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Yeah, Reagan really did a great job letting AIDS kill all those people because he hated the gays.
Oh, and kickstarting the modern homeless crisis by closing all the countries mental health facilities without another solution in the wings.
And yet, it's not 40 years later and we still have no vaccine or cure for HIV/AIDS. Blaming Reagan is tad silly. I doubt you were alive during the crisis but it was alarming. Faucci mishandled the situation just like he did with COVID.
it’s not 40 years later and we still have no vaccine or cure for HIV/AIDS.
What? We have multiple examples of massive growth in treating and stopping the spread of AIDS/HIV?
The Reagan administration literally acted like it was a joke that no one should care about because it only affected gay people. This was during a period of time where people preached that the disease was God punishing sinners. You can rewrite history all you want, but Reagan killed people by minimizing the seriousness of the disease and minimizing the gay community at the same time, essentially saying "It's okay if we let the queers die."
That opinion was given to him by Faucci. Reagan was not in charge of the disaster. Faucci was. Faucci is the one who would not sign off on the waives for the drug treatment. You are assigning blame to the President for something that isn't in his power. It is why the LGBTQ has spoken out against Faucci for years.
Fauci was not the one on the news cracking jokes about it and making fun of the gay men it was affecting. The entire administration didn't take it seriously.
Can you cite where Reagan cracked jokes about it? I don't remember that. It was officially called GRID in the beginning. It was believed to be a gay disease and that belief came from the CDC and other health organizations.
It was believed to be a gay disease and that belief came from the CDC and other health organizations.
Wow, shocker. In a period of history where queerness was regularly met with violence for being queer, straight people in positions of power were making crude assumptions about the queer community. I'm pretty sure the discrimination came first, and that's where assumptions, even from scientists who are fallible human beings like anyone else, came from. I mean hell, this was barely 30 years after Alan Turing, a fucking war hero was chemically castrated for being gay. Doctors signed off on that, too.
It doesn't mean it wasn't an issue that traveled through the entire administration. You can dump it all on Fauci's feet if you want, but it was painfully obviously much bigger than that, with the dominant straight community pretending it wasn't an issue, or an issue to be joked about since they didn't think it would affect them.
It's more complicated than that. Yes gays were persecuted in the 80's that is a fact. It was still illegal in many places until very recently (Not being gay, but gay sex).
The issue was early on it was only in the gay population. That is why they thought it was a gay disease.
As the blood supply became contaminated, it spread into the heterosexual population and that caused an even larger panic.
Yet, we still do not have a vaccine for it. we do have some good treatment options but AIDS for whatever reason has never received the funding or priority that it should have. That isn't just a Reagan thing, that is an larger issue.
That's a take I'll agree with. Still don't agree Reagan was a good President, though.
Reagan is complicated. There are things I love about him and things I hate about him.
Like all people, they are either all good or bad. As a country we need more nuance to grow as a country.
We have become too partisan as a nation and that is why we are where we are today. We pretend everyone is binary, either good or evil.
You still have people complaining about Clinton when history has shown he did a bang up job. I didn't vote for him at the time but I wish I had. Ignore the BJ crap. That should have never been an issue but times were different.
He was the last president I can remember other than Reagan who really did things to transform that nation. some good/some bad but overall he did well. Yet people still want to talk about the damn BJ.
If he could run again I would vote for him.
Yeah, we have different feelings on that. A much older man taking advantage of a younger woman when he is in a professional position of power over her is skeevy as fuck, no matter how you slice it. The Republicans were full of shit and just trying to discredit him, but the fact of the matter is he is a scummy old pervert philanderer. Honestly, a lot of my personal issues with Hillary Clinton center around her not divorcing his ass and having a great political career without him. She should have, I would have a lot more respect for her today if she had. She covered for his creepy ass in public.
That isn't to say that other President's didn't do similar things and just didn't have them publicized, but those were wrong, too.
Also, I will say that Bill Clinton at least admits when he fucked up.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clinton-we-blew-it-on-global-food/
Today's global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me when I was president," by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world's poor, Bill Clinton told a U.N. gathering on Thursday.