our history

Our Legacy on America’s and the world’s history is yet to be fully written.  We have the makings of a great generation, adversity, intense issues with the world, issues worth solving.  Yet I worry about our decisions to push things off onto the next generation.  Global Warming is an issue we must move on now, or our future will be bleak, people consider education and science to be things not needed.  The lethargy of the 80s and 90s generation will haunt us later I believe.  No one seems to care about the important things enough to solve them, only enough to either say they care and not make amends for it, or to capitalize on the issue and make money off of it.  I am among the former sadly, I feel very strongly about particular issues, but not to go any farther than to write my representative and senator.  The issue that this causes is perhaps the idea of Nixon’s silent majority.  We may hold a majority on most issues, but no one cares enough to do anything about it, save extremists on both sides.  We are far too alienated to do anything but allow the status quo to continue on its march.  Our lives take up too much time to make any rational moves on national and international policy, so we do nothing and allow those who do not have our best interests in mind to make what they will of our world.  So this is our history.

Reagan

The rise of Conservatism within the political world of the United States was one of paradoxical ascension.  The standards of shrink government, increase freedoms for businesses and individuals, and allow the economy to grow how it naturally would was contrasted by the increase in federal spending, a continued expansion of the military, and a change in the tax code to greatly favor the wealthy.  The separation between grassroots activists serving Reagan and the wealthy Americans who funded his campaigns was an ideological one, and a red herring at that.  The issue was, and the reason Reagan was elected, was that he spoke to people about tax cuts to wealthier Americans as if they were to get those cuts, while for the most part, those people wouldn’t see a dime of the break he proposed.  The ones who supported him financially, on the other hand, were about to see a large increase in income from his tax policy.  The disparaging conflicts between his grass roots followers  and the upper class supporters was fixed by his use of class confusion within his speeches.  Class confusion allowed the poorer grass roots supporters to feel as if the tax breaks for the upper class were actually for them, because in their mind at the time, both the upper class and them shared income, thus would share in the tax cuts.  This idea that helping the rich helps everyone was the base for trickle down economics, and we can see its effects on today’s economy.