Today would have been Ronald Reagan's 98th birthday. Just because I think he was a shallow pool of trickle-down crassness and a bad B-actor selling sugar-coated bullshit to the true believers and the gullible doesn't mean I am advocating speaking ill of the dead. I am merely pointing out that almost 30 years after the onset of the Reagan Era, it's his policies that have made us ill to the point of critical condition.
Ronald Reagan was an FBI informant in the '40s and '50s who secretly floated names of suspected Hollywood communists to Hoover's goons. (You can look it up.) He was a divisive, ineffective culture warrior as governor of California, and--as president--The Gipper ignored the poor and middle class, traded arms for hostages and did not bring an end to the Evil Empire as his groupies have forever since claimed.
Reagan was the frontman of a band of idealogues who worked to systematically dismantle the parts of the United States government designed to aid the citizens who needed it most in an attempt to profit those who needed it least.
Not only have I never believed that he was one of our best presidents, I have always felt he was simply one of our worst.
2 comments:
"doesn't mean I am advocating speaking ill of the dead."
A shamelessly borrowed 'Tip O'The Hat' AND 'Wag O'The Finger' at you for being so delicate.
Anyone who thinks death absolves all worldly sins is just a self-serving ummm...self-severer(?)
In Reagan's time I was in the UK and voted for his transatlantic girlfriend Maggie Thatcher.
Whilst Maggie got my vote for some very sound reasons (mostly because Labour were so demonstrably clueless) I did not share her admiration for Reagan.
He was indeed an ideologue of the first water, a dangerous idiot. About the only sympathetic thing I can say about him is that he wasn't as bad as Bush43--and that's in hindsight.
At the very least I certainly did NOT appreciate his belligerence when it was Europe that would suffer the consequences of his missile policy.
I remember watching the Iran Contra hearings. What he did was arguably far worse than Nixon's actions. I'm still staggered that he wasn't impeached for that.
And now we face the prospect of Bush43s crimes being swept under the rug too--again far worse than Reagan or Nixon.
Delicacy has never been my oeuvre.
Thx for visiting....
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