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Sorry, no. I'm willing to assume just for the sake of argument that Reagan messed things up. If things are still messed up 40-50 years later, it's not due to "
by Turing_Machine 3y ago
Sorry, no. I'm willing to assume just for the sake of argument that Reagan messed things up.
If things are still messed up 40-50 years later, it's not due to "Reagan". That's just an excuse.
As for the idea that the mental health infrastructure was some kind of wondrous utopia before "Reagan", I draw your attention to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titicut_Follies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titicut_Follies
Many other citations are available.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoWould you say social security isn’t a part of FDR’s legacy because it passed through the hands of every president over the last 80+ years? Many have reviled it in that time but haven’t been able to dismantle it. It’s harder to build than destroy. The fact that it wasn’t until Obama we reversed coverage for mental health shows how enduring Reagan’s legacy is in mental health. But I would agree every president since carries a guilt for not driving redress, similarly every congress whose really at fault. I don’t hold it was a utopia. But if you want to see something worse than Bridgewater, look at the streets and see humans rotting in front of your eyes in the depths of untreated, yet easily treated, mental illness. It’s certainly morally convenient to do nothing, and morally wrong to try and get it wrong - but I think trying and failing in some cases and succeeding in others is better than failing in all cases by default. My father and great uncle were both clinical psychologists in the public mental health system, and there were many institutions that were high quality and served a population we let simply decompose on our streets now. If we traded a non utopia, we traded it for a total dystopia.