At last, a US writer takes down Ronald Reagan at whose feet he lays America’s present economic decline. I think it’s deeper than Reagan but it’s fine by me if we start there. And about time too. From Allen Barra at Truthdig:
In a fiery and lucid introduction he writes, “This book is born of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It gives voice to a vast swath of psychically disenfranchised Americans, millions of them, lumped most thickly in the urban areas on either coast, who never understood Reagan’s appeal.” Kleinknecht’s thesis is nothing less than that Reagan was the “obvious enemy of the common people he claimed to represent, this empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling. …” The great conundrum “is this: none of [the] unmistakable harbingers of American decline is being laid where it belongs—at the door of Ronald Reagan” [emphasis Kleinknecht’s].
In the tradition of most previous Reagan critics, Kleinknecht doesn’t try to draw a bead on Reagan from an ivory tower. He goes after Reagan from the blue collar on up: “He enacted policies that helped wipe out the high-paying jobs for the working class that were the real backbone of the country. … His legacy—mergers, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, privatization, globalization—helped weaken the family and eradicate small-town life and sense of community.”
Reaganomics did create fortunes, but mostly for those at the top of the economic ladder; it also brought “a reversal in the slow gains that the working class and the poor had made in the previous two decades.”
mirabile dictu 
THANK YOU!! YOU HAVE WRITTEN EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE WANTED TO FOR YEARS!!! THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, SAD TO SAY, RESPONDS TO SOUND BITES, AND FEEL GOOD “QUIPS & QUOTES”, NOT SO VERY UNLIKE THE GERMAN PEOPLE DID IN THE 30’S & 40’S!! THIS IS A “MUST READ” FOR REAL THINKERS, REAL AMERICANS AND THOSE WHO STILL DO NOT HAVE A CLUE AS TO HOW MUCH DAMAGE THIS MAN HAS DONE, AND THE BIG MONEY GRAB THAT CONTINUES IN OUR “DE-REGULATED” CAPITALIST SYSTEM!! IT’S NOT ONLY FRIGHTENING, BUT SAD…..THE DESTRUCTION THIS MAN FATHERED OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IS SO UN-AMERICAN, AND WILL TAKE DECADES TO REVERSE!! THANK YOU MR.KLEINKNECHT!!! CAN WE GET MICHAEL MOORE TO DO THE DOCUMENTARY???
THANK YOU!! YOU HAVE WRITTEN EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE WANTED TO FOR YEARS!!! THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, SAD TO SAY, RESPONDS TO SOUND BITES, AND FEEL GOOD “QUIPS & QUOTES”, NOT SO VERY UNLIKE THE GERMAN PEOPLE DID IN THE 30′S & 40′S!! THIS IS A “MUST READ” FOR REAL THINKERS, REAL AMERICANS AND THOSE WHO STILL DO NOT HAVE A CLUE AS TO HOW MUCH DAMAGE THIS MAN HAS DONE, AND THE BIG MONEY GRAB THAT CONTINUES IN OUR “DE-REGULATED” CAPITALIST SYSTEM!! IT’S NOT ONLY FRIGHTENING, BUT SAD…..THE DESTRUCTION THIS MAN FATHERED OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IS SO UN-AMERICAN, AND WILL TAKE DECADES TO REVERSE!! THANK YOU MR.KLEINKNECHT!!! CAN WE GET MICHAEL MOORE TO DO THE DOCUMENTARY???
Mr. Gomez, I feel EGGGGGSACTLY THE SAME. I’ve been saying for years that Reagan hijacked my future and all to deaf ears all the time. I was like ‘what iw wrong with folk.’ Everyone thinks I’m sort of crazy person and in my circle, there is NONE that agrees with me or can see through what has happened to all of us. Instead, they just give in to the corporate madness and now look at us. I’ve just begun to read the book, and from the first page, I said FINALLY . . . a lone voice of reason in the wilderness. And now there are two voices , yours and the authors. I thank the author for the book and you for your comment. I consider myself a thinker and I remember when he was in office all this 666 talk was going around; this man truly was the anthithesis of a patriot and I believe that because of him, we can no longer sing Kate Smith’s GOD BLESS AMERICA because or hope is gone, our lives bankrupted and our once bright future has been dimmed and now look at the state America is in. Sad. Sad. Sad.