>>Internet, developed by government researchers at CERN

Really? I'd agree that a number of the current protocols (and one layer) used by what we now call "The Internet" were either taken directly from ISDN, or developed from RFCs in response to it.

Through the 80s and 90s, those of us involved in datacomms considered ISDN to be an acronym meaning "It Still Does Nothing".

That said, Reaganism has been an absolute disaster for the US the same way Thatcherism has been for the UK - we are still dealing with the after effects. In the US, I see the ascendance of Trump in 2016 as a reaction by the people left behind - and your conservatives might be the same.

I'm not sure any other system would have done better for the environment - even Marxist communism regards the environment as an 'externality'. Ditto the Russian version of socialism.