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.
