All of these things objectively happened. A conservative might argue that they weren't all Reagan's fault/responsibility, but that's bullshit.

Just before he was elected, his campaign conspired to prevent the release of US hostages, a move they made to make Carter look bad. This is one of the reasons he won. The man worked directly against the benefit of US citizens for personal gain.

It's a shame that Carter gets the blame for failing to reach an agreement to release the hostages, instead of Regan getting pinned for the much worse behavior of deliberately delaying their release.

There was once a union employee. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for striking “illegally” the big companies did hardcore union busting. This employee, young and with a family, was suddenly thrusted into a world with wages racing to the bottom. People being fired for any or no reason. Strike? Say hi to your scabs.

I know this is vague, but it’s real. Edited for privacy, but real nonetheless. Fuck Ronald Reagan.

Edit:

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/788002965 Some context for my anecdote. Sorry :(

I did not see repealing the fairness doctrine mentioned.

This is what is basically allowing media like fox "news" to spout straight up lies and made up news, while selectively not mentioning, twisting or brushing over actual news.

It's also what allowed Sinclair to start their buying spree and create a hidden broadcast network of similar right-wing propaganda and lies. John Oliver had a very good episode on them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

For me this is the biggest sin of Ronald Reagan. Without this change to content quality control, there wouldn't be so many Americans who live in an alternate reality, which is also what is allowing the republican party to not even try to govern & is allowing them to be as despicable as they are. Those rightwing "news" channels will after all just brush over their gaffes & instead conjure some made up scandal again over something democrats or one of the designated out groups has allegedly done.

He also further spread anti-government sentiment which has made society far worse as people question everything about government and how it can help people.

You left out Oliver North helping the Contras smuggle tons and tons of cocaine into America, creating the Crack Epidemic of the 1980's.

Technically Reagan started closing mental institutions while he was governor of California. He promised to open up alternatives and never did. It was a popular action that started when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" showed abuse in the mental health system and the new system was suppose to have fixed those issues.

Being out on the street is undoubtedly bad but you should not be clamoring to return to the days of stuffing homeless people into mental institutions. Indefinite involuntary commitment without trial or appeal is barbaric and that's setting aside the kind of "treatments" they used and what they considered "disorders".

Please, just give them homes.

This is not to mention how the war on drugs lead to massive effects on vital industries such as hemp

Deregulation of rails also had massive effects down the line. There was a lot of consolidation that just made everything significantly more expensive and caused us to be more dependent on oil thanks to the massive rise in the trucking industry

It’s no wonder the top 1% own such a large percent of the wealth when they are being taxed so little. Why give your employees a raise when you can take in a massive bonus with very little tax liability instead?

But I bet he made a lot of money while doing that.

The only comment that even attempts to debunk anything while offering sources is buried by downvotes. This community is badly in need of moderation.

A number of people replied about Reagan's work ending state mental institutions, and made a lot of good points. One interesting aspect of that was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation. In the 60s and 70s, mental health professionals were advocating for moving from a institution-based model of care (a la "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest") to a community-based model (groups like https://www.reachinc.org/ basically follow this model). The basic thrust: ensuring that individuals are a part of a community, and care is tailored to the individual. It's very well-meaning at its core. By the lat 70s, deinstitutionalization had (to some extent) become doctrine with experts working with disabled individuals. And for good reason! A number of early studies showed promising results! So come the 80s and Reagan. Reagan has an easy excuse for closing down institutions: experts in th field even recommend it! There's one really important caveat, though: experts recommended diverting the funding the institutions had received into community-based support (again, see the link above for Reach as an example of how they imagined this funding being dispersed). Reagan...just cut the funding. So really, he did a "No Child Left Behind" 20 years earlier! Which, as I type it out...is even shittier. He gave false hope that he was actually going to do something great for mentally disabled people, and instead threw them on the street. Man. Reagan really sucked.

Side note: there are groups like Reach all over the US and the world, and they all could use help. Volunteers, funding, etc. A quick bit of research and you may meet some incredible people in your local community.

Don’t forget record setting interest rates.

Why is this an image of text? Makes it a lot harder to reply to, and you specifically asked for a reply.

Tripling the Debt

Usually, when someone accuses a POTUS of significantly impacting the national debt, they are lying, as Congress controls the country's wealth. This is no exception. For example, Reagan's repeal of the Windfall Profit Tax on Oil is usually used as part of the claim, but what he signed passed both the House and the Senate with veto-proof majorities; claiming he had anything significant to do with their passing is deeply disingenuous.

Dropped the income tax rate

Not going to bother with a link this time; it should be fundamental, basic common knowledge that a POTUS has no power over income tax rates. That's as Congressional as it gets. See statement above for a linked example of how Congress controls taxes.

Sold 500 missiles to Iran

This is an easy one; it was significantly more than 500.

Let 90k Americans die of AIDS

I have no idea what this is even about. Do you mean the Watkins Commission?

Claim about Reagan's impact on mental institutions and its impact on homelessness

The first half sounds truthy, and certainly vague enough to be impossible to "debunk", with the major caveat that, as with taxes, it's a near-certainty that Congress did the lion's share of this. The real meat on these bones is your claim that eroding the institutions led to a homelessness crisis (and tour subclaim that the crisis is still happening). I don't have time to debunk that, gotta get to work, but I wanted to acknowledge my failure to do so. It might be super true or super false, and either way I'm genuinely curious.

What do you want people to say, that Reagan wasn't objectively horrible? The only thing wrong with this image is that it's abridged. You could pen volumes with the terrible shit that stems from Reagan.

He also started the path to end the fairness doctrine, which directly leads to rush limbaugh, which leads to fox "news" which leads to the tea party which leads to sarah palin as a major ticket vice presidential candidate which leads to a trump presidency which leads to how fucked we are today and in the future.

Given that homelessness rates almost directly correlate with cost of living, and not whether or not mental institutions exist, that's the wrong reason to blame Reagan for a rise in homelessness. All of the union busting under his presidency is a much better reason