[johnnyforeigner]

Living through the Cold War brought us a constant and very close awareness of the potential for a nuclear extinction event so I don’t think it’s climate change. If anything it was scarier then because there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error in a highly complex socio-technical system.

I’m of the opinion that much of the change in our culture was driven by a concerted pushback on the part of the “straights” to reassert the primacy of their worldview. The threat felt by those in power by the rise of the civil rights, anti-war and nascent environmentalist movement was a direct threat to business as usual. So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan, we have adopted a worldview that for decades has told us that happiness and satisfaction comes only through the pursuit of financial success and conventional career paths.

[redis_mlc]

> there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error

Agreed, I was there and watched the "Duck and Cover" films in school. That only stopped when leaders realized that surviving the initial blast was one thing, and surviving a month later for most urbanites was unlikely.

> So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan ... happiness and satisfaction comes only through the pursuit of financial success

I don't see a coherent argument here.

You can ignore Thatcher, since she was the head of a bankrupted, hapless country (Britain had food rationing for 9 years after WW2.)

Reagan was one of the most powerful leaders in world history. He wanted a strong America, both domestically and overseas. Can't really argue with that. We don't like people who utter words like "Evil Empire" [see Prof. Victor Davis Hanson], but somebody has to say it. Just be glad Reagan was on our side.

[mft_]

> You can ignore Thatcher, since she was the head of a bankrupted, hapless country (Britain had food rationing for 9 years after WW2.)

She became Prime Minister in 1979. Britain was probably over the nine years of food rationing by that time... 34 years after the war ended...

[chasontherobot]

Whose side was Reagan on? He certainly wasn't on the side of a lot of gays, blacks, or the other minorities his administration threw in jail, poisoned, or just let die through inaction.

[eadmund]

That's just nonsense.

Re. gays, Mr. Reagan signed into law federal outlays of $5.73 billion for AIDS research and treatment and he opposed California Proposition 6, which would have fired public-school teachers for advocating homosexuality.

Re. blacks, his administration did push hard for tough-on-crime measures — measures which were supported by black groups in the 80s. They may or may not have been wise in retrospect, but they were a well-intended attempt to support black communities and black people.

[nappy]

Where does $5.73 billion come from? I searched and found figures in the hundreds of millions [1] along with other evidence of the Reagan administrations indifference to AIDS [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/18/us/reagan-defends-financi...

[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/reagan-administratio...

[bovermyer]

It's not as black and white as that. Reagan was probably the last conservative president that made an effort to work with groups opposed to his own ideological positions.

For example, have a listen to his 1983 Address to the Nation.

Be careful, also, to view him in context of the era he was active in. It's tempting to judge historical figures' actions in a modern context, but that dramatically alters the nature of what they did and why.

[AnimalMuppet]

Poisoned? What, specifically, are you referring to? (Because, without some specifics, this sounds like an unhinged hyperbolic rant.)