[HN Gopher] My mother declared my bedroom a disaster area (1984)
___________________________________________________________________
My mother declared my bedroom a disaster area (1984)
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 287 points
Date : 2024-04-18 12:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.lettersofnote.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.lettersofnote.com)
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I enjoy cheeky letters and even moreso, I really enjoy cheeky
| responses to said letters.
|
| The staffer who replied probably enjoyed writing it.
| mwcremer wrote:
| This is one of my favorites:
|
| https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-am-unable-to-accept-your-...
| kzrdude wrote:
| that was lovely. Sure enough the letter writer has a
| wikipedia article as Paul Devlin (filmmaker)
| lostlogin wrote:
| I like the Arkell versus Pressdram.
|
| https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/arkell-v-pressdram
| mauvehaus wrote:
| That is excellent, and if you enjoyed it, you might also
| enjoy the Cleveland Browns one:
|
| https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/very-truly-yours
| hodgesrm wrote:
| The cc: to Art Modell [0] was a nice touch. He was a real
| character. I imagine he thoroughly approved of the
| response, assuming he didn't think of it himself.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Modell
| fifilura wrote:
| There is a reference to a "small grammatical error" in the
| rejection from Harvard, but I did not quite understand what
| he was referring to.
|
| Was that obvious from his reply and I missed the point?
|
| I am guessing it must be in the form of "Please accept our
| letter of rejection" or similar?
| demondemidi wrote:
| Yeah I'm pretty sure Reagan didn't write this reply. Spending
| decades on social media has made me not trust anything I read
| that is "feel good".
| Merad wrote:
| Around 2017-2018 I remember reading a really interesting
| article about how the Obama White House handled letters to
| the president. The vast majority of letters (hundreds per
| day, IIRC) were answered by staffers, but each day they would
| select 10 letters that Obama would read himself. He didn't
| personally write out a reply, but he'd make notes for the
| staff about how he wanted to respond. No idea how Reagan's
| team handled it, but it's at least possible that he was
| personally involved in the reply.
| mlyle wrote:
| Reagan's administration worked in the same way. But Reagan
| himself was a prolific correspondent, and personally
| dictated a much greater share of those replies than most
| 20th century presidents.
|
| (Reagan also was known for reading articles and scribbling
| notes to staff about a note to send "from him" about the
| content-- quite a few journalists and essayists received
| Reagan letters).
| sdeyerle wrote:
| I'm trying to figure out where 539 hurricanes is coming from?
| That's over an order of magnitude more than there's ever been in
| a single season...
| knute wrote:
| I'm thinking it must be tornadoes. There were 907 tornadoes
| across all of 1984.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornado_events_by_year
| re wrote:
| Also curious that the letter was from May, before the start of
| the 1984 hurricane season. Per Wikipedia, 1984 did go on to
| have the highest activity since 1971, while 1983 the lowest
| since 1930. But 1983 caused more damage with Hurricane Alicia
| crossing Texas.
|
| The Texas drought reference does appear to be accurate.
| https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/16/us/crushing-drought-in-te...
| tasuki wrote:
| Isn't all of the letter a joke?
| Detrytus wrote:
| It being a joke does not justify POTUS lying to US citizens
| :P
| IncRnd wrote:
| It's good to keep things in perspective. After all, there
| are 16,384 misunderstood comments each minute on this very
| website.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| If your comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your
| calculations?
|
| If my comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your
| calculations?
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| I misunderstood this comment initially, thinking that
| there can't be so many comments on HN. But then I
| realised each comment can be misunderstood more than
| once. Seems plausible. Pleased to have done my part.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| And that number immediately triggers my "Nice neat power
| of 2 answer? Seems unlikely..." suspicions. :-)
| m463 wrote:
| maybe from a list of funding requests? :)
| js2 wrote:
| It's likely a joke, but it sure stands out. Could also be
| transcription error. The letter itself contains a typo ("if you
| will privide") which is fixed in the transcription. (It should
| have been transcribed as is with "[sic]" added to note the
| original typo.) Too bad there's not an image of the reply.
|
| BTW, the letter was shared to reddit 7 years ago and a redditor
| replied that it was his uncle Andy:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5a95b8/til_i...
|
| A photo of Andy:
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/tsWkg
|
| The story has been circulating the Internet at least since
| 2004:
|
| https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/spring/c...
| OJFord wrote:
| > A photo of Andy
|
| What kind of amazing self-parody is 'Irmo man wrote letter'!
| That's brilliant
| Thorrez wrote:
| There's an image of the reply in that imgur gallery you
| linked. The image says 539.
| hedora wrote:
| The letter looks like pretty typical republican playbook:
|
| It implausibly overestimates the scope of problems, then claims
| that the private sector / volunteer organizations have more
| capabilities / funding than the federal government.
|
| I'm hoping it was self-parody and not just a canned form letter
| response.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Is the image composition fair use? The website is commercial. I
| would argue the reagan borrow is fair while taking the whole room
| picture is probably not.
| bhaney wrote:
| Do you seriously care?
| kzrdude wrote:
| Why not, it's a theoretical musing like much else on this
| forum.
| jader201 wrote:
| FWIW, this mostly falls under one of the guidelines of
| things not to do:
|
| _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's not a tangential thing, it was mentioned explicitly
| as a point in the text by the author.
| whyenot wrote:
| The "best regards to your mother" at the end seems so innocent.
| Nowadays, it would read like a reference to an SNL skit starring
| Andy Samberg and Mark Whalberg.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| > Andy Samberg and Mark Whalberg
|
| Andy Samberg _AS_ Mark Whalberg :)
| anon35 wrote:
| Wahlberg lampooned himself in a follow-up appearance with
| Samberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYcHxF_cO8o. So:
| "and" is also correct.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake did that at
| the start of their song about threesomes they did with Lady
| Gaga.
|
| And if I recall correctly, one of their mothers was played by
| Susan Sarandon?
| pvg wrote:
| "Word to your mother" was a thing around the time this was
| written and the history of potentially ambiguous maternal
| reference is probably about as long as that of language itself.
| jh00ker wrote:
| "Say hi to your mom for me." -- Biff Tannen, Back to the Future
| OJFord wrote:
| Amazing, hard not to think (if you've seen it) of the 'I declare
| bankruptcy' scene (surely you've seen a gif if not the show?) of
| the US remake of _The Office_.
| tombert wrote:
| This doesn't appear to be a thing you can easily do anymore now
| that social media has sort of supplanted it, but I used to email
| members of bands that I really liked when I was between the ages
| of ~12-16, so this would have been around ~~2003-2007 or so.
|
| The band members wrote back with a surprising frequency, and were
| extremely polite and grateful for fanmail. I remember that I had
| a fairly in-depth email session with Justin Pierre, the lead
| singer for Motion City Soundtrack, where I asked him about how he
| comes up with songs and what touring was like.
|
| Now, obviously, there's reasons that kids should _absolutely not
| ever do this_ , because there's a lot of really crappy humans who
| might try and exploit the kids or do otherwise horrible things,
| but I was lucky enough to where that never happened to me, and
| everyone who wrote back to me was very professional and seemed
| flattered that anyone liked their music enough to write a fan
| email. I think email was still a new enough thing to where most
| people weren't writing fan emails.
|
| It's something I reminisce about occasionally, and while I don't
| really agree with any of Reagan's policies, I will acknowledge
| that him writing back to this kid was genuinely a kind of cool
| thing to do.
|
| ETA:
|
| Before anyone goes judging them, I should point out that my
| parents did not know I was doing that, and would likely have told
| me to stop if they did, precisely because they would have been
| afraid of me being coerced into something horrible as a minor. I
| don't think they realized at the time that it was even possible
| to directly contact band members via email.
| camillomiller wrote:
| You might like Nick Cave's newsletter, the Red Hand Files
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I don't think it's really that bad for kids to do this, nor for
| parents to let their kids do this. Obviously parents should
| supervise somewhat to make sure that the kids aren't being
| manipulated by some predator, but otherwise I think it's fine.
| The solution to "there are bad people in the world" isn't to
| shut out the world, it's to watch out for bad people.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, fair; I guess what I was getting at is that kids
| shouldn't do stuff like that unsupervised, especially really
| young kids. If it's just politely interacting with a singer,
| that's fine, but if the conversation gets too bad that can
| shut it down.
| ycombobreaker wrote:
| If the kid CC's their parent it's usually obvious that the
| conversation is supervised. A thoughtful and respectful
| individual will Reply All.
| tombert wrote:
| Completely agree, I think that's a very reasonable
| precaution that doesn't really "restrict" the kid, but
| hedges a bit against the famous person doing anything
| inappropriate. I also feel like nearly any famous person
| who isn't a creep would understand as well, within some
| degree of reason.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems OK to me and I would be fine with my kids doing the same.
| Risk for email is very low, especially when the child seeks out
| an adult, opposed to the other way around.
|
| Ironically, my elderly father does the same thing today! He
| cold emails ivy league professors and writers from the WSJ, and
| I'm always surprised on how engaged they get with
| corresponding. They send preprints, lab data, and all kinds of
| followup.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Similarly I've done research on some of the more obscure
| older games, and cold emailing developers when I find contact
| info has resulted in a suprising number of successful
| correspondences.
| mturmon wrote:
| In the 90's I used to listen to Ian Masters' radio show
| _Background Briefing_ which was a very pointy-headed, left-
| leaning examination of various issues.
|
| At the time it was just a show run by a very competent host
| out of a public radio station in LA (KPFK - not an NPR
| affiliate). I think it has expanded since then.
|
| Several times Ian said he was surprised to usually get a
| "yes" when he asked some relatively high-profile journalist,
| think-tanker, or university professor to be interviewed on
| his show. (Typical interview was 15-20 minutes of airtime -
| not just a sound bite.)
|
| Basically, these folks seem to be surprisingly willing to
| chat when cold-called by an interested person.
| tombert wrote:
| In 2015, I found the phone number to radio host Jesse Lee
| Peterson's office, and around the same time had seen a clip
| of him saying that the "biggest mistake America ever made
| was allowing women to vote". I called the number to leave a
| message that I thought he was an "ignorant, sexist moron".
| [1]
|
| The intern that answered the phone said "do you want to
| tell him yourself?", to which I quickly said "yes".
|
| Jesse answered the phone, and I said "hey, Jesse Lee
| Peterson, I think you're an ignorant moron".
|
| He replied back with "do you want to say this on the show
| tomorrow?" to which I said "absolutely". A producer reached
| out to me via email, and the next day I spoke to him on the
| radio for about 20 minutes. I doubt I convinced him or any
| of his listeners of anything, but at least I got to say my
| piece, for a lot longer than I thought I was going to.
|
| While I still think he's an ignorant and sexist moron whose
| opinions have only gotten more radical and scary, I guess
| I'll give him a little credit for being a bit open to
| alternate arguments.
|
| [1] Even if you disagree, don't try and convince me
| otherwise here, because you will not convince me otherwise
| in this case. If you don't know who he is, I advise that
| you don't Google him if you don't want to get depressed.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| Yeah, I recently got a response to a cold email to Dr. Karl
| Friston. Definitely a fanboy moment!
|
| Regarding the risk of a minor doing this kind of outreach,
| 90% of all child abuse happens with someone known to the
| child and/or their guardian, and I doubt many of the
| remaining 10% are just waiting around for a child to contact
| them first. I'd say reaching out to people you admire is a
| useful enough skill that it's definitely worth honing as soon
| as there's an interest, though of course involving one's
| parents in the process is a good idea.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Professionally it really works well as well. If you have a
| good rap and interesting questions you can connect with
| interesting people.
|
| Think about it, most email is a pit of despair. Interesting
| human contact is rare.
|
| Years ago I was working with a client on a really obscure bug
| with a storage system. I emailed a dude from the manufacturer
| who posted on an listserv about some similar-ish scenarios.
|
| We emailed a few times and he ended up calling me. Turned out
| he was on the east coast for a conference an hour away and we
| ended up meeting up at the customer site unofficially, and he
| realized that whatever we were doing was outside of their
| test coverage in error. We both learned a lot and stayed in
| touch for a few years.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| After reading a sci-fi novel I really enjoyed, I emailed the
| author to let him know how much I appreciated his imagination,
| and received a rather lovely reply.
|
| Absolutely didn't expect it, but it was really nice to get.
|
| (Adrian Tchaikovsky, and his Children of Time series).
| dekhn wrote:
| I was wondering if he was a real, individual human being
| because that author writes far more text in a short period of
| time than anybody I've ever seen.
|
| I really liked Cage of Souls, it was like a Jack Vance
| revival. And it's always fun to reach Tchaikovsky and
| Alastair Reynolds books back to back.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I was wondering if he was a real, individual human being
| because that author writes far more text in a short period
| of time than anybody I've ever seen.
|
| I've wondered the same thing about Stephen King. I figured
| it'd be easy enough for him to put out outlines and then
| make edits after others he trusted to write in his style
| wrote most of the words.
| vidarh wrote:
| Look up Georges Simenon (Maigret novels). Some people just
| write fast. Simenon used to write his novels in a week, and
| that isn't particularly unusual.
|
| It certainly varies with genre, and the short writing
| periods tend to be more common in genres where people write
| series and the genre has very specific expectations (e.g.
| romance, crime mysteries) and where huge levels of
| originality isn't needed. NOT suggesting that is the case
| for Tchaikovsky.
|
| I've written two novels, and when I first get myself to sit
| down and write (that's the hard part), I fairly
| consistently write 2k words an hour. A 200 page novel is in
| the 60k-65k word range, so 30-33 hours of writing.
|
| If I could get myself to sit down and just write more
| consistently, I could churn out a lot too (of course
| whether it'd be good enough and/or commercial enough is
| another matter - most authors sell peanuts).
|
| That ability to make themselves sit down and write with
| some degree of consistency is the most impressive part to
| me with authors who produce a lot, but that probably
| reflects what I personally find hardest (my second novel
| took three weeks from synopsis to first draft, and another
| four of editing; I'm now two years and 40k words into my
| third novel despite having planned the plot out in detail)
| starlight_nomad wrote:
| I also really liked Cage of Souls. It seems like most of
| the people I know who have read any Tchakovsky have just
| read the Children of Time, and not any of his other
| prolific work.
| pea wrote:
| Oh man I totally did this. I got really nice emails back from
| Jello Biafra and Sole from Anticon as an angsty teenager.
| p3rls wrote:
| I didn't think even Justin Pierre would know how Justin Pierre
| wrote music
| tombert wrote:
| These are like 19 year old memories, so they're a bit hazy
| and I cannot seem to find the emails, but he mostly said he
| took inspiration from history with drug addiction, and that
| he usually starts with the melody.
| cm2012 wrote:
| My wife as a teenager wrote a letter to a romance novel author,
| sincerely asking about the fates of some characters. I thought
| the author was a legend, she responded she just writes the
| books for money and doesnt think about it at all afterwards.
| Lol
| pnw wrote:
| Sounds like Gary Oldman giving an interview about any
| character he has played in a movie!
| swatcoder wrote:
| > there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this,
| because there's a lot of really crappy humans who might try and
| exploit the kids or do otherwise horrible things
|
| I know you're just making a CYA disclaimer, but that's not an
| effective approach to creating future adults. It just produces
| old children.
|
| Good on you for doing this and hopefully your parents would
| have assisted you in staying safe (and polite) rather than
| stopping you.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Haha, I used to harass bands I loved as well. Like you, I got
| mostly positive and polite responses. I suppose my emails were
| constructive and kind so they appreciated it and reciprocated
| to some degree.
|
| I learnt a fair bit about music from some of these exchanges.
| It was good fun. A relic of the old internet says I guess.
| These days you'd just look for content on YouTube or something
| instead. Still awesome in its own right, but different.
| Zathman wrote:
| I continue to reach out to at least one independent band or
| artist each year, even now in my mid-30s. Around the end of
| each year, I review my top artists and songs to see which truly
| resonated with me as part of my life's soundtrack. Whether
| through email, SoundCloud, Facebook, LinkedIn, or VK, I take
| the time to express my appreciation for their work--sharing
| which songs touched me and why. Amazingly, nearly every artist
| responds. One memorable instance was when an artist, who hadn't
| produced music in over a decade and was going through a tough
| divorce, told me a year later that my message had inspired him
| to return to music and embrace life anew. Your engagement with
| musicians can have a profound impact, perhaps even inspiring
| them to rediscover their passion. Keep reaching out and sharing
| your love for their art--it truly makes a difference, no matter
| your age!
| drones wrote:
| Whenever I go out to see live music, I always make it a point
| to let the performing artists know they had a great set, even
| if the music itself isn't for me. In a world consumed by
| negative engagement, it's a small yet disproportionately
| effective way to keep the human spirit alive.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> there 's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do
| this_
|
| In the same way kids should never go outside on a sunny day
| because there is an exceptionally small chance that they could
| be struck by lighting? Back in my day writing letters like this
| was part of the elementary school curriculum.
| GJim wrote:
| > Now, obviously, there's reasons that kids should absolutely
| not ever do this,
|
| And what are they?
|
| FYI: Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly
| are) and to be afraid of strangers is wrong. You should instead
| be teaching them how to tell a good stranger from a bad one.
| latexr wrote:
| > And what are they?
|
| They're in the rest of that sentence that you abruptly cut
| off while quoting, for some reason. You're free to disagree,
| but leaving them out then acting like they aren't there
| doesn't feel like arguing in good faith.
|
| > FYI: Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself
| clearly are)
|
| Furthermore, this is incredibly judgemental to lob at a
| (presumed) stranger. You shouldn't assume someone's life from
| a snippet on a comment on a random forum.
|
| You whole argument could have been distilled without attacks
| to:
|
| > Teaching children to live in fear and to be afraid of
| strangers is wrong. You should instead be teaching them how
| to tell a good stranger from a bad one.
| Gormo wrote:
| It's reasonable to presume that a long-term implication of
| inculcating a "never talk to strangers" mentality into
| young children is the gradual decline of social trust,
| potentially leading to the collapse of civil society
| generally.
|
| I think a t least some of the intense polarization,
| "culture war" acrimony, paranoia, and institutional
| dysfunction we're seeing today is attributable to the
| coming of age of people who were raised this way.
| tombert wrote:
| I really think this is a pretty large extrapolation from
| me saying "don't let your kids talk to random celebrities
| on the internet", claiming that what I suggested will
| lead to some kind of moral decay.
|
| I agree that I probably should have clarified (and have
| in a few sister threads, you can find it if curious), but
| I don't actually think it's 100% analogous to say that
| being cautious when talking to famous people is the same
| as "don't talk to strangers". There's a pretty huge power
| differential between a kid and someone that they really
| admire vs some random stranger, and there is probably at
| least some degree of selection bias of people who pursue
| positions of power and have the desire to abuse it. I
| don't have kids, but if I did I probably wouldn't let
| them hang around a lot of people who actively pursue
| power completely unsupervised, e.g. basically any
| politician, religious leaders, etc.
|
| You can call it paranoia if you want, but I think it's
| just being aware of selection bias; I probably wouldn't
| let a kid into an Incel Support Group for the same
| reason, because there's going to be selection biases
| towards justifying horrible stuff, even if a vast
| majority of incels are just dorky dudes who probably
| wouldn't do anything inappropriate to a child.
|
| Most famous people are just average humans, and are
| perfectly professional and courteous, and I feel like I
| did at least kind of mention that in my original post
| when I said that nothing bad happened to me, but I don't
| think that implies you just throw caution to the wind and
| just let kids reach out to every stranger they want. I
| also don't think it's leading to a moral decay to think
| that parents should supervise very young kids on the
| internet.
| drewdevault wrote:
| Agreed. This is ridiculous.
| tombert wrote:
| > Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly
| are)
|
| Well I don't (and can no longer) have kids so there's not
| much risk of me teaching children anything other than
| computer science at a school, and considering that _I_ was
| the one sending the emails before, I don 't think that I'm
| "living in fear".
|
| I mostly agree though, I shouldn't fear-monger, most people
| don't suck. I guess I was just saying that because I've seen
| enough true-crime and creepy Hollywood casting couch and
| child exploitation that I just felt the need to put a bit of
| a disclaimer. Obviously those are generally outliers (that's
| why they're noteworthy enough to make into a documentary or
| something), but I do think it's probably a good idea to
| supervise/monitor kids' outgoing emails, especially very
| young kids.
|
| I don't think it's "teaching them to live in fear" to give
| some very basic safety precautions, but I acknowledge that I
| didn't make that clear in the original post.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Before even then, when Cliff Burton (Metallica bassist) died in
| an auto accident, I wrote some physical mails to his parents
| expressing my sympathy. I forget how I got their address, but
| regardless they wrote back - by hand! and we had a few back and
| forth physical mails. Nice folks, and totally genuine.
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| People should never, ever write letters? You're kidding me.
| What is going to happen over the mail?
|
| When I was a kid I wrote letters all the time to anyone I met
| and kept up some good correspondences. I felt it really
| enhanced me as a character and grew my literary skills.
|
| Anyways the point -- I'm sure -- is moot as no one does that
| anymore, I'll bet.
| shuntress wrote:
| It's a cute interaction for sure but it's frustrating to see this
| sort of "I'm doing my best to make our government useless"
| attitude from the president.
|
| A better response would have been "Sorry but your mother does not
| actually have the authority to declare federal disasters"
| DennisP wrote:
| I'm aware that Reagan maybe had that attitude in general but I
| don't see it in this particular letter. He mentioned lack of
| available funds due to an excess of disasters, and promotes
| volunteerism, which I'd say is a pretty important component of
| a well-functioning society regardless of how well your
| government is performing.
|
| Your "better" response isn't funny and violates the basic rule
| of improv comedy, which is that you go with what the other
| person gives you, instead of contradicting it. As an actor,
| Reagan was certainly familiar with this.
| totetsu wrote:
| Richest country on earth and still there not enough money to
| clean up this child's bedroom.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm pretty much the opposite side of the political spectrum
| to Reagan - as a European left winger he was pretty much the
| bogeyman for us in the 80s - and I still found it funny.
|
| It's pretty much what people would expect Reagan to write if
| it had been a serious request warranting a reply. What isn't
| expected, and makes it funny, is the humour of actually
| replying and pretending to take the letter seriously.
|
| I think it'd lose its humour if it was markedly out of
| character and didn't sound like a serious reply.
| UberFly wrote:
| This is a strange take on a very light-hearted interaction. Non
| of it was all that serious.
| wordsinaline wrote:
| The left has let go of humor. Every day for them is a deadly
| serious struggle against the forces of far right wing
| nationalist theocratic fascism. Reagan triggers. Humor goes
| out the window.
| paganel wrote:
| I wouldn't have expected pro-US government propaganda coming from
| lettersofnote.com, but it is what is, this New Cold War demands
| sacrifices.
| pantulis wrote:
| It would have been so cool if the mother had subsequently written
| a letter to Reagan _requesting_ the funds!
| blueflow wrote:
| What tf did Reagan do that every other comment has a "Reagan bad"
| section?
| anewhnaccount2 wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite, although I'm afraid it's unlikely this will
| lead to much substantive discussion.
|
| * "Trickle Down Economics": Large tax cuts for the wealthy
| while simultaneously dismantling social programs which benefit
| everyone else
|
| * Arming authoritarian and far right militia in South America
|
| * Environmental deregulation
|
| * Giving a voice to the religious right and their anti-
| gay/anti-woman agenda
| blagie wrote:
| The basic problem is that everyone makes mistakes. I feel bad
| if people do things maliciously or in bad faith. None of
| those, as bullets, feel that way. He did a lot of big things,
| some of which will invariably be big mistakes.
|
| Expanded from bullets (e.g. Iran-Contra) there was badness,
| but what would be helpful would be to:
|
| 1) Expand those out a little bit, to where we can see the
| bad.
|
| 2) Compare to other presidents for level of bad.
|
| On the whole, I have complex feelings here. The quality of
| recent presidents and presidential candidates has been very,
| very low. I think I'd take Reagan over Hillary Clinton,
| Trump, or Biden. On the other hand, I think I'd take Obama,
| Romney, and probably McCain over Reagan.
| hobs wrote:
| The right's obsession with trickle down economics alone and
| the no new tax pledge is enough to think Reagan was a bad
| president.
|
| We see an entire portion government apparatus effectively
| obsessed with killing the government, but only
| performatively. This is what I see as a Reagan special.
| blagie wrote:
| I agree about the harm that caused by that movement, but
| as much as Reagan was part of it, I have a hard time
| attributing the whole movement to him.
|
| FWIW, as much as a president has a soapbox to advocate
| from, budget and tax policy are set by congress.
| r00fus wrote:
| Reagan's administration did all that, and not to mention they
| side-channelled with Iran to not release the hostages so
| Carter couldn't have the win. Just pure machiavellian thought
| process.
|
| Also: regulating ketchup as a "vegetable serving" (so school
| lunches didn't need to have fresh veggies).
|
| Just thinking outside the box on how to completely F up
| government to serve their agenda.
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