Survivors of a 40-Year War on the American People

For over four decades, Ronald Reagan’s legacy has been less about restoring American greatness and more about dismantling the security of working-class Americans. Since the late 1970s, every president—Democrat or Republican—has extended what can only be called Reagan’s Curse: a relentless assault on the majority of Americans, disguised as freedom and prosperity but delivering austerity, inequality, and despair.

Who pays the price?

The steelworker in Ohio who lost his job as factories closed or moved overseas, swallowed by NAFTA and corporate greed. His town became a ghost of what it was, told to “retrain” or “adapt” while CEOs flew private jets.

The single mother juggling three jobs without benefits, struggling to keep a roof over her kids’ heads as rents soared and wages stagnated. Clinton’s welfare reform didn’t fix poverty—it cut lifelines, pushing families deeper into crisis.

The young person burdened with crushing student debt, stuck in gig work and hopelessness, while the richest grow exponentially richer.

The Black and brown communities hit hardest by mass incarceration, policing, and deportations—policies expanded by every president since Reagan. The war on drugs and “tough on crime” laws made inequality worse, not safer.

The foreign civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria who suffered endless wars under the guise of freedom but fueled by empire and oil. Bush’s lies about WMDs were deliberate excuses to conquer. Obama’s drone strikes turned villages into graveyards. Trump’s aggression deepened global chaos.

How did we get here?

Reagan rewrote the rules: deregulate industries, cut taxes for the wealthy, crush unions, privatize public goods, and ramp up military spending. This blueprint became bipartisan orthodoxy. Democrats followed, Republicans doubled down. Clinton embraced neoliberalism, Bush pushed war, Obama preserved Wall Street, Trump exploited division—and Biden tried to hold a collapsing center together without reform.

At every step, the American majority lost. Not by accident. By design.

But the curse isn’t absolute.

Survivors resist—in union halls, community centers, classrooms, and streets. Progressive movements fighting for healthcare, climate justice, racial equity, and workers’ rights challenge the curse.

Reagan’s curse isn’t eternal. It’s a chain—and those chains can be broken.

The first step is seeing clearly who’s been sacrificed. The working class, poor, and marginalized have paid a brutal toll. Their stories deserve to be told loud and clear, without spin or apology.

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References

Abramovitz, M. (2006). Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S. Monthly Review Press.
Scott, R. E. (2011). The high price of ‘free’ trade: NAFTA’s failure has cost the United States jobs across every state. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/nafta_losses/
Risen, J. (2014). Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Taibbi, M. (2010, March 31). Obama’s Big Sellout. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/obamas-big-sellout-195629/
Gonsalves, G. (2020, April 3). COVID-19 and the American death cult. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-19-death-cult/
New York Times. (2022, Aug 16). The Inflation Reduction Act expands oil and gas drilling. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/climate/inflation-reduction-act-fossil-fuels.html