bonzo rant
Sorry if you saw this post in a half-complete form yesterday — by accident, I scheduled it to be published a day early. You’re welcome to read it now — or not, if you don’t fancy me getting all angry and political for a bit.
It’s no secret that I’m a liberal person.
I don’t really like flying my uber-left flag here, but.
This whitewashed, braindead slavishly adoring madness surrounding Reagan’s centennial is causing me a great deal of pain.
I’m shocked how hard it is to even think about him, and his era, and the horrors that he wrought upon the American people.
I don’t want to be cliche here, but you just wouldn’t understand, if you weren’t the age I was and the circumstances I was in when he became president.
I was plunked into the post-college job market during the very worst of reward-the-rich Reaganomics.
I felt continual, visceral fear at the nuclear war that felt ever-more imminent as he ramped up the risk and the arms and the reasons to bomb us.
Years elapsed as his cabinet completely refused to help prevent (or even to acknowledge) the HIV/AIDS crisis.
He waged unbelievably stupid, deadly wars and attacks for quietly corrupt motives.
I didn’t just sit by — I marched and petitioned and made art and ranted. They were horrible times but to be in my 20s and to have such a clear-cut villain to throw my punk anger at, well, it was powerful and helped to galvanize my adult viewpoint.
It was like Nixon showed me that authority could be clownish, and then Reagan showed me what it was like to be under the thumb of a dumb, power-mad bully. Those were some times, huh?
This is my soapbox. If you don’t agree with me, that is totally fine, we’re still friends. But I can’t engage in an argument about this. I fully admit I cannot be rational, still, about that asshole.
Much better-written rants against Ronald:
The Daily Kos link (“Screw Reagan”) contains a transcript of that absolutely chilling press conference given by Reagan’s press secretary in which he jokes about AIDS. No wonder you (and I) marched and protested and made art and ranted!
couldn’t agree more. there’s been some good dissenting reportage over at dangerous minds this week. http://www.dangerousminds.net/
I also can’t figure out why he gets such praise for ending the cold war and bringing communism to its knees. I always felt he just happened to be in office at the right time to get kudos for that one.
Oh, yeah, Danny, his timing (like any good actor) was everything. Remember the hostages getting released on the day of his inauguration?
I have ranted a bit myself on my Facebook page and on other people’s posts that insist on engaging in romanticized revisionist History. In these exchanges, I have to admit I have been corrected on one or two points. But, the bulk of the things we remember as bad…..really were.
I’m over this “remember the good things crap” after someone’s death. The evil they brought should get just as much prominence. More, actually. Because they had the choice to do good, and they choose to do bad.
Right on, friends! Thank you! Like I mentioned to Karl, I felt like I was amongst the pod people during this crazy revisionist love fest.
My friend Susan commented about this post on Facebook:
Becky, thanks for posting this. I was a young and idealistic civil rights/environmental lawyer when Reagan was in office, and he was a nightmare for me — not to mention the people hurt by his policies. It’s scary that people have such selective memories (and that he still has such an amazing PR machine protecting him, even after his death).
If they exhumed Reagan, threw on a brown suit and put him up for president, my dad would vote for his lifeless corpse.
God DAMN right!
When Obama praises Reagan, it makes me worry that my head is going to explode.
Yes. Me too. I guess I’m somehow not aware all the glorification of him now, except in terms of Obama– has someone used the word “cringe” yet?
I shall now use the word CRINGE. Ugh, phoo, and yuck.