You make excellent points, Ed. I’ve made the same ones countless times myself. However, I was around for all those elections. I didn’t dig deep enough. I heard what I wanted to hear. There’s nothing we could have done to stop the rise of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. There are too many benefits to those things that everyone likes.

But, we could have done more. I don’t remember anyone being politically conscious in the 1980s. People were tired of getting their feet dirty and making granola. They wanted nice clothes and a house in the burbs again.

Reagan seemed like such a comforting grandfatherly figure after all the crap we’d gone through with Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis. We didn’t notice that his administration was making changes that would have serious implications down the road. The focus for the general public became making money. I don’t put all the blame on the victims here, but let’s face it if you don’t look both ways when you cross the street and get hit by a car, some of the responsibility for what happened rests with you. Thank you for such a thoughtful and considered response.