by Dan Burns

May 12, 2026, 8:30 AM

Trumpism is really true Reaganism

When the Reagan administration was winding down in the late 1980s, I remember thinking, in what turned out to be my callow naivete, that at least we’d never have a president like that again. People couldn’t possibly not have learned their lesson, right?

Reaganism was grounded in the same (primarily) white male grievances and victimization (shared by many of their wives), blaming “big government” for everything that’s not great in their own lives (which admittedly is a lot less distressing than taking a good, hard, honest look in the mirror now and then), mindlessly uncritical authoritarianism, and plutocratic/military governance that Trumpism is. The latter just aren’t bothering to seriously pretend otherwise.

The Bush/Cheney administration took it further. (I always say Bush/Cheney administration because Cheney was the real boss. He admitted himself that he did that simply by making sure he was the last person to talk to George, who was far from the brightest streetlight on the boulevard, before they went into any meeting where important decisions were made and policy determined.) In my mind that’s still the worst administration in U.S. history, going by the standard of how things were when it took office compared to how things were when it left. The Trump economy currently sucks donkey balls, to be sure, but it has a ways to go before becoming a repeat (or worse) of the Great Republican Recession. And Iran, along with Trump’s and Kegbreath’s other insane military projects, don’t yet compare with Iraq and Afghanistan. And it all was, fundamentally, still grounded in Reaganism.

As in the 1980s there are a whole lot of people now who could look in the mirror and realize that while they probably should have tried harder in school, that’s in the past and can’t be changed, and the thing to do now is to stop enabling their own continued exploitation by right-wing billionaires and their military/industrial complex. The best way to do that, and in fact one that takes little time and effort overall, is to vote for progressive Democrats, in every election. But first they’d have to face that they’ve spent their whole lives so far being conned and suckered. That’s a very distressing prospect, and it seems that most will never go there no matter what. I get that. It’s called “cognitive rigidity,” or in the vernacular “living in denial.”

While I don’t believe in “historical inevitability,” certainly there was always a very good chance that Reaganism would over time deteriorate even further to Trumpism. The latter is really just the former made very, very plain.The basis has always been there – said basis being a big chunk of the populace that is genuinely scared and confused at what they see happening in “their” country, which was supposed to remain ensconced in white “Christian” patriarchal authoritarianism forever, even among many who are not hard-core evangelical right-wingers themselves. The gains that began in the Sixties (and even late Fifties) in racial minority/women’s/LGBT rights are of the sort that historically almost always create a backlash among those who delusionally see their own rights and opportunities diminished as a result. This backlash, which was first really taken advantage of politically by Reagan and his ilk, has gone on for far too long, and has enabled the move to our current kleptocrat/war pig rule. I wish I could think of a way to really shake a lot of young, potentially progressive voters out of their political cynicism and apathy. Or that someone could.

Comment from Joe Musich: Normalcy keeps morphing. Reagan National Airport covers up the fraud. I would like to see an AOC/Sanders ticket from the Dems. At least they have a record of not being quiet or shallow. While I was high school there was a ray of hope with the ideas of JFK. The the assassinations. But it starts with hope. The young people of today start in a bleak place coming out of the blocks. And I understand I am vastly generalizing.