Letters to the Editor
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brightstar
No politician today represents my view that government ought to be 5% of what it is today, primarily responsible for the one thing it is failing at miserably, that of border defense.
5%? You have no idea what the numbers are or where your money goes do you? You couldn't even do border defense at 5%.
And how is border "defense" failing? You mean keeping out illegal immigrants? Your xenophobia is showing.
You can say the same about Reagan, that many of the things lodged against him were misconstrued, distorted, initiated by enemies, on and on.
Sure, you could say it, but you'd be lying. 32 convictions. 30 more leaving office in disgrace. That's not just partisan spin.
And with all the lying and money spent on hunting the Clintons (over $500,000,000 just of PUBLIC money), they got nothing. Nothing at all.
The Democrats came in in 2006 on a false claim that they were cleaning house and restoring order.
What happened, bitches?
This kind of thing takes time. Cleaning up after the disaster of Republicans while the Right Wing Propaganda Machine continues to scream isn't easy. Some of the Democratic Leadership needs to be persuaded. But change is starting to happen. Excuses? Nope, reality. The Democrats don't have veto/filibuster-proof majorities, but they're still making progress.
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Brightstar
And of course you're not going to play "tit for tat" because you've got nothing to play with. You have no response, that's why you keep attacking Clinton or the current Democratic congress. Reagan was a miserable president a vile human being and a disaster for this nation. There is no response to that because it is all true.
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actually, Reagan was worse than we thought
I remember hearing Reagan give a speech during the '80 campaign. "Why should people be punished for being successful?" he asked. It took me a moment to realize that by "being punished", he meant "expected to pay taxes". In a generation we went from "Ask not what your country can do for you," from the idealism and instinct to service of the Kennedy years, to "I got mine and screw you." Reagan's genius was in persuading people that their unwillingness to pay taxes wasn't rooted in greed or selfishness--oh no! You see, taxes are bad for the country! To band together as a people, each paying his or her share so we all have education, health care and clean water and air is very harmful! So I'm going to keep all I make for your own good! It is like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon and making himself emperor. The society may never recover its ideals. Our current President argues that our civilization may depend on what happens in Iraq. Never mind whether this is nonsense, the fact is that he believes this to be true, and yet he dares not institute a draft or even set up the taxes to pay for it. We cannot call upon ourselves to do anything for the common good any more. That is Reagan's real legacy, and it is a shameful one.
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Apologies if someone has already posted the equivalent to this comment
I'm unable to find an actual argument in the article related to its headline. That Reagan made the (white) nation feel good about itself and displayed incurably sunny optimism seems to me very thin material for finding a positive upside to his presidency.
A postscript: I find the lack of hyperlinks to explain the hedgehog and fox references at the end disturbing, even a bit snobbish. I am superficially aware of Isaiah Berlin's celebrated essay, but if I weren't I would be thoroughly confused and at a loss how to enlighten myself.
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root of all evil
an estimated 32 million people have died from AIDS since the beginning of the pandemic. whatever the reason for his deliberate inertia, Reagan's homophobia, racism and/or class-ism i agree with my my dearly departed grandma: she always referred to Reagan as the "root of all evil." (she was dear in every sense except for her supreme dislike for Reaganism and the Reagan democrats who've consistently voted against their own best interests since he so effectively snowed them. that really got her dander up!)
if you consider the influence on the republican party and its message of raging fear since his administration -- all of which has been reported on these pages exhaustively -- AND you give credit for GOPs successes where credit is due (see Bush, GW) then you must agree, Reagan has nothing but suck all over him. and he always will.
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@opus131
Amen! That was the era that gave us "Greed is good." And if Oliver Stone meant it as an indictment of the times, it was eagerly embraced at face value by all too many Americans.
And talk about sucking ... remember how popular vampires were in pop culture back then, in novels & films? Aristocratic, wealthy, powerful, self-centered creatures who subsisted off the lifeblood of humanity, who were regarded as faceless & dispensable cattle by their masters. Sound at all familiar?
Reagan & company simply did not care about the majority of Americans, much less the majority of humanity. Oh, they liked to make speeches about Freedom & Honor, while wiping away a manly tear -- but they did their best to exploit the rest of the world for their own comfort & pathetic psychological needs.
Interesting that the pop culture monster du jour these days is the zombie: mindless, devouring the living, bereft of reason & morality, incapable of reflection, shambling endlessly through a ruined world ... yes, GWB is RR's (un)spiritual heir, all right!
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Ronald Reagan most certainly did completely and absolutely suck.
Look, how hard is it to extend the broken clock analogy? Just because something good might happen in any 8-year period doens't necessarily mean the president gets the credit.
Reagan's legacy includes war in Central America and Iran/Contra; trickle-down economics, race-bating, "star wars," anti-intellectualism, villification of government, the Neocons, and "AIDS epidemic? What AIDS epidemic?"
Reagan sucked.
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Key to Reagan's success, an adept ability to mythologize
If there is anything "we the people" love, it is the mythology of America - the enduring notion that we are a free, democratic society, whose citizens all possess the Horatio Alger ability to rise above their circumstances. We easily overlook the fact that the most inspiring words written about freedom and liberty were written by Thomas Jefferson, a slaveowner who failed to recognize his own children by slave Sally Hemmings. We forget that a very wealthy man, Franklin Roosevelt, presided over the socialization of American government. And the president who watched as the budget deficit grew to preposterous proportions - well, his fiscally unsound principles of economics are immortalized as Reaganomics. Remember the "trickle-down" theory? The Laffer curve? Fuzzy math?
Ronald Reagan came to prominence after some of the most traumatic years in our history, the upheaval and assassinations of the 1960s; the humiliation of Nixon's fall from grace, the powerlessness exhibited by Carter. He left us with mind-boggling deficits; abortion remains legal more than a quarter of a century after he declared war on Roe v. Wade; Star Wars is still just a popular movie, not a valid national security weapon.
But in the day of Bush, Enron, Iraq, Guantanamo and high gas prices, it is no surprise that Reagan, a president whose primary skill lay in his ability to communicate the American myth as fact, continues to influence our national dialogue long after leaving the scene. Even now, though our government embraces it, "we the people" are reluctant to wave the banner of torture to the world, preferring instead to bask in the fading glow of the America that once was, continuing to believe that we still live in that "shining city on a hill" that attracted so many with the promise of hope.