I think you overestimate the permanence of the changes Reagan made. With Rat Land candidates we are always one to two administrations from a permanent bureaucratic dystopia. In this modern InfoAge you don’t need a North Korean 1984 style government using terror to control people. You just bury them in a life of personal ineffectual greyness. Give them enough to keep them docile. Today you would probably get a plurality to agree with that life if you put enough smiley faces on it.
Not at all, I have lived through and am still living in it, domestically Reagan lingered for decades and still has influence, internationally we still live in the Reagan world, look at this diminished Russia and look at the free nations of Europe.