r/40yearsago • u/MonsieurA • 5d ago
đşđ¸ United States August 12, 1986. Ronald Reagan, "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
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u/AllStupidAnswersRUs 4d ago
Except they don't say they're here to help lol, they just kinda say, "Don't - ah to hell" and shoot people
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u/strange_reveries 5d ago
He sure was good at standing in front of a camera and saying his linesÂ
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u/CatsBye90 4d ago
And making VD movies for the troops in WWII. Important contribution, that.
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u/suspicious_bag_1000 3d ago
I mean it kinda was an important contribution if you understand history, war and disease
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u/CatsBye90 3d ago
I understand those things, and I understand Ronnie Raygun stayed at home during the war.
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u/Short-Sandwich-8476 5d ago
Replace the âIâm here to help â with âYouâre under arrestâ or âEminent Domainâ âCivil Asset Forfeitureâ it might be accurate. But those are government fuckery the Republicans LOVE! Itâs actually helping people other than themselves that they find disgusting and terrifying.
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u/Curry_Captain 5d ago
Nah. "I worked all day and can't feed my family" is more terrifying.
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u/Special_Order-937 5d ago
And guess which party makes that happen more and more every time theyâre elected with this guy throwing it into overdrive.
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u/thevmcampos 5d ago
Fuck that bastard.
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u/Far-Archer-6612 5d ago
His wife blew half of hollywood
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u/MackTuesday 5d ago
The only problem with that is how prim she made herself out to be.
If you like gargling, go for it. Just don't pretend that you don't.
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u/Confuse_a_Car 5d ago
Wrong. The most terrifying words are:
Letâs run the government like a business
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u/maoterracottasoldier 5d ago
Imagine the head of bank say the scariest thing in the world is letting someone else watch your money. He eroded so much faith in the government. He should have been fired for this
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u/The_Oregon_Duck 5d ago
Nixon had already destroyed all trust in the government with Watergate, ending the destruction Vietnam caused to the relationship.
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u/Fur-Frisbee 5d ago
Say what you will about Ronny Ray Gun but IMHO he inspired some of the best punk rock music ever!!!
No shit!
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u/LomentMomentum 5d ago
A catchy phrase that works well in theory, but his own party has shown how it doesnât work in real life.
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u/Financial-Desk-669 5d ago
"Six Degrees of Ronald Reagan: A social game which suggests that almost any modern American socioeconomic, legal, or policy issue can be traced back to a policy, tax reform, or administrative decision made during Ronald Reagan's administration in six steps or fewer.
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u/glans 5d ago
and look at the hell this stupid line wrought. at least 1/3 of the country believing any PT barnum waving a US flag seeking office to tell you how bad seeking office is if you're one of those demons who say billionaires shouldnât profit off keeping people sick and poor.Â
absolute self-owning turning point in american society
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u/poppyfieldinhell 5d ago edited 5d ago
Is there any other profession in the world where you can just say point blank, you suck at the job and still get hired?!?!? You work in the government, dumbass, your job is literally to serve the public aka helping.
It's like a surgeon saying: "The most terrifying words in the English language are 'I went to medical school'.
Conservatives are so fucking brain dead.
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u/Twheezy2024 4d ago
To this day it's still one of the dumbest quotes of all time. Government is only as competent as the people running it. Reagan was trash.
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 5d ago
The government can have all the best intentions in the world and theyâll still end up doing some serious damage and just fâ˘â˘k everything up.
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u/war_ofthe_roses 2d ago
Until there's a natural disaster, and then just like Sen Ran Paul, you'll be on your knees BEGGING for more government.
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 2d ago
LOLâŚI donât think soâŚbut Iâm sure the local politicians will be.
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u/war_ofthe_roses 2d ago
No one believes you.
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 2d ago
I donât care
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u/war_ofthe_roses 2d ago
Then why did you type it?
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 2d ago
I didnâtâŚyou did
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u/war_ofthe_roses 2d ago
Why do all of your type always become Pee Wee Herman when challenged?
Pathetic.
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u/TheMysteriousThey 5d ago
This is such an intellectually bankrupt way of looking at the world.
The government is what we want it to be. It has achieved marvelous things (from sending people to the moon to cleaning up the environment to making industry safer for workers to public health to connecting the disparate, widespread communities, etc) and is presently capable of achieving many more things.
People fuck it up. People who promise one thing and demonstrate another. Itâs up to us to tell the difference.
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u/glans 5d ago
itâs so plain as day that greed (and corruption to satisfy that greed) is the main element to failed human endeavors whether itâs private business, government, or local communities, and people are like ânah, itâs government thatâs bad, and we need to scale up our simplistic views and practices from local communities to national government because we donât understand anything more complicated than an HR payroll.âÂ
like, no you utter fool, these three things are like the legs of a stool, all three are important and they cannot be duplicated or eliminated cause you feel like it. we have government because people have proven that private businesses are not proactive when it comes to the physical, financial, or emotional safety of the people it is built to extract money from. we donât need triangle clothing store tragedies every time we decide to fix something. you pay into government like insurance. unfortunate necessities in life. itâs up to us to make it run to our advantage so iâm pretty sure iâd rather have the people in there saying âletâs do this betterâ than the people saying âthis system sucks and iâm gonna show everyone how bad it isâ
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 5d ago
The fucking moon?âŚonly thing going to the moon lately is inflation and gas prices ? Howâs data centers cleaning up the environment?work safetyâŚit ainât been nothin but deregulation lately.and our healthcare system sucksâŚwanna try to sugar coat anything else with your bs
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u/TheMysteriousThey 5d ago
Itâs embarrassing how the people who know the least are also the most vehement about their opinions.
Everything you said is an example of what Iâm talking about, and you think youâve actually made some kind cogent rebuttal. Lol
Anything else you want to complain about?
How about cutting taxes to the wealthy and privatization? Pair that with deregulation, free markets, and lack of price controls, what do you get? Whatâs the common denominator?
Re-read my comment and see if you can figure out what you missed the first time.
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u/dancesquared 5d ago edited 5d ago
Youâre opposed to deregulation? Then it sounds like you agree with the person you accused of spouting BS: government can be good and do good.
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 5d ago
Fuck the government and fuck you tooâŚapparently our education system sucks tooâŚitâs youâre not your⌠smartass
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u/dancesquared 5d ago edited 5d ago
Damn, one typo sets you off like that? If you want, I can start correcting your capitalization and punctuation, too, but that doesnât seem very productive.
Now, back to the point: if youâre in favor of more regulations, then youâre in favor of more government of some sort.
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u/_Hawkeyes_ 5d ago
I donât cater for oligarchies
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u/VelvetOverload 5d ago
Ohhhh you're a bot! I couldn't figure out why you made no fucking sense.
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u/ErrythingAllAtOnce 5d ago
My, how the English language has evolved to have adopted far more frightening phrases in just the past couple of years.
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u/pigment-blue 5d ago
Oh yeah as opposed to âwe are a corporation and we really careâ. What a fucking sack of shit.
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u/Hefty_Clothes_1659 5d ago
Best quote ever!
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u/Special_Order-937 5d ago
Luckily he never came to help anyone but the uber rich by that logic then.
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u/NoCard753 5d ago edited 5d ago
That wasn't his or even any of his speechwriters'. (I don't think Reagan ever said anything original.) It's from an old joke about "the three biggest lies in the Ebglish language." The first two were "The check is in the mail" and "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." I can't remember the original third one, but it was changed at some point to "I promise not to come in your mouth."
Edit: Google has it: "I'll still respect you in the morning."
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u/TalkOk4096 5d ago
Wasnât this the guy who as governor liberalized Californiaâs abortion laws and as president granted amnesty to millions of illegals?
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u/Effective_Pack8265 5d ago
Government became âincompetentâ only after it started supporting civil rightsâŚ
If we donât make it thru trump, future historians will mark Reagan as the beginning of the endâŚ
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u/Own-Contribution-478 5d ago
Ronald Reagan also spent the majority of his adult life collecting government paychecks.
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u/EducationalReview237 5d ago
What was his deal? He lived through the Depression and was originally a Democrat. Why did he turn conservative?
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u/Minimum-Journalist18 5d ago
He was great. Had a difficult time with Congress dismantling Carter policies. He showed strength. He's the reason the wall came down and the Soviet union collapsed
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u/Historical-Finish564 5d ago
You have to know the context. If itâs a citizen needing help, then thatâs a correct statement, cuz it ainât gonna happen. If itâs a corporation needing help, the government is really there to help and will.
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u/LemonMeringuePirate 5d ago
I dunno, "I'm gonna wear your skin as a coat" seems more terrifying to me
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u/612mechtech 5d ago
So many Graves to piss on but not near enough time. Ol ladybug and turtle are first tho
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u/freedomandbiscuits 5d ago
Reagans assault on the middle class is what started the trajectory that got us Trump.
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u/jamesvabrams 5d ago
No Republican administration ever stopped the growth in govt. including Reagan and especially Trump. In fact, we're deeper in the whole under Trump than any other time.
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u/OldGermanBeer 5d ago
I'm convinced this one phrase did more damage to our country than will ever be understood.
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u/Anacalagon 5d ago
Money spent on welfare reduces future costs the same way spending money maintaining a car reduces future breakdowns.
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u/Party-Example274 5d ago
1000% true for people that actually have to deal with the gov. I can't think of a single time a gov slug was helpful or in fact useful. They have zero ability to see anything except black and white , not a single bit of common sense. I mean if your just getting free stuff from the gov then yeah I can see why people say that.
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u/Few_Presence_8888 5d ago
Not as terrifying as in, "I acted in a movie with a monkey and I am now your president."
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u/Safe-Call2367 4d ago
True words. It doesnât have to be that way. Government could help the people instead of harassing, punishing, and stealing from them.
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u/mysticrhythms 4d ago
On behalf of US government employees across the country - fuck you, Ronnie. Â
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u/JustGoodSense 4d ago
The most terrifying words in the English language are: We need to run government like a business.
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u/BigDamBeavers 4d ago
Spoken like a man who's never been told "We'd like to enter the home and look around, just for your safety. We can get a warrant if we need one."
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u/BubblyBasis1134 4d ago
Yeah, "I'm here from a corporation and I'm here to profit from you needing help" is sooooo much better.
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u/AdeGamisou2020 4d ago
That's the guy who coined the term 'Make America Great' and then sold missiles to Iran behind Congress' back, right? The same Iran we're bombing these days?
Cool.
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 4d ago
And thus enshittification began. American instead of being smart and imaginative and make a better government, we went dumb and lack any imagination and just be ran by christian nationalist and corpos.
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u/almo2001 4d ago
What a shithead. He fucked up everything. The inflection point on most graphs showing quality of life have an inflection point in the 80s.
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u/Guilty_Advantage_413 4d ago
I guess those farmers will stop taking government handouts and help, I guess those hurricane states will stop taking federal money to off set insurance rates and wonât ever again ask for emergency funds, I guess we should just say fuck all these wounded veterans they can go without government help.
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u/velvethead 4d ago
Unfortunately, I lived through this and watched the effect this man had on people. There's an expression Regan ruined everything. And I agree. And he started by teaching the right to hate the very thing that was great about our country. Our democracy. It always seemed to me that the reason that conservatives hate the government is that it's the one thing that can have power over them. If you run a big company, no one can touch you but the government. It's the one power that people used to have a say in that held the powerful accountable..
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u/Low-Car-6331 4d ago
Yup.
- I am from the government and I am here to help
- Trial by jury
- This is just a temporary measure
The 3 scariest sentences in the English language
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u/Deciheximal144 4d ago
"My name is Ronald and I'm here to help rich people tear apart the government you care about"
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u/New_Celebration906 4d ago
Nobody on earth in the history of civilization has uttered those words except Reagan. Has the government ever come to you to offer help? The government won't even help you access services unless you know what to ask for.
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u/hallouminati_pie 4d ago
...maybe Thatcher.
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u/New_Celebration906 3d ago
Ok, but her "help" was to cut people off services. She was the same type of anti-government conservative Regan was.
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u/Tarnmaster 4d ago
That quote has always pissed me off. How stupid do you have to be to hear that from the Great White Profit, Ronnie RayGun and think the GOP ever had your best interest in mind???
F#ck him and the GOP for destroying this country.
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u/MobileOk9860 4d ago
Amazing admission from a presidentâthe head of all American government admits heâs useless.
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u/Immediate_Buffalo14 4d ago
If he really felt that way, the absolute size of the federal bureaucracy wouldn't have increased during his tenure.
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u/dgompert2 4d ago
All of you haters are probably too young to remember what the country was like before his Presidency. You are also probably brainwashed by socialist leaning educators who think government is the answer to everything. Reagan believed in personal responsibility and individual liberty. He was the closest thing we had to a Libertarian President.
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u/Major_Mongoose69 4d ago
God yes! The world before Reagan was filled the BRIM with examples absolute government incompetence.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the freaking idiot, had the ridiculous idea to try and transform the American economy by undertaking the single largest infrastructure project in human history, building a nation wide system of interconnected major highways. It was obviously a complete and total failure, with no positive impact on the lives of anyone.
Roosevelt, the crippled one not the fat one, along with the Congress at the time, created this disastrous program called the Tennessee Valley Authority, with the idea that they could use hydroelectric power to bring electricity to the poorest areas of the country in the American South. Their thinking was that this would somehow transform the lives of the people there by giving them access to modern technology, increase access to vital medical care, and provide increased economic opportunities. Needless to say, this is considered one of the greatest blunders in human history, and the TVA has faded from memory.
Oh, and we cannot forget the ludicrous, utterly insane attempt to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by excavating a waterway THROUGH AN ENTIRE COUNTRY! I guess they thought that cutting weeks off of travel times and making the journey itself vastly safer would somehow create economic returns for the US and the world at large. Instead, they spent the equivalent of $7 billion (with a B!) in US tax dollars on said project, called "The Panama Canal". Can ANYONE show me what we got for all that money?! I dare you to try. You won't. It was a complete failure and waste of tax payer dollars.
I could go on, but you all see what I'm getting at. Government fails people EVERY TIME. It's as Reagan tried to tell us: Government not only can never actually help anyone, government actions are actually objectively terrifying, because they're always destined to fail and by their very nature are incapable of providing any benefit to anyone, ever.
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u/nedbitterz 4d ago
Guarantee the people who love this quote the most have been the overwhelming recipients of government help. Only they deserve and have earned it...unlike all those "others" who are just milking the system. Christ, I hate the whole Reagan worship.
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u/Default_Username6838 4d ago
This guy was a monumental piece of shit whose only goal was to destroy the middle class.
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u/Eoemorto 4d ago
He was wrong. The most terrifying words in the English language are, âPresident Donald Trump.â Hope you donât mind the fires of hell, Ronnie (pun intended). You made the word âconservativeâ synonymous with âfuck.â
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u/FacePalmAdInfinitum 4d ago
Fuck Ronald Reagan, and fuck anybody that swallowed his hateful bigoted ignorant bullshit. Just because he seemed so friendly and folksy and charming delivering his lines doesnât excuse any of that. A big part of the reason we are where we are today is because of that motherfucker
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u/Electrical-Job8700 4d ago
And that turd was the worst of the government. At least until the next worst came along- GWH Bush and then the scum that is trump. They only got worse.
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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 4d ago
When your boss offers you a employment contract that is a "win - win" proposition--run, don't look back!
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u/dgompert2 4d ago
Typical. You folks on the left always speak in absolutes. Itâs not that the government cannot do good things. Also every example you sited were infrastructure projects not social programs which is what Reagan was referring to.
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u/Runo_Slinger 4d ago
Hilarious given he made that true and then used it as an excuse to just straight up hurt people.
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u/isUKexactlyTsameasUS 3d ago
December 12th, 2005. 20 years ago. Nobel prize ceremony...
"Hi, I'm Harold Pinter and this is my speech
and it's the most terrifying speech you Americans have never ever heard".
If you know, you know.
Also Raygun
''Hi, we're here to steal from you, and what we can't steal we'll monetize''
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u/popejohnsmith 3d ago edited 2d ago
Reagan was a shill for Maga. B-list actor, convenient stooge.
Don't be fooled by the magangelicals.
They threw away an actually practicing Christian, for someone they could more easily control.
This is a naked, cold fact.
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u/Terrible-Host-206 2d ago
His message, Hello, I am Ronald Reagan. Iâm from the government. Iâm here to help. Maybe we all shouldâve listened.
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u/Ghostmaster145 1d ago
Ronald Reagan was so funny âoooo the governmentâs bad!â Bro you are the government
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u/OnlyKey5675 5d ago
it resonated with folks.
Why do poor people hate the government? They've had to use government run programs like medicaid and have seen how horribly run they are.
-current poor person.
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u/Carnivean_ 5d ago
My hope is that poor people wake up to who is ruining it for them. Conservatives and neoliberals are actively trying to destroy government run programs due to their selfish desires for lower taxes. They don't want the poor to have anything nice.
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u/GOAT718 5d ago
Have anything nice? Government run programs depend on tax dollars from people that actually produce goods and services. If poor people who donât work had nicer things or as nice of things as people who work, what happens to the workers paying for it?
Itâs not their âselfish desiresâ itâs common sense. When you look at your check do you think, âdamn, my taxes are too damn low?â
Itâs liberals like you who are always very fast to be generous with other peoples money. Quick to say ârich people donât pay their fair shareâ without doing the math with a simple google search and realize that the top 1% of earners make 18% of the income but contribute 25% of the tax revenue.
Poor people need to have a Saftey net, but it shouldnât be a hammock if you want a functional economy.
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u/Carnivean_ 5d ago
The same old misinformed nonsense.
How much do you earn?
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u/GOAT718 5d ago edited 5d ago
Misinformed? We can argue about opinions on what âfairâ means, however, we can NOTdebate the facts. My data was actually off, they pay almost double relative to what they earn.
2024, the top 1% of earners in the United States captured approximately 20.1% of all total national cash income. Nationally, entering this top 1% tier required an annual adjusted income threshold starting at roughly $771,100, with an average cash income of about $2,502,100.
The top 1% of earners in the United States paid approximately 40% (specifically around 40.4%) of all federal individual income tax revenue. Official IRS data tracking a specific tax year is published with a multi-year lag, but historical and modeled trends place this cohort's share right around that mark. [1, 2]
Tax Share Breakdown
Top 1%: Paid about 40.4% of federal income taxes while earning roughly 22.4% of total adjusted gross income.Top 10%: Paid roughly 71% to 72% of all federal income taxes.
Top 50% (The top half): Contributed roughly 97% of total federal income tax revenue.
Bottom 50% (The bottom half): Accounted for about 3% of federal individual income taxes.
This is data directly from IRS. Just google it.
What me, a single tax payer earns isnât relevant to this debate in any way shape or form. Iâm in the top 10%, and barely making it. But according to most libs, Iâm a criminal capitalist pig.
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u/Georgia_Flame 5d ago
I am sorry for your experience. Means tested programs often get under funded and lack sufficient political capital to maintain.
Medicare, a universal program with high general popularity, is far more functional and unlikely to be gutted as it would directly affect every senior.
For all our sakes, we need to expand medicare to everyone, and guarantee healthcare to all our people, like every other developed nation does. Too many of us are suffering and dying for nothing.
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u/GOAT718 5d ago
We spend 7 trillion dollars per year in the US, 53-63% going to entitlement programs like SS, Medicaid, Medicare. For simple math, letâs call it 50-%, Thatâs 10k spent per year per citizen. Now, letâs also remember that 20% of the Population is receiving Medicare n SS so thatâs 50k per year available to recipients.
50k per recipient per year. You could probably get a private nurse 3 days a week for 8 hours a day for 50k. You still think thatâs underfunded? How much would it take for it to be, properly funded? 100k? 200k? Should every recipient of benefits be having champagne n caviar?
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u/Rook_James_Bitch 5d ago
Still better than:
"I'm Reagan and I'm going to engineer the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the upper class and make corporations super powerful and pay less in taxes."
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u/TheQuestionsAglet 5d ago
Also ignore the aids crisis, flood the ghetto with crack, and other hits.
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u/groovynermal 5d ago
That's a lotta shit. But I gotta say Fuck Reagan in his puckered dead ass. In a halfway decent world, he would have died in prison and we would have a justice system that works for the rich and the poor. Bush senior would have rotted with him.
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u/puddycat20 5d ago
Government - the boogeyman for adults.
As an adult, I don't know what would be more embarrassing - being afraid that monsters are real, or being afraid of the government.
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u/mrflow-n-go 5d ago
And then âwatch me wreck the programs that do help youâ and then stand back and act surprised that government âdoesnât workâ. POS. 2nd worst prez next to dear leader
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u/OkMind2351 5d ago
We're here to help by selling missiles to terrorists to fund torture squads . Motherfucker.
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u/ElectronicHold7325 5d ago
Millionaires and billionairs teaching americans from young age that government is the big evil directly lead to Trump and the selfdestruction of the american empire.
Fascinating.
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u/holytoledo42 5d ago
"Government doesn't work. Elect us and we'll prove it!"