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The rudiments of neo-fascism stole into American politics during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. At that time, government discovered that serving the private corporate sector was more profitable than serving American citizens. For example, if people were faced with eviction due to back mortgage or were unable to scrape together a standard of living based on current wages then it was irrelevant whether or not the conservative and liberal ideologues and policy wonks had their best interests at stake. At the end of the day, people found themselves on the street and applying for food stamps. They couldn’t afford to get sick or send their children to college, and it was very unlikely they would be able to retire when that time arrived.
American citizens were gradually indoctrinated to believe that either all of the nation’s problems resulted from too much federal spending or, conversely, arose from too little government expenditure. The Reagan and Bush regimes told us that the wealth of the rich must be protected because it would be from this tiny class of wealthy and powerful that jobs would trickle down creating a free market that would benefit everyone. However, according to the Reagan agenda, for this scheme to work it was also necessary to get rid of pesky social entitlements, eliminate taxes and terminate regulations. At the same time, the Reagan/Bush conservatives had no reservations about launching the largest increases in government and military spending and to subsidize Big Oil, Big Nuclear, Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Insurance with public tax dollars.
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