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It's really amazing that both Thatcher and Reagan came to power at around the same time, delivered such fabulous witticisms, and caused very similar societal ha

It's really amazing that both Thatcher and Reagan came to power at around the same time, delivered such fabulous witticisms, and caused very similar societal harm.

di4na 4y ago
Not really. They delivered exactly what the biggest demographic group at the time wanted. Which is... Exactly what you expect in a democracy with a particularly large voter bloc...
refurb 4y ago
Not that shocking. Both the UK and US had suffered under economic policies that didnt deliver. Not shocking the voters wanted something different.
- dools 4y ago
  Didn't deliver!? That's an absurd claim.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Not really. Carter didnt talk about the “general malaise” just for fun. The economy was pretty much in the dumpster for most of the 70’s in both countries. Not unusual for the old guard to be turfed out when that happens.
raspberry1337 4y ago
UK before Tatcher was a depressed society with stagflation, rising crimes, crumbling infrastructure; that couldn't even clean its own streets. It was a society completely hamstrung by old unions that would happily collapse the economy in face of global competition, as long as their jobs gave the same pay - nominally. Thatcher won two landslide re-elections for a reason.
- noizejoy 4y ago
  > Thatcher won two landslide re-elections for a reason. Arguably the reason was the war, not domestic policy [0] [0] https://history.com/news/margaret-thatcher-falklands-war https://history.com/news/margaret-thatcher-falklands-war
  - smcl 4y ago
    You're downvoted but I don't think you're wrong. In general it seems to be the case that if you're waging a war and you're not getting completely crushed the electorate (or at least the "undecided" voters") tends to rally around whoever happens to be in charge. And indeed I think it's fairly safe to say that most agree that Thatcher benefitted electorally from a strong response to the invasion. I should add that as a Scot I'm definitely not a fan of hers (you just grow up there knowing "Thatcher Bad") but I'm not quite at "put a stake through her heart and garlic round her neck"[0] :) [0] - https://twitter.com/halaljew/status/1294414600566382598 https://twitter.com/halaljew/status/1294414600566382598
    - raspberry1337 4y ago
      Gulf war didn't save Senior Bush from the bad-economy, neither did the Iraq War help Tony Blair's popularity. It's a lot more complex than war-helps-current-leader, at least outside the US. It depends on the war and the context.
      - smcl 4y ago
        Fair point, these are actually great counterexamples
        lostlogin 4y ago
        They are. That war was also unusual in that it was an attack on a country far away that wasn’t a threat to the US or UK, and there was little to be gained. It was a strange time.
  - 4y ago
gadders 4y ago
I wouldn't call defeating communism and winning the Cold War "societal harm".
- MengerSponge 4y ago
  "Defeating communism" like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AfPFlWnww8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AfPFlWnww8
  - gadders 4y ago
    No, by outspending them militarily, encouraging Solidarity in Poland, and forcing Gobarchev to realise the inevitable.
    - MengerSponge 4y ago
      Encouraging Solidarity in Poland was the right call, but it's not likely that different leaders would have opposed it. "Neither the strong nor the weak version of the proposition that American defense spending bankrupted the Soviet economy and forced an end to the Cold War is sustained by the evidence." https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagr...
      - gadders 4y ago
        I hardly think you can expect an unbiassed opinion from Gorbachev.
        MengerSponge 4y ago
        I expect Gorbachev to be wildly biased, which is why I don't attach much credence to his statements.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    It is funny that all the Experts (TM) have been talking for years how the USSR was an unbeatable giant with colossal strength that can not be defeated and Americans need to seek friendship with them and learn to live alongside them and learn to respect the choice of people in all the communist countries. In fact, the Democrats went the further along this road, actually requesting help from Andropov to fight Reagan (yes, that happened, look it up). Until Reagan came and... the mighty USSR is no more. The Eastern Europe is free. Then The Experts shrugged and proclaimed that it collapsed by itself, through forces of nature that any learned man would easily predict and that they can easily explain, and nothing Reagan did has anything to do with it. Of course.
watwut 4y ago
Fabulous witticisms is usually take down of someone or something that is hard to argue against, but rarely actually factually correct. People who deploy it are arguing by emotion and insult, which would explain why they are also people capable to cause a lot of societal harm. "Fabulous witticisms" feels good to listener and is funny, because it validates what people want to hear. It is rarely actually correct or actually correctly describes world.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  I think you need to hear better comedians. The best ones are funny and accurate.
blippage 4y ago
One thing I noticed is that political thinking tends to come in waves. Not just for countries individually, but globally. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but each age seems to have its own zeitgeist in the world's collective consciousness. Currently, for example, there is Wokeism in general, with particular emphasis on transgenderism. Transgenderism only "affects" a very small percentage of the population, nobody paid it any mind a decade ago, and yet today it's a thing.
- itsthejb 4y ago
  Isn’t this just evidence of the Overton Window? The amount of promotion needed to push any particular cause is significantly lower than people intuit. And following on from this, once that cause has hit the mainstream, the amount of coverage it gets leads to people further overestimating its true significance. After that point it just snowballs I think what we’ve discovered is that, thanks to the Internet, that’s a strategy that’s significantly easier to employ than ever before. In the past ups at least need to have mainstream media outlets onboard. Nowadays you can do that with a hashtag

It's really amazing that both Thatcher and Reagan came to power at around the same time, delivered such fabulous witticisms, and caused very similar societal harm.

di4na 4y ago

Not really. They delivered exactly what the biggest demographic group at the time wanted. Which is... Exactly what you expect in a democracy with a particularly large voter bloc...

refurb 4y ago

Not that shocking. Both the UK and US had suffered under economic policies that didnt deliver. Not shocking the voters wanted something different.

dools 4y ago
Didn't deliver!? That's an absurd claim.
- refurb 4y ago
  Not really. Carter didnt talk about the “general malaise” just for fun. The economy was pretty much in the dumpster for most of the 70’s in both countries. Not unusual for the old guard to be turfed out when that happens.

raspberry1337 4y ago

UK before Tatcher was a depressed society with stagflation, rising crimes, crumbling infrastructure; that couldn't even clean its own streets. It was a society completely hamstrung by old unions that would happily collapse the economy in face of global competition, as long as their jobs gave the same pay - nominally. Thatcher won two landslide re-elections for a reason.

noizejoy 4y ago
> Thatcher won two landslide re-elections for a reason. Arguably the reason was the war, not domestic policy [0] [0] https://history.com/news/margaret-thatcher-falklands-war https://history.com/news/margaret-thatcher-falklands-war
- smcl 4y ago
  You're downvoted but I don't think you're wrong. In general it seems to be the case that if you're waging a war and you're not getting completely crushed the electorate (or at least the "undecided" voters") tends to rally around whoever happens to be in charge. And indeed I think it's fairly safe to say that most agree that Thatcher benefitted electorally from a strong response to the invasion. I should add that as a Scot I'm definitely not a fan of hers (you just grow up there knowing "Thatcher Bad") but I'm not quite at "put a stake through her heart and garlic round her neck"[0] :) [0] - https://twitter.com/halaljew/status/1294414600566382598 https://twitter.com/halaljew/status/1294414600566382598
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    Gulf war didn't save Senior Bush from the bad-economy, neither did the Iraq War help Tony Blair's popularity. It's a lot more complex than war-helps-current-leader, at least outside the US. It depends on the war and the context.
    - smcl 4y ago
      Fair point, these are actually great counterexamples
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        They are. That war was also unusual in that it was an attack on a country far away that wasn’t a threat to the US or UK, and there was little to be gained. It was a strange time.
- 4y ago

gadders 4y ago

I wouldn't call defeating communism and winning the Cold War "societal harm".

MengerSponge 4y ago
"Defeating communism" like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AfPFlWnww8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AfPFlWnww8
- gadders 4y ago
  No, by outspending them militarily, encouraging Solidarity in Poland, and forcing Gobarchev to realise the inevitable.
  - MengerSponge 4y ago
    Encouraging Solidarity in Poland was the right call, but it's not likely that different leaders would have opposed it. "Neither the strong nor the weak version of the proposition that American defense spending bankrupted the Soviet economy and forced an end to the Cold War is sustained by the evidence." https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagr...
    - gadders 4y ago
      I hardly think you can expect an unbiassed opinion from Gorbachev.
      - MengerSponge 4y ago
        I expect Gorbachev to be wildly biased, which is why I don't attach much credence to his statements.
- smsm42 4y ago
  It is funny that all the Experts (TM) have been talking for years how the USSR was an unbeatable giant with colossal strength that can not be defeated and Americans need to seek friendship with them and learn to live alongside them and learn to respect the choice of people in all the communist countries. In fact, the Democrats went the further along this road, actually requesting help from Andropov to fight Reagan (yes, that happened, look it up). Until Reagan came and... the mighty USSR is no more. The Eastern Europe is free. Then The Experts shrugged and proclaimed that it collapsed by itself, through forces of nature that any learned man would easily predict and that they can easily explain, and nothing Reagan did has anything to do with it. Of course.

watwut 4y ago

Fabulous witticisms is usually take down of someone or something that is hard to argue against, but rarely actually factually correct. People who deploy it are arguing by emotion and insult, which would explain why they are also people capable to cause a lot of societal harm. "Fabulous witticisms" feels good to listener and is funny, because it validates what people want to hear. It is rarely actually correct or actually correctly describes world.

lostlogin 4y ago
I think you need to hear better comedians. The best ones are funny and accurate.

blippage 4y ago

One thing I noticed is that political thinking tends to come in waves. Not just for countries individually, but globally. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but each age seems to have its own zeitgeist in the world's collective consciousness. Currently, for example, there is Wokeism in general, with particular emphasis on transgenderism. Transgenderism only "affects" a very small percentage of the population, nobody paid it any mind a decade ago, and yet today it's a thing.

itsthejb 4y ago
Isn’t this just evidence of the Overton Window? The amount of promotion needed to push any particular cause is significantly lower than people intuit. And following on from this, once that cause has hit the mainstream, the amount of coverage it gets leads to people further overestimating its true significance. After that point it just snowballs I think what we’ve discovered is that, thanks to the Internet, that’s a strategy that’s significantly easier to employ than ever before. In the past ups at least need to have mainstream media outlets onboard. Nowadays you can do that with a hashtag