posted 06-16-2004 10:33 AM
One more for "Dutch" http://www.villagevoice.com/sutton/
Enough With Reagan Already
The Gipper's true legacy? Making the GOP as it is today: nasty, brutish and shortsighted. Good riddance
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
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Let's get this straight. Ronnie Reagan allowed AIDS to flourish for years after it was discovered and did next to nothing to stem its virulent, lethal tide, and wouldn't even utter the word until the end of his term, when it was too late.
Ronnie Reagan denied the existence of the nation's homeless problem that he largely created, and then blamed the problem on not enough people caring to get out there and get a job as he meanwhile slashed civil services and assistance for the poor.
Ronnie Reagan pillaged the U.S. Treasury and ballooned the deficit more than 100 percent during his term. He gave the wealthy enormous tax breaks and gouged the living crap out health care and social services and increased defense spending so much you'd think America was on the verge of being attacked by giant marauding alien centipedes.
Get that man's face on the dime!
History credits Reagan with ending the Cold War and putting the final nail in the already-collapsing Soviet coffin. Which he did, sort of, but not really, mostly via a massive, budget-reaming arms buildup and via strong-arming the world and launching Star Wars and by playing nice with all manner of dictators and then surprising everyone by siding with Gorbachev on disarmament.
All while selling some slick, bloated version of an uber-patriotic, thick-necked, sanitized America to a dazzled populace who were utterly hypnotized by the man's silky-smooth ability to make toxic policy sound like Disneyland.
Let's get this straight: Ronnie Reagan should have been impeached for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, for launching an illegal war on Nicaragua, for applauding genocide in Guatemala and death squads in El Salvador. Ronnie Reagan worked tirelessly to roll back abortion rights, affirmative action and civil rights and was instrumental in diminishing the voice and strength of the U.N. Ronnie Reagan opposed stem-cell research, which could have helped end the horrible suffering of the last decade of his own life.
Get that man's face on the 20-dollar bill!
Let us not forget: Ronnie Reagan's secretary of the interior, James Watt, was indicted on more than 40 felony counts for leveraging his connections at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help his cronies seek federal funds for housing projects. Nothing like a little prison time for one of your key Cabinet members to make your administration really shine.
As Tim Noah of Slate points out, Saddam's now-famous gassing of the Kurds, the horrific event that BushCo never ceases to point to as really really bad, occurred on Reagan's watch. And, in 1984, when Reagan's hawks received their first reports that Iraq was engaged in chemical warfare (using chemicals sold to him, in part, by the United States), they chose to shake hands with Saddam and ignore it.
Give that man's fluffy head a spot on Mount Rushmore!
Reagan the great government shrinker? Reagan the great decreaser of budget spending? Whatever. Truth is, spending actually increased by one-fourth, even factoring out inflation, during his term. Know who reversed that? Who actually decreased spending as an overall percentage of GNP and reduced the size of government during his term? Bill "Big Government" Clinton, that's who. Whatta jerk.
Can we forget the lovely winking deal Reagan made with the Ayatollah Khomeini to hang on to those 52 American hostages in Iran till after the 1980 election in order to make Jimmy Carter look small and weak? Shall we remember how Reagan took full credit for their release, when he had almost nothing to do with it? True American hero, that Gipper.
Ronnie Reagan tried to tell poor people that ketchup was a vegetable.
Ronnie Reagan was largely detested by his own children and wasn't exactly highly respected for his intellect by his own Cabinet, and his general vagueness and lack of nuanced understanding of how government works -- not to mention how to pronounce the names of foreign leaders and countries -- is matched only by the current least articulate least intelligent least educated least attuned least globally respected man who now stumbles though the Oval Office with a smirky Texas pseudo-swagger.
Reagan could be famously snarling, pinched, mean. As California governor, he fully cooperated with the CIA to investigate all those nasty commie uprisings in the UC system, ended the career of then-UC President Clark Kerr and famously warned student protesters, "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." What a sweetie. Is it too much to call Reagan "a cruel and stupid lizard" and "dumb as a stump," as Christopher Hitchins writes? You be the judge.
Ronnie Reagan deregulated major industry and essentially loosed corporate America upon an unsuspecting populace, including the savings-and-loan companies, all while opening the national treasury for his wealthy pals to loot. He promised a crackdown on out-of-control deficit spending while working furiously to double the national debt. "Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter," oozed a very proud Dick Cheney, sneeringly.
But let's be fair. Let's look on Ronnie's good side, the legacy, the reason tens of thousands are mourning the Gipper's passing and why an aging boomer nation is still held rapt by this most beguiling and masterful of proto-American Hollywood salesmen.
Reagan was, as widely noted, a pragmatist. He was a seductive charmer. Gracious. He stood by his warped ideals and admitted his mistakes and followed through on many of his promises, even if those promises mutilated progressive ideas and stomped on the environment and gave piles of money to the wealthy, all while sucker-punching the poor and the working class and promising them nice shiny pennies and a big heap of false hope if they'd just shut the hell up.
Which is why, I presume, there are any number of adorable GOP sycophants out there right now campaigning to get the Gipper's mug on the national currency. There are even some who want his face on Rushmore, who think it's not enough that we named a huge airport and an aircraft carrier and probably some nice road somewhere after him. After all, Ronnie gave the conservative agenda its beautiful, historic sense of bitter entitlement.
As for the mourners, they weep not because Reagan was such a profound intellect, not because he was such a generous humanitarian, not because he balanced budgets or worked to end poverty or because he, as Clinton did, brokered peace in Northern Ireland and came closer than any president in history to finally ending conflict in the Middle East, and nearly winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the process.
No, they want Reagan canonized because he was a wildly successful, hugely manipulative media presence. Because he charmed them to death, because he shaped American politics like no other president in recent history. This is what people are remembering: essentially, a surreal and often sad and yet indelible hunk of American history, a time when America fell under a slick jingoistic spell and conservatism found its voice and became much of what it is today: you know, mean-spirited and hawkish and ideologically lopsided, corporate sponsored, homophobic and fiscally reckless and more oriented toward one overarching agenda: military might uber alles.
This, then, is what we have to thank Reagan for. A bruising, devious, glossy worldview, fiscal irresponsibility, the art of the slick media sound bite, humanitarianism treated like a disease to be eradicated.
And now, with his passing, it's only appropriate to try to show a little respect. After all, you have to give the man credit -- he did indeed do a great deal to alter the timbre and direction modern American politics. His legacy is convoluted and eternally debatable and yet absolutely, undeniably extraordinary. He is the GOP's icon of finger-wagging righteousness. He is their demigod o' slippery prefab swagger. His attitudes and policies have had a titanic effect on the shape of modern American conservatism.
Problem is, that shape looks increasingly, and frighteningly, like a giant, bloody baseball bat.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by swamp gas on 06-16-2004]
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