Reaganism is a mentality and a cause which largely succeeded in changing social standards on a broad base. People do things in a different way, with a different purpose, because of it. There is nothing good about any of it.

Philosophically, the situation is this: Material life creates a relationship to objective reality (realities outside the mind), which is necessary for solving problems and sustaining life. Handling objective realities properly is rationality. Acquiring objective realities in the mind is understanding. Using objective realities to sustain life is morality.

This constructive path in life is what was reversed (subconsciously) by Reaganism. There was nothing new about corruption; but the natural evolution of social existence was toward solving problems. Reaganism was a reversion back to a stone-age state of mindlessness, as if nothing were accomplished over the past ten thousand years of social existence.

A very basic example was Reagan’s slogan that “You have to fight fire with fire.” He applied it to his war in Central America. It was a seven word philosophy with no clarifications or limitations. It means force, violence and destructivity must be met with force, violence and destructivity. The slogan was used to justify the not-so-secret death squads. There was no indication that the same philosophy should not be applied to a kid disrupting a classroom or a taxpayer delinquent on payments. Why shouldn’t it be? It is the new social norm applied everywhere.

Not the least problem with the ethic of using force and violence is that no one is perfect enough to walk a straight enough line for the enforcers of force and violence. The result is an endless war of conflicts. Another problem is that the destructivity is so easy to produce, and the constructivity so demanding, that the destroying prevails and outstrips the constructivity.

Another ethical reversion of Reaganism was deregulation. It directly states, in a twelve letter word without a philosophical explanation, that there was something wrong with the past standard of regulation. There is something wrong with distilled water, to. But instead of fixing it, deregulation says the standard must change to a discontinuation. It was part of a broader purpose of shrinking government down to nothing and flushing it down the drain.

Deregulation converts ordered existence into chaos. There was a claim that corporations would produce a better result without government involvement. But corporations do not regulate or self-regulate. It was not a replacement philosophy; it was a removal philosophy. It removed government involvement from complex social processes with no other influence replacing the overall direction.

Deregulation of banking allowed a pyramid scheme to be created where derivatives were constructed and given a fake value dependent solely on the ability of someone else buying them. Two quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives were created, with about $450 trillion still in existence. That’s more than ten times the total global yearly product, which means it is fakery. In the process, all pension funds and trust funds were sucked up, never to be retrieved again, which made “legacy” corporations noncompetitive with newer ones. It’s the reason why state governments acquired economic problems during a thriving economy. And it’s the real reason why banks are in gridlock: They cannot base their transactions on worthless derivatives.

Deregulation of utilities cost Californians tens of billions of dollars due to the Enron scam. Something similar apparently happened on a smaller scale in other places such as Montana.

Deregulation is an absence of ordered existence. Fighting fire with fire is the promotion of disordered, or destructive, existence. Why did such backward motion succeed? Because of general social deterioration. It began before Reagan but reached a breaking point with Reagan.