Premise: Discussion

Premise:
2001 would have seen flying cars and voyages to Jupiter if it weren’t for Reagan, squandering our national resources on useless wars, tax cuts for the wealthy and diverting the nation away from scientific progress.

Discuss.

I don't know how many scifi dreams would have been fulfilled, but certainly the supply-side laffable nonsense has derailed the economy repeatedly. It's still used as an excuse and smokescreen by the Republicans, even now.

Without checking the figures, it seems likely that Reagan's wild defense spending spree...

The wars in Lebabon, Grenada, Libya (as well as preparing the field for Bush's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia...)

The Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") debacle...

The tax giveaway to billionaire campaign donors...

... As well as a myriad of other unsound financial decisions, squandered a lot of money that could have paid off the debt, advanced space technology, made alternate fuels competitive, rebuilt the infrastructure, retired the internal combustion engine, and fostered a generation of well-educated scientists advancing the wave of innovation here in America instead of abroad.

Quote :

While it's surely unfair to blame Ronald Reagan for unanticipated consequences of his policies that were 20 years in the making, there can be little question that the narrow Cold War worldview that led him to classify Osama Bin Laden as a "freedom fighter" and Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist" had some serious drawbacks.

And as a reminder of how important it is to remember the past, I often hear Reagan referred to as “The Great Communicator.” This, about a man who stumbled through the speeches written for him, and without a script was almost mute. Who showed signs of Alzheimer’s in his first term. Who slept through cabinet meetings and had all presidential briefings boiled down to a paragraph or two because he couldn’t follow anything more.

Well, at least his briefings were on the issues. Not scrapbooks of pictures of himself.