day 1. What a friggin joke of a country.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus · 4 pts · 22h
Noone expects it to do it day one. But they ignored obvious flaws for hundreds of years now, and that makes them the butt of the joke for sure, and they deserve the fallout of their glorious empire becoming an autocracy.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 22h
Who’s they? They must be old as hell.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus · 4 pts · 21h
You know, civil society? The millions of people who neglected updating the basic rules their country is running on? That's the problem when you write down that state and religion have to be separated, but at the same time adopt a civic religion - because at that point, changing the constitution becomes akin to blasphemy.
foodandart@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 21h
Here's the problem with that.. It starts with education, and in the late 70's when Texas became the school textbook publishing capital in the nation, all bets were off.
There's a reason that in 1980 my 11th grade High School US History textbook was from 1967.
What started being published come that Texas capture of school textbooks, changed the course of the country.
NGL, sad as it is to admit, the boomer generation that came of age (now being called "generation Jones") just as Reagan was in his first term was the last generation to get an education that included civics lessons as if they mattered. Afterwards, it all apparently went to hell.
It's our older generational siblings that came of age in the mid-60's (before Vietnam hit) who became the insufferable reactionay MAGA jackasses the generation is known for. The change they saw post-Vietnam scared the hell out of them, and they've been reactionary ever since.
My mom (who's a Silent) has younger 'boomer cousins - whom I've tanged with online - that are MAGA diehards and bigoted as fuck - and they are unreal. Don't wanna know.. Don't care and they live in such fear they vote to deliberately hurt other people. Horribly lost, terribly damaged Americans, and typical of the reactionary boomers born before 1958.
The Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z got the shit end of the stick WRT education and civic and engagement as an obligation of being an infored citizen.
Which sucks as it's led us here.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 21h
Oh man don’t get me started on civil society!
Tiger666@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 6h
Well he didn't start the Iran thing that happened in the 50's when the US and Britain ousted Iran's democratically elected leader called [Mossaddegh](Mohammad Mosaddegh https://share.google/oHyWn3GiAmqHRIz0l)
hanrahan@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 11h
indeed
good articles here
https://aeon.co/essays/why-western-democracy-is-ailing-and-how-to-fix-it
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 44 pts · 1d
The United States have been a problem country for 100+ years.
crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 32 pts · 1d
100+250+ yearsdaychilde@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Since 1619.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · -9 pts · 1d
Unlike who
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 23h
I have very little bad to say about Palau on their global influence and politics
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 23h
. . . Well okay then.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 40 pts · 1d
After dropping off their load of illegal weapons, the smugglers that Oliver North hired to smuggle the weapons down to Central America found themselves with an empty plane, a fistful of cash, and CIA protection, so what do you think they did?
That's right, they loaded their planes with cocaine, and flew them back to America, over and over and over again, starting the crack epidemic that killed millions, a lesser know outcome of the Iran-Contra Treason.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Noriega, anyone?
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 31 pts · 1d
Nixon did the same thing with the North Vietnamese so he could get elected in 1968. He didn't offer to sell them weapons, but he encouraged them to not negotiate with the Johnson administration, telling them that he'd give them better terms. Then he kept the war going for YEARS, until North Vietnam finally won it, chased the Americans out.
TREASON has is a core conservative value.
A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip · 23 pts · 1d
After he won
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
And when the hostages-until-election deal was discovered the corporate news sewers were fine with it. Less so than now, but they could have stuck it to them, but they were outplayed by Michael Deaver.
His “Morning in America” bullshit is what we called MAGA back then. Flags. Trucks. Racism.
UsernamesAreForSuckers@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 17h
Don’t forget, Iran was a democratic nation in the early 1950s until America fucked it up for corporate profits. We created the conditions that brought about the Iran regime to capitulate to corporate interests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
UsernamesAreForSuckers@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 17h
Highly recommend reading this book for more details on American interference in sovereign nations to protect corporate interests: https://ia600507.us.archive.org/0/items/ConfessionsOfAnEconomicHitman_257/JohnPerkins-ConfessionsOfAnEconomicHitman.pdf
brownsugga@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2h
whoa, direct to .pdf link, very nice, thank you. seconded your recommendation
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 11h
at the behest of the UK too.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 5h
And now even the US is up to being couped, in a "constitutional" manner. (Fidesz'es rise to power is often being called a "constitutional coup" by some scholars.)
Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 1d
Something else the americans have forgotten about Canadians helping them with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Caper
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Capitalism create a self centered personality. As long as it isn't American nobody cares.
GripenGal@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 21h
Hard to argue with vote blue no matter who if you look at every republican president
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 13h
Obama had record bombings, Biden sucked Bibi's dick, and that's just recently. You don't want a solution to American imperialism, you don't care, you just don't wanna look as ugly as the Reds make America look (who are monsters but at least they're honest about it).
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -12 pts · 19h
I hope you like fetterman
Donkter@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 19h
^ This guy thinks Dr. Oz would have been better btw.
pinto@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12h
Both are grifters, one was more honest.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 19h
He's running for president, huh?
That's news to me
stoly@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18h
You mean the guy who underwent a personality change after experiencing a serious stroke?
pinto@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12h
You mean the lie that people say? Look into his history of his mayorship, lots of nasty racism.
Cheebus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2h
Fetterman is proof that the only way to understand republican mentality is to have a stroke and shut half your brain off
lukaro@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 17h
So republicans have been worthless corrupt shit for as long as I've been alive..
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 2 pts · 5h
Every president and the majority of senators and representatives for as long as I have lived.
Tiger666@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 6h
Even longer
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
To be clear, the henchman who constructed this outrageous evil was former CIA director George Herbert Walker Bush who called the FBI when JFK was shot to let them know he totally wasn’t anywhere near Dallas that day okay so don’t even bother looking.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 23h
GHWB was one of the shooters, or at the very least, on the ground conducting the op.
Ed Lansdale. Ted Shackley. E Howard Hunt. Lee Harvey Oswald. David Morales.
Basically all of them CIA, Operation Mongoose veterans.
With Bush, JE Hoover directly mentioned him by name in a memo that supposedly didnt't exist untill oops it does and it's real.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 23h
For more information! https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/bush-and-the-jfk-hit-part-3-where-was-poppy-november-22-1963/
brownsugga@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 20h
If you haven't yet, you should read Family of Secrets, it's eye opening
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 14h
Funny, that book. I went to find it on Wikipedia to see if it's something I'd read and there's recurring disagreement on the talk page about it. One gets the impression there is an effort to discredit the entire work, with an overt emphasis on calling it conspiracy theory along with the omission of anything positive.
I went to one of the review sources used, and it's true: the wiki author really did only quote the first line of the paragraph from the Boston Magazine article. The rest of the Boston Magazine article supports the praise, but the Wikipedia author chose to include only this:
Here's the rest of the source paragraph, the part they left out (emphasis mine):
Interesting editorial choices. It's almost like someone doesn't want anyone to take it seriously. But if it's that well researched and documented, and it appears to be, then it's not just an unfounded conspiracy theory, is it.
I'd read it just to find out what someone's so upset about in there that they have to try to make it look like a hack job. And Gore Vidal, for all his personal foibles, was prescient about what was going on in this country long before the rest of us had any idea the fascists were taking over, and a recommendation from him was high praise: I'd read it just for that.
brownsugga@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 14h
If a nonfiction work is discredited by mainstream popular media it only makes me want to read it more
UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18h
https://youtu.be/6lIqNjC1RKU
Killer Mike - Reagan
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online · 5 pts · 1d
Fuck the Gipper. Don't forget he also gave us Trickle-Down Economics, which I've been calling Trickle-Downs Syndrome for the last 30 years because you have to have an extra chromosome to believe that bullshit.
Coupable@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1d
"I like to make fun of people with disabilities when I criticize ronald reagan" fuckin dope take man good job great work keep it up
DummyWOW@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 1d
Garbage take. People with Down syndrome have more respect than you do.
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online · -10 pts · 22h
Getting outraged on other's behalf like this must be exhausting. Have yourself a good cry and go take a nappy-nap little one.
chloroken@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 16h
Shut the fuck up, cretin.
Makhno@lemmy.world · -13 pts · 1d
Get over yourself 😂
Coupable@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Shut the fuck up 👍
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 11h
he also started, Starve the federal government beast, and removing the ethical reporting of news.
PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al · 0 pts · 20h
As the older brother of someone with DS, my brother Daniel, I am glad that people like you are suffering. It is comments like yours that make me feel a little less bad about everything that is happening to Americans, including the "good" ones like you yourself probably proclaim sometimes. You really have no idea the amount of violent intrusive thoughts people like you instill upon us. I actually wrote one of my massive comments insulting you so heavily, I had to remove 90% of it because I'd have gotten permanently banned. Don't worry, though, people like you always end up paying the toll.
West_of_West@piefed.social · 5 pts · 19h
"Did Reagan give the orders? Did cocaine pay the bills?
They said we's fighting communists, it was kinda hard to tell"
Tiger666@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 6h
Im smart enough to understand history and what the US and Britain did to Mossaddegh and Iran.
This was all caused by imperialistic ambitions by western powers and 80 years later nobody remembers who caused what.
The US has been a terrorist state since its inception.
Thor_Whale@lemmus.org · 4 pts · 21h
He was an empty suit that could read very well off a teleprompter
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 11h
he had alzheimers, and was controlled by Nancy"throat goat" reagen and his cabinet, he was nothing more than an empty puppet.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 13h
Ollie North!
LBP321@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 14h
I think the phrases "illegal war" and "war crimes" are redundant. WTF is a "legal" war?
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 14h
One with a formal declaration and a stated goal.
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 13h
"War I've been told to support is legal, other wars are illegal (we don't talk about morals here because I'm American and morality is decorative at best, but usually shunned as weakness)."
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 11h
Something that Ukraine is doing
MIDItheKID@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 14h
And then they made a video game about the guerilla warfare in Nicaragua and everybody was like "hell yeah"
/s if not obvious.
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 21h
You know the Iranians were the other major user of the F-14, right?
mabeledo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 19h
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 13h
he also got himself a deal from sag-aftra seperated from the rest of the union i believe too where personally benefited more by snitching on them. he likely had early onset alzheimers the whole time he was president too.