Count me in the “Reagan was terrible at virtually everything, either caused or worsened every major problem facing America today, and had nothing to his credit except for his ability to make Americans feel their country was great and noble regardless of what it actually did” camp.
Kinda native. I grew up speaking it, but I learned a bit of Quebec French from my father first. It was kinda funny because my first words were apparently very foul curses, and as a result my father started to slowly stop speaking Quebec French over the next three years. My mind still sometimes think in fragments of French though, so my English gets jumbled sometimes as a result.
Quebec French curses are hilarious. They’re things start-of-strip Joyce would hear and go, “…that’s a swear? How is that a swear?” XD
modulusshift
Uh, isn’t that one tabernacle, though? So it’s a religious swear? I think Joyce might be concerned even though they don’t really use tabernacles outside of Catholicism last I checked.
hof1991
Learned that there are Quebecois curses reading / listening to Louise Penny’s Gamache mysteries. Best to listen so you get the pronunciation right. Love the idea of curses that specific to place, as if Michiganers used different curses than the rest of the country.
Makkabee
Well, there’s the way Yiddish curses seeped into English in New York but only a few of them made it into general American English.
But a lot of them are fading out. Schmuck’s pretty well entrenched, and maybe putz too, but when was the last time you heard somebody get called a mamzer?
Big Box
Also, if he was the nadir, how would the decline be continuing?
Random832
I think Rukduk means he presided over the *fastest* point of the decline (which, since we’re talking about the second derivative, is generally called an inflection point rather than a peak)
Bicycle Bill
If Trump is the natural progression from Reagan than you bet you sweet ass that “the decline is … still going on”.
Needfuldoer
Trump is the inevitable result of decades of hate-fueled rhetoric, starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and really kicking into high gear after 9/11.
Jon Rich
It took a turbo boost after 2008, as well. As for the era of hyper-partisanship that helped make the vitriol grow worse at a faster pace, there’s a strong case to be made that lays the blame at Newt Gingrich’s feet.
thejeff
Which inflection point do you want to look at?
There’s Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
There’s Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words”.
There’s Gingrich’s Contract on with America.
There’s the whole GOP reaction to electing a black president.
Probably others I’m forgetting.
Each built on the previous foundation and increased the vitriol even faster.
It all traces back to the realignment after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and “lost the South for a generation”, with the switch of Dixiecrats to the GOP.
Willoughby Chase
Didn’t Reagan reach out to the fundamentalists as well?
thejeff
Yeah. That was the rise of the Moral Majority and the Christian Right in general.
He did stop that scientist who was pushing for America to normalise the use of nuclear (as opposed to hydrogen) bombs in everyday warfare.
EvilMidnightLurker
Teller? (Whenever anyone mentions a scientist promoting the use of nuclear bombs for things you wouldn’t normally (or rationally) use them for, I assume Teller.)
NelC
Teller was all about the hydrogen bombs, and the third generation nukes that would power death rays (yes, really).
What’s hilarious is that Reagan actually raised taxes, expanded government and couldn’t get elected dog catcher in the modern GOP, yet he’s still the patron saint of the party. It’s also hard to describe to people who didn’t grow up in it what living in the Cold War was like. I was in high school during the second Reagan term and had basically made peace with the idea that I, and everyone I loved would probably die in a nuclear fireball. Whatever else he was, he was one Hell of a public speaker. He’d come on the t.v. with that stern but kindly voice and basically tell us everything was going to be okay and we believed him. It took the end of the Cold War and the end of the threat of nuclear annihilation for a lot of us to grow up and take a second look at him and analyze who he really was.
CJ
Growing up in Germany in that time, we knew we’d be the first to go.
.
Some of the more rural areas in the US might have a chance to have survivors though we weren’t sure if they’d be thankful for doing so.
Some of the scariest moment in my life were shortly after he bombed Lybia when some fighter planes practicing bombing a river crossing near our house came in a 50m not the usual 200. (I tended to hate bright skies at the time because of those flyovers).
Say, can there be a connection between rising fundamentalism and apocalyptic beliefs and the fact that is much less likely the US and Russia will blow up the whole world than it was 30 years ago?
Like people somehow need an apocalyptic option?
Willoughby Chase
His nickname in wonk circles was the “Great Communicator.”
I’ve posted below about NATO exercise Able Archer when we really did come close to the Apocalypse.
ProfessorChump
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
ProfessorChump
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
nothri
For what its worth, I think Reagan is like 1000 times better than anything the GOP has to offer today. That’s more to do with my general feeling that the quality of the Republican Party has been plummeting in recent years and shows no signs of hitting a bottom any time soon. I’ve no great love or hate for Reagan himself, but I suspect I’d like him better than if all the 20 plus yahoos who’ve been grappling for the presidential nominations did the fusion dance and turned into one uber canidate. Still vote for Hillary, mind you. But I could happily tolerate Reagan, which is light years beyond what I can say for anything GOP related these days.
thejeff
That’s alright. Reagan couldn’t win a nomination today.
At least if he ran as he did back then. Likely he’d adjust, but then he’d come off looking worse to the rest of us.
Future comics may prove me wrong, but I don’t think Roz is loving this. She’s trying to engage with Mary on reasonable terms, and it’s clearly a painful process.
Indeed. Mary is less about “engaging” and more about “you listen to me because I am the paragon.”
I’m a little surprised she doesn’t have any pre-rehearsed BS comebacks for Roz’s accusations.
begbert2
But to form counterarguments would be acknowledging that her idol had flaws that needed explaining, and Mary doesn’t accept the idea that anybody she’d like would have flaws. And so as often happens when cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head, the preferred option is to just pretend the problem isn’t there.
No she needs to keep pushing so we can see the heavy artillery. She didn’t learn after messing with Carla, she won’t learn from Roz, and one day she will confront Mike and it will be the climax of the strip and then Willis will die of old age before the thread finished.
I would hold off on Mike. Mike’s an ass to everyone– he’ll change himself simply in order to discomfit you. If you were vegan, he’d eat a rare steak in front of you, if you were comfortable being a carnivore, he’d pile on about innocent animals, etc. There’s no core there, just “so long as I can get you to feel bad”.
Mary doesn’t deserve the out of ‘he’d say something mean, no matter what”.
She probably is, but there’s a weird sort of canonization that occurs on the right for Reagan despite or perhaps because of the many many awful qualities of his administration.
Well, most of the things I think were awful about the Reagan adminstration, they think were great, but the things they should think were awful seem to have vanished from memory in favor of the purity of the patron saint of the modern American party.
The real Reagan would never be able to compete with the imaginary one 25+ years of distance has created.
Conservatives in general like to disown George W. Bush. Otherwise, they like to pretend that they never supported him or, better yet, that his Presidency just never happened. There was 8 years of… something… then Obama ruined the economy and did a bank bailout.
9/11 happened on Obama’s watch! …is a thing I have heard argued (not just stated, argued when pointed out to be veryvery incorrect).
Reltzik
Technically, there have been seven 9/11s on Obama’s watch, and there’s about to be an eighth.
….
I’ll be leaving now.
Mr Ak
…what was the substance of the argument?
Freemage
Okay, that’s mind-boggling. I’ve heard the claim that it was Clinton’s fault, of course, usually with the accusation that he was getting Lewinskied when he should have been personally leading Seal Team 6 in the deserts of Afghanistan or somesuch. But this makes it sound like Obama took a side-trip in his time-machine (after going back to put the ad in the Hawaiian newspaper that announced his birth at a hospital in Hawaii) to personally make certain the Towers went down.
Havtorn
Wha… How…
Did they confuse Obama with Clinton? Because if they really wanted to blame a democrat it would make more sense to blame the guy who was in office a few months before the event than the guy who wasn’t in office until eight years later…
Tgape
If someone who was old enough to remember 2001/9/11 made that claim to me, I’d probably reply something like, “Thank you for invalidating any argument you have ever made and will ever make.” And then remind them of it any time they attempted to argue anything. Admittedly, I could see them eventually working their way out of it, but not without a pretty serious attitude change. (Of course I’d point out the flaw if they really needed it pointed out, but…)
Angel H.
People, people! You’re forgetting the most important thing:
421 thoughts on “Fraud”
Ana Chronistic
←this monster here
also I wonder how Roz arrived at that conclusion… couldn’t possibly be that Shortpacked! poster on the wall?? XD XD XD
sun tzu
Count me in the “Reagan was terrible at virtually everything, either caused or worsened every major problem facing America today, and had nothing to his credit except for his ability to make Americans feel their country was great and noble regardless of what it actually did” camp.
Rukduk
Reagan was the peak of a decline that began with Vietnam and Watergate and is possibly still going on.
Cephalo the Pod
Peak of a decline…you mean a valley? A trough?
modulusshift
A nadir?
Chris Phoenix
No, Nader was a different kind of problem
Mad Scientist
Ba-dum-pshh.
Rukduk
I was thinking more of a gorge or marine trench personally, but those work as well. Man I need to refresh my English skills.
trlkly
Native or second language?
Rukduk
Kinda native. I grew up speaking it, but I learned a bit of Quebec French from my father first. It was kinda funny because my first words were apparently very foul curses, and as a result my father started to slowly stop speaking Quebec French over the next three years. My mind still sometimes think in fragments of French though, so my English gets jumbled sometimes as a result.
chris2315
Hey, Quebec French has the best curses. Tabarnak!
Dara
Quebec French curses are hilarious. They’re things start-of-strip Joyce would hear and go, “…that’s a swear? How is that a swear?” XD
modulusshift
Uh, isn’t that one tabernacle, though? So it’s a religious swear? I think Joyce might be concerned even though they don’t really use tabernacles outside of Catholicism last I checked.
hof1991
Learned that there are Quebecois curses reading / listening to Louise Penny’s Gamache mysteries. Best to listen so you get the pronunciation right. Love the idea of curses that specific to place, as if Michiganers used different curses than the rest of the country.
Makkabee
Well, there’s the way Yiddish curses seeped into English in New York but only a few of them made it into general American English.
But a lot of them are fading out. Schmuck’s pretty well entrenched, and maybe putz too, but when was the last time you heard somebody get called a mamzer?
Big Box
Also, if he was the nadir, how would the decline be continuing?
Random832
I think Rukduk means he presided over the *fastest* point of the decline (which, since we’re talking about the second derivative, is generally called an inflection point rather than a peak)
Bicycle Bill
If Trump is the natural progression from Reagan than you bet you sweet ass that “the decline is … still going on”.
Needfuldoer
Trump is the inevitable result of decades of hate-fueled rhetoric, starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and really kicking into high gear after 9/11.
Jon Rich
It took a turbo boost after 2008, as well. As for the era of hyper-partisanship that helped make the vitriol grow worse at a faster pace, there’s a strong case to be made that lays the blame at Newt Gingrich’s feet.
thejeff
Which inflection point do you want to look at?
There’s Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
There’s Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words”.
There’s Gingrich’s Contract
onwith America.There’s the whole GOP reaction to electing a black president.
Probably others I’m forgetting.
Each built on the previous foundation and increased the vitriol even faster.
It all traces back to the realignment after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and “lost the South for a generation”, with the switch of Dixiecrats to the GOP.
Willoughby Chase
Didn’t Reagan reach out to the fundamentalists as well?
thejeff
Yeah. That was the rise of the Moral Majority and the Christian Right in general.
Pylgrim
He did stop that scientist who was pushing for America to normalise the use of nuclear (as opposed to hydrogen) bombs in everyday warfare.
EvilMidnightLurker
Teller? (Whenever anyone mentions a scientist promoting the use of nuclear bombs for things you wouldn’t normally (or rationally) use them for, I assume Teller.)
NelC
Teller was all about the hydrogen bombs, and the third generation nukes that would power death rays (yes, really).
Boxilar
What’s hilarious is that Reagan actually raised taxes, expanded government and couldn’t get elected dog catcher in the modern GOP, yet he’s still the patron saint of the party. It’s also hard to describe to people who didn’t grow up in it what living in the Cold War was like. I was in high school during the second Reagan term and had basically made peace with the idea that I, and everyone I loved would probably die in a nuclear fireball. Whatever else he was, he was one Hell of a public speaker. He’d come on the t.v. with that stern but kindly voice and basically tell us everything was going to be okay and we believed him. It took the end of the Cold War and the end of the threat of nuclear annihilation for a lot of us to grow up and take a second look at him and analyze who he really was.
CJ
Growing up in Germany in that time, we knew we’d be the first to go.
.
Some of the more rural areas in the US might have a chance to have survivors though we weren’t sure if they’d be thankful for doing so.
Some of the scariest moment in my life were shortly after he bombed Lybia when some fighter planes practicing bombing a river crossing near our house came in a 50m not the usual 200. (I tended to hate bright skies at the time because of those flyovers).
Say, can there be a connection between rising fundamentalism and apocalyptic beliefs and the fact that is much less likely the US and Russia will blow up the whole world than it was 30 years ago?
Like people somehow need an apocalyptic option?
Willoughby Chase
His nickname in wonk circles was the “Great Communicator.”
I’ve posted below about NATO exercise Able Archer when we really did come close to the Apocalypse.
ProfessorChump
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
ProfessorChump
Reagan’s speaking skills were not extraordinary; by the time he was campaigning for re-election his Alzheimer’s was already becoming apparent. What was extraordinary was the mainstream media’s decision to treat him with kid-gloves. They dubbed him the teflon president to whom nothing stuck as though it was not their choice to let him off the hook for what he did (I don’t call him a mass-murderer only because of the nature of the office he held, but Reagan’s killings were far more voluntary tan those of any President since LBJ). Actually, the whole Republican shift towards, hate and demagoguery has largely been a failure of the media to do its job.
nothri
For what its worth, I think Reagan is like 1000 times better than anything the GOP has to offer today. That’s more to do with my general feeling that the quality of the Republican Party has been plummeting in recent years and shows no signs of hitting a bottom any time soon. I’ve no great love or hate for Reagan himself, but I suspect I’d like him better than if all the 20 plus yahoos who’ve been grappling for the presidential nominations did the fusion dance and turned into one uber canidate. Still vote for Hillary, mind you. But I could happily tolerate Reagan, which is light years beyond what I can say for anything GOP related these days.
thejeff
That’s alright. Reagan couldn’t win a nomination today.
At least if he ran as he did back then. Likely he’d adjust, but then he’d come off looking worse to the rest of us.
Willoughby Chase
Well, yes. But isn’t Mary also referring to herself? Some sort of self-awareness?
DarkoNeko
ain’t pleasant to to look at your own idols, eh.
BrotherFlounder
I love tweaking hypocrites. Looks like Roz does too. 😀
Inspector Hound
Future comics may prove me wrong, but I don’t think Roz is loving this. She’s trying to engage with Mary on reasonable terms, and it’s clearly a painful process.
Gigafreak
Indeed. Mary is less about “engaging” and more about “you listen to me because I am the paragon.”
I’m a little surprised she doesn’t have any pre-rehearsed BS comebacks for Roz’s accusations.
begbert2
But to form counterarguments would be acknowledging that her idol had flaws that needed explaining, and Mary doesn’t accept the idea that anybody she’d like would have flaws. And so as often happens when cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head, the preferred option is to just pretend the problem isn’t there.
Ragnarok101
Hahahaha yes!
Kingmonster
Just gonna put on my M. Bison hat…
*ahem*
YES! YES!!!
Mr. Mendo
Ah, I used to pull this kind of shit on people in the Army all the time. Roz is my new favorite character! ^_^
Mehe
Ronnie!
Paella Time
Yay Reagan cameo
Mo
with PATRIOTISM!
AutobotDen
Mary just needs to stop now. Before Roz pulls out the heavy artillery.
spriteless
No she needs to keep pushing so we can see the heavy artillery. She didn’t learn after messing with Carla, she won’t learn from Roz, and one day she will confront Mike and it will be the climax of the strip and then Willis will die of old age before the thread finished.
Idontcarenomore
+ Internet
MatthewTheLucky
It won’t be an accident either. He’s going to time it that way.
Reltzik
Mike’s going to let her off the hook, on account of being able to piss more people off that way.
Bratty Roger
????
Clif
Someone who understands.
chris2315
Nah, I’m sure the buffer can keep going well into the next century.
vysearhone
so what you’re saying is that we’re going to obtain berserk boat arc levels of “this shit will never end”
Briny
I would hold off on Mike. Mike’s an ass to everyone– he’ll change himself simply in order to discomfit you. If you were vegan, he’d eat a rare steak in front of you, if you were comfortable being a carnivore, he’d pile on about innocent animals, etc. There’s no core there, just “so long as I can get you to feel bad”.
Mary doesn’t deserve the out of ‘he’d say something mean, no matter what”.
Foxhack
… oh no.
What if one day she ends up confronting Mike… and they fall in love and get married.
Badluck1313
But it’s all an elaborate ruse so that Mike can divorce her?
Jabberwocky
Mary ain’t a fan of the Bushes?
Cerberus
She probably is, but there’s a weird sort of canonization that occurs on the right for Reagan despite or perhaps because of the many many awful qualities of his administration.
Rukduk
And yet when Catholics do something similar to someone we think was a good person, we’re servants of the devil. Kinda hypocritical in my eyes.
Regalli
Also they probably weren’t hard enough on gay people. Remember, 9/11 was God punishing us for allowing homosexuals.
thejeff
Well, most of the things I think were awful about the Reagan adminstration, they think were great, but the things they should think were awful seem to have vanished from memory in favor of the purity of the patron saint of the modern American party.
The real Reagan would never be able to compete with the imaginary one 25+ years of distance has created.
WingedBeast
Conservatives in general like to disown George W. Bush. Otherwise, they like to pretend that they never supported him or, better yet, that his Presidency just never happened. There was 8 years of… something… then Obama ruined the economy and did a bank bailout.
Pat
9/11 happened on Obama’s watch! …is a thing I have heard argued (not just stated, argued when pointed out to be veryvery incorrect).
Reltzik
Technically, there have been seven 9/11s on Obama’s watch, and there’s about to be an eighth.
….
I’ll be leaving now.
Mr Ak
…what was the substance of the argument?
Freemage
Okay, that’s mind-boggling. I’ve heard the claim that it was Clinton’s fault, of course, usually with the accusation that he was getting Lewinskied when he should have been personally leading Seal Team 6 in the deserts of Afghanistan or somesuch. But this makes it sound like Obama took a side-trip in his time-machine (after going back to put the ad in the Hawaiian newspaper that announced his birth at a hospital in Hawaii) to personally make certain the Towers went down.
Havtorn
Wha… How…
Did they confuse Obama with Clinton? Because if they really wanted to blame a democrat it would make more sense to blame the guy who was in office a few months before the event than the guy who wasn’t in office until eight years later…
Tgape
If someone who was old enough to remember 2001/9/11 made that claim to me, I’d probably reply something like, “Thank you for invalidating any argument you have ever made and will ever make.” And then remind them of it any time they attempted to argue anything. Admittedly, I could see them eventually working their way out of it, but not without a pretty serious attitude change. (Of course I’d point out the flaw if they really needed it pointed out, but…)
Angel H.
People, people! You’re forgetting the most important thing:
Obama is Black. So, of course it’s fault.
Angel H.
*it’s his fault…
(First time posting and I screw it up…)
Tenn
Not to mention, a muslim and a communist!
Oh… I just mentioned it. Thanks, Obama!
*mutter mutter* Frikken’ muslim commies…
Willoughby Chase
As Cheyney says, they create their own reality.
If you or I tried that trick, we’d be off to the doctors tout bloody suite.
Paul