may i ask why

Remember when like 6 Americans had ebola and it was an international emergency, and Obama flew out to meet survivors?
Here is a list of things the United States government did in response:
-Increasing the number of Ebola testing labs throughout the U.S. that can quickly and safely screen a potential Ebola specimen -Educating more than 150,000 health care workers on how to identify, isolate, diagnose, and care for patients under investigation for Ebola -Developing countermeasures — including the first Ebola vaccine to progress to Phase 2 testing — to prevent and treat Ebola -Converting at least 10 of the Ebola Treatment Centers into long-term Regional Ebola and Pandemic Treatment Centers for long-term readiness for years to come -Helping state and local public health systems accelerate and improve their operational readiness and preparedness for Ebola or other infectious diseases
Source: https://whitehouse.gov/ebola-response

When the Reagan administration was faced with tens of thousands of gay men dying, they did nothing. They made jokes. They laughed. They caused an epidemic that killed 40 million people, because they hated gay men and thought we deserved to die.

There is so much more to it.  There is a myth perpetuated by Reaganites that he was an historically significant  President, in some positive sense.  If you are old enough to have voted in 1980, you probably know differently.  If you were born after 1980 you have been raised on this myth.  He sold Americans a fable about a Hollywood movie-like exceptional past and destiny, and led ordinary people around with portrayals of that mirage while his reactionary robber-baron friends set about dismantling 50 years of progressive advancements for working men and women, on their way to returning themselves to the position of unfettered economic domination they held between the Civil War and the Great Depression.  He was a union buster.   He gave us Scalia – need I say more?  He tried to give us Robert Bork (does anyone under 30 even know who he is?).  He lied about Iran/Contra.  He avoided dealing with AIDS.  He sealed the political sham-show between right wing capitalist kings and the evangelical thought-control snake-oil salesmen.  Americans don’t want to hear that they are ordinary citizens of the world, and they don’t want to hear that the aren’t anointed by some deity to lead the world to salvation.  They lapped it up, and they continue to do so.  

I have to wonder how the response of a more competent presidency to the AIDS crisis might have changed even the global impact of the disease. Where might we be today? How many millions of people would be alive and not suffering? Yes, Reagan was historically significant—for fucking things up in a globally devastating way.

When you hear how he slashed Income taxes, he did on the Wealthy, but he increased the lowest tax rate from 10% to 15%.

His campaign was funded by Christian radicals, whose entire goal was to dismantle Roe vs. Wade and see American women relegated once more to back alleys and dirty knives.  He opened the door to religion in politics in a way the postwar McCarthyists never dreamed possible.  Now, 36 years after his election, maybe a third of American medical schools offer proper access to even first-trimester abortion training (in an era where that should mean a pill or vaginal suppository), and there are currently fewer doctors trained to perform late stage abortions for the entire US than there were pre-RvW (when such operations were only performed as a heroic measure).

And no one has even touched on his legacy of racial
hatred, deliberate destruction of black communities and establishing of COONTELPRO to destroy the lives of black panthers and black activists, his actual murder of black activists and more. He was actually a demon.

If you want to know how many lives could have been saved if the Reagan government had just fucking BUDGETED for AIDS research instead of telling AIDS researchers that they had to beg, borrow or steal any money for AIDS from other programs–then read And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition by Randy Shilts. And be prepared to have your heart broken at the unadulterated and wildly irresponsible waste.of time and human lives. 

Other shitty things Reagan did:

1) He almost tripled the National Debt. And you need to see the difference with zeroes:

When Reagan took office in 1980: $909,100,000  owed.(909.1 billion)

When Reagan left office in 1988:  $2,601,300,000,000 owed. (2.6 trillion)

2) He raised taxes on the middle class and the poor ELEVEN TIMES while in office. 

3) Unemployment soared after Reagan passed his tax cuts for the rich, and it took decades to get back down again.

4) He turned the U.S. into an illegal weapons dealer.

5) He funded terrorists, helping create the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. From NewsOne:

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, U.S. funding of the mujahideen increased significantly and CIA Paramilitary Officers played a big role in training, arming and sometimes even leading mujahideen forces.

The CIA trained the mujahideen in many of the tactics Al Qaeda is known for today, such as car bombs, assassinations and other acts that would be considered terrorism today.

6) When his economic policies began wreaking havoc on the government, Reagan stole from Social Security–to the tune of 2.5 TRILLION–treating it for eight years as the private slush fund of himself and his rich friends. 

7) [T]he Reagan administration demonized opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress, as dangerous and pro-communist. Reagan even vetoed a bill to impose sanctions on South Africa, only to be overruled by Congress.

They called him the Teflon president for a reason. All this shit–and none of it stuck to him. He got away clean every single time.

Reading up on Nelson Mandela I caught wind of that fact a few years back. The standing President of the US was more than a little ok with not condemning Apartheid even as a symbolic gesture. 

That coupled with all of this and it speaks to an impossibly gross legacy. Of course the Neocons of the Republican set look at him as some sort of Conservative Jesus, so none of this would get actual traction with them.But email scandals are beyond the pale…

HEY LETS TALK ABOUT DONALD TRUMP

for anyone who sees this, some clarification

sanders’ quote is from a satirical 1972 essay he wrote that examined sexual dynamics between men and women, and he used such extreme language (he also said men prefer tied up women) to help more clearly draw contrasts between male and female sexuality

and “defended” here means “was legally obliged to defend her client in a court of law because that’s her duty as a public defender” even though she did request to be taken off that case in particular way back in 1975

although I know a fair portion of tumblr has already written off Hillary due to, y'know, doing her job and it’s only a matter of time before sanders’ essay gets passed around and taken out of context too

regardless I’d bet that sanders and Clinton have much more pro-women voting stances than literally any of the 18 republican candidates (trump and Carson notwithstanding) despite these out-of-context instances that occurred 40 years ago