The responses in this thread, detailing Reagan's obscene crimes, are amazing.
@SenTedCruz https://t.co/39Q14Wb2h6
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 5, 2015
We miss you, Mr. President. What is your favorite Reagan moment? pic.twitter.com/oWkQe0KNdG
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 5, 2015
Since I lived through them, I thought I had a pretty good catalog of Reagan-administration offenses, but I hadn’t known we dodged a bullet when his FEMA director never got the chance to prove he’d have been worse at his job than even Michael “Heckuva job” Brown.
Joni Ernst is currently hog-calling this year’s crop of GOP candidates, but I’m not sure I’ve got the energy to read about the particulars. Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
S. cerevisiae
When Oliver North was sentenced to life in a Nicaraguan prison – oh wait, that was in the just universe.
Jerzy Russian
I did not realize the Gipper shared the same birthday as my daughter. I won’t tell her as it will spoil the rest of her evening.
Pogonip
I’m getting over a sinus infection. I’ll have to crawl out to the store tomorrow. I’m finally feeling better so I hope other shoppers will not mistake me for a zombie. (“Look, Mom! There’s a zombie buying tomatoes!”)
Mike J
Osama bin Laden said Reagan’s response the marine barracks bombing in Beirut was what convinced him Americans were cowards.
Southern Beale
1970, isn’t that around the same time the NRA went from being a “sportsman’s organization” and started down the road to racism, paranoia and fearmongering about scary black people taking the white women?
satby
I basically blew the day being lazy. Only made one batch of doggie shampoo bars, though I really like my doggie paw print mold. I made a kick ass broccoli-potato- chipotle cheddar soup too, mostly to use up this enormous bag of florets I got on markdown. But after yesterday’s chilly day sitting in a damp wind at the farmers market, I just wanted to rest. Never even got out of my jammies.
Tonight I’m going to see if I want to add Sling to my Roku line up. Big ambition!
Edited to add: I can’t even on Reagan. This country started hurtling downhill when the powers that be decided he’d be their front man.
PsiFighter37
I still can’t believe Joni Ernst is a real-life U.S. Senator. God, Bruce Braley was a godawful candidate.
Given how much Iowa loves its incumbent senators, methinks the next shot we have at a seat in the state is when Grassley decides to hang ’em up / hangs around forever. Hard to believe that he and Harkin coexisted for 30+ years, given how disparate they are in ideology.
Suzanne
I have spent the day not doing much. I watched Spawn the Younger at her swimming lesson and just about choked on the cute. Now thinking about going out for some Mexican food.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike J: This is one of those moments when I’m almost tempted to sign up for twitter
I can’t find it now but I saw somebody say that Lindsey Graham’s schtick at Jodi Ernst’s pageant is to greet kids by saying “sorry about social security”. Somebody is telling Republicans that running on cutting social security is smart. I wonder if Bill Kirstol has a brother who handles domestic policy
schrodinger's cat
Speaking of Reagan, does anyone else watch The Americans, I just started with the first season, its not Tinker Tailor but I am enjoying it so far.
Betty Cracker
Reagan was president when I was in high school. (I grow old! I grow old! I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled!) I didn’t pay that much attention, but I remember my mom’s disdain for Reagan (she thought he was an empty-headed puppet of the plutocracy — prescient, my mom was), and I remember when he got shot.
I have no idea how he became such an icon to the Con Cult. I guess because he was lucky enough to be occupying the Oval when the USSR collapsed? He was hardly an impressive figure, and his brains had turned to tapioca pudding well before his term expired.
PsiFighter37
@Betty Cracker: Actually, H.W. was president when the USSR ceased to exist. Everyone credits Reagan blowing billions on missiles and Star Wars for glasnost, perestroika, and all those Russian words taught in American history class to mean ‘Reagan told those reds to get bent’.
schrodinger's cat
Too young to have actual memories of the Reagan Presidency but I think his legacy of demonizing labor and fetishizing tax cuts must be amongst his worst.
kdaug
Glasnost. Perestroika.
I’d take a bust of the man who ended the cold war. Put in my damned bedroom.
It ain’t Reagan’s.
SiubhanDuinne
Concentration camps for Black people? Did I read that right?
fuckwit
Um, the time Reagan forced my state to raise the drinking age to 19, the year I turned 18? Or the time Reagan forced my state to raise the drinking age to 21, the year I turned 19? Fucker.
Not that I got carded very often buying beer or getting into clubs anyway, but still. It was the first thing that pissed me off and made me realize that government by right-wingers was not going to be all roses.
I have to say, the first time I realized that Reagan was truly evil was when Iran/Contra came out. I watched the hearings, read the news, and went, wow, this is some corrupt-ass shit going on, why isn’t Reagan resigning? Why the hell isn’t this worse than Watergate? Oh, because they’re manipulating the media as if it were their personal propaganda outlet. Fucking Ollie North testifying in his uniform. And that made me even angrier.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I just started watching “The Americans” too. Kind of interesting so far. I wonder if there were really deep undercover spies like that? The anti-commie scaremongering at that time would suggest so, but I’ve always wondered how much of that was to inspire support for absurd levels of defense spending.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker:
Call them boyfriend jeans and you will be current.
Kropadope
Reagan, the man who taught America you could have the government do everything for you and not pay for it. The man who showed us that all you need for an effective foreign policy is tough talk and a whole lot of bombs.
Betty Cracker
@PsiFighter37: Yeah, but the collapse began under Reagan. Not because of him, myths notwithstanding, but the writing was definitely on the wall before GHWB took office.
jl
@Betty Cracker:
” I guess because he was lucky enough to be occupying the Oval when the USSR collapsed? ”
I’m about your age, and have similar political history. Didn’t pay all that much attention at the time, and for a while was ‘libertarian curious’, though always skeptical since even during my most curious stage I couldn’t help wondering how an ideology with such a high BS factor could have any connection to reality.
I think it was because Reagan was popular, won elections with long coat tails, lead the political rise of the of the GOP with its current ideology and could sell pretty much any BS to a majority of the voters.
We get down into the weeds, like how stuff actually worked, and what role he did play in fall of Soviet Union, you run into the Real Historical Reagan versus Zombie Godhead Reagan issue, a problem which makes things like the philosophy of mind and free will problem seem easy. The warmonger wing of the current GOP hated Reagan’ Soviet Union policy, since it was too pragmatic and reality based (except for the star wars missile defense waste of money, which I think records show Gorbachev’s military said should basically be ignored, it would not work).
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: So far, only in the first season. I find Matthew Rhys to be more believable as a Russian spy than Kerry Russell. IRL the spies accents’ would probably have not been as good. Accents are very hard to fake.
Anne Laurie
@SiubhanDuinne:
“But only as a theoretical! You know, if for some reason we needed to control a rebellious subgroup, we’d want to have the logistics laid out in advance!”
The Repubs didn’t get to use those plans against American citizens, but I’m sure the mindset that could come up with them has had an effect on “our” foreign policy in the Middle East/AfPak. For better or worse, mostly worse.
Pogonip
@schrodinger’s cat: And the funny thing was, at one time he was a union president! ( Screen Actors Guild)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I think The Americans is a lot of fun, it requires significant suspension of disbelief, but doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Whenever I hear cons talk about Iran, I think back to the old nitwit sending Khomeini a cake and a bible, along with the missiles. But Obama doesn’t understand how dangerous they are!
I googled to double check, the cake thing: It was in the shape of a key, to symbolise the opening of new relations between the US and Iran
schrodinger's cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The policy of arming the Afghan mujhadeen did not turn out that well either.
jl
@PsiFighter37:
” Actually, H.W. was president when the USSR ceased to exist. ”
Which the GOP warhawks did not want to admit happened. Just as the old SU was falling apart they were warning everyone it was a big con, the SU was playing dead to lull the world into letting down its guard, supposedly. And poor old old-school white collar crook HW, I think felt he had to play along with the BS.
These national security jokers, still pining for old fashioned Great Power Big War (nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Rooskies’ as Major Kong put it) will still playing imaginary mind games about the good old Cold War days right up to the 911 attack.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That was the 80s, when we were the shining city on a hill. Since 9/11 changed everything; all righteous, God-fearing Americans should recognize that anything short of nuclear attack is appeasement.
schrodinger's cat
Reagan’s “free-market” experiment in Russia failed just like Dubya’s did in Iraq. Market economies need a strong central government. See for example, Britain and Netherlands in the 19th century and the United States in the 20th.
Chris
“We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”
delk
Rapping Ron Reagan has some cheese for you!
Those years will always be filled with memories of far too many friends dying way too young.
PurpleGirl
Just had dinner and now want to put things away. Also take stock of what happened today. I went to the bead show and saw some tremendous items. But they didn’t have an exhibition set up, it was all sales. I wore a necklace I made more than 20 years ago and a number of people recognized the style.
I then went to Barnes & Nobel to meet an acquaintance to have coffee and talk about a common friend who died last year on this date. I waited there for some time and my acquaintance didn’t show up. I’ll have to call him to find out what happened.
And when I left B&N, I left my jacket there. I have to go to the store tomorrow and see if it was found and turned in. Argh.
schrodinger's cat
@PurpleGirl: Can you call them and ask first?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: It pays to hire Bob Hope’s writers to write your jokes!
Betty Cracker
@delk: I’ll never forget Reagan’s inexcusable silence and inaction on AIDS.
jl
In other words, the current debased and degraded political rump called the GOP likes Reagan because he was a political winner, and was very popular. That is all that really matters. History certainly does not. History will be bent into any shape by toxic clowns like Cruz and Jeb! to bend the Historical Reagan into the Zombie Godhead Reagan, in order to have the Godhead bless whatever BS they are pushing for the next election.
From one angle, it is a sadder more irrational cargo cult, since the bamboo airplane and radio fetishes at least looked like the real thing. From another angle, it is cynical dishonest marketing to gull voters into supporting the BS the current GOP is trying to sell. I’m not sure where one starts and the other ends in the minds of the current crop of GOP clowns.
Thanks to AL for this post. Reagan was in some respects better than the current GOP in that he did make a few good, and important decisions that the reactionary nutcase crowed hated, and Reagan did not back down.
But in many ways, Reagan was just as bad as the current bunch. Stocking racism and bigotry as a wedge issue to win elections was one of them. As I became politically aware in the 80s, the ugly racism I saw around me was one of my main memories. Not sure how important a role Reagan played in that, but he did play a role in it, and it was evil.
Gin & Tonic
@jl: We were arguably closer to WWIII in 1983 than during the Cuban missile crisis, thanks to the Cheney-Wolfowitz crowd.
schrodinger's cat
@Gin & Tonic:Did you see the NYT magazine story about BiP’s office aka Russian Troll Factory?
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, read that a couple of days ago. Even posted a link here. Must have been a slow day.
Chris
@satby:
@schrodinger’s cat:
I definitely think he belongs at the very bottom of the list of U.S. presidents. The harm his legacy’s done to this country is incalculable, and we’ll still be feeling it for years, probably decades to come. I mean, for all the shit Buchanan and Hoover get, they’re basically blamed for not responding well to the problems of their age; Reagan was actually causing the problems. Buchanan and Hoover were, basically, reaping the whirlwind for issues that had been brewing for decades; Reagan actually dug up and resuscitated issues that had been successfully buried since the 1930s.
I don’t know whether he’s worse than Nixon; Nixon definitively broke the country’s politics, but couldn’t touch (and mostly didn’t try) the economic social contract built over decades or progressive governance (heck, he even said something like “we are all Keynesians now.”) That was Reagan. And while Nixon eventually went down for his crimes, Reagan vindicated them, setting the standard that when the President does it, it’s not illegal.
Yeah, I don’t insist that Reagan must be the worst president that ever happened to America, but I think a good case can be made for it. He is certainly among the worst.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: You forgot W in your list of the worst.
Kropadope
@schrodinger’s cat: W was the climax of the story of decline that begins with Reagan.
Anne Laurie
@Pogonip:
Yeah, but he used his tenure to serve as a snitch for J Edgar Hoover:
jl
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah. I thought about Able Archer when I wrote my comment. I think part of the exercise was simulating NATO follow-up on the nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Was that an attempted provocation by some geniuses in the Reagan administration?
Reagan later claimed the close call woke him up and led him to the Reykjavík talks. I guess that’s true. The GOP war nuts sure hated what Reagan did there.
That was part of my political awakening. I remember that some NATO intermediate range missiles were finally deployed after a long delay. And I remember some war nuts complaining that finally deploying them made things worse, since the SU had so much time to anticipate, and that unless everything was deployed as soon as some foreign policy dolt or nuclear weapons physicist paranoid said to do so, the US would just be digging itself into a deeper hole. Not sure what it was, but something about that line or reasoning did not seem quite right to me.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
They need a President Icon, and who else can it be?
George W. Bush, no: his name is mud.
George H. W. Bush, no: he’s mostly remembered for a bad economy and raising taxes, and he was Eastern Establishment (i.e. “liberal”).
Nixon, no: his name is mud and he was a big government Keynesian (i.e. “liberal.”)
Eisenhower, no. Too liberal. Teddy Roosevelt, no. Too liberal. Nobody remembers the three between Wilson and Roosevelt, except Hoover, and no one wants him for an icon. Nobody remembers the Gilded Age presidents, either, and that’s starting to go too far back anyway. Beyond them, there’s only Grant and Lincoln, which, definitely no.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Kropadope said what I would have. Bush was following the trail blazed, and benefiting from the winds unleashed, in the Reagan era.
Woodrowfan
Favorite Reagan moment? when he died, the senile, racist, lying, reactionary SOB.
mclaren
There are no lists of Reagan crimes in the responses to Cruz’s inane tweet. I’m guessing Cruz has pruned all the responses he didn’t like, sending ’em to the bit bucket.
It would nice if someone could produce a collated list of Reagan’s crimes that couldn’t be deleted or censored.
This list of Reagan administration officials who were indicted or convicted or who resigned to avoid indictment is the most comprehensive one I know of. But I’m pretty sure it only scratched the surface. I lived through the Reagan maladministration, and by the end of Reagan’s second term, things were so bad that personnel in the DOJ were scrawling insulting graffiti about Attorney General Ed Meese on the walls of the DOJ building in Washington D.C., just before Meese was indicted and convicted, and Reagan was putting appointees up for nomination with the boast “hasn’t been indicted yet!” as though that was a good reason to confirm the appointee.
Anyone have a more comprehensive list of Reagan indictments and crimes? It was by far the most corrupt and lawless presidency in my lifetime, eclipsing even the Nixon reign of error.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I chalk a lot of it up to Daddy issues, and as Roslyn Carter said, he made people feel comfortable with their prejudices, put a smiling smiley-face on the glowering, shifty-eyed resentments and paranoia of Nixon.
Mike G
Reagan went to the Berlin Wall and sternly demanded that the Russians tear it down. This restating of what had been US policy for decades made conservatards swoon, because these authoritarian simpletons think all you need to dominate the world is “talk tough” with “resolve” like John Wayne and everyone will cringe and obey you, without any of that namby pamby diplomacy requiring intellect and erudition that they don’t have.
He was a slick, telegenic pitchman who could sell right-wing hate and economic disembowelment. A father figure for Repukes into daddy issues and magical-thinking wish fulfillment. A shallow figure to impress shallow minds.
And he massively slashed the taxes of the people who really run this country. His rich cronies bought him a house in Beverly Hills when he left the White House, but no that’s not corrupt because shutupshutupshutup.
Anne Laurie
@Chris:
Amity Schlaes, proud mouthpiece for the Money Party, keeps trying to resuscitate Coolidge’s reputation but even her libertarian peers aren’t convinced. Karl Rove tried to resuscitate McKinley, as an amiable figurehead who’d hand over the keys of the Treasury to his buddies warmed the cockles of whatever passes Rove for a heart — but Dubya’s massive failure pretty well put paid to that rebranding experiment.
fuckwit
@Woodrowfan: I remember when he died, the mediia was 24/7 Reagan, I was just retching continually. Then when Ray Charles died sometime after, my first thought was, AT LAST WE CAN STOP HEARING ABOUT FUCKING REAGAN! Then I was sad. Ray Charles should have lived. Hell, Ray Charles should have been president instead of Reagan.
fuckwit
Ooh, it it too late to play?
I’ll submit this: http://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/ronald-reagan/
Probably the best Reagan moment ever.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, that’s true too.
I think a big part of it was that the sixties and seventies had involved laying bare and challenging more and more of America’s sins – racism with the civil rights movement, but also the economic issues that remained after the New Deal, other “identity” issues from sexism to homophobia, constitutional issues like the lawlessness of the security state, foreign policy issues like the sins of the U.S. military in Vietnam and of U.S. stooges in Chile or Iran…
Along comes Reagan, who tells Americans that the problem isn’t all these issues, the problem is the horrid liberally biased media and liberally biased activists who’re bringing up these issues because you know they’re only doing it because they’re trying to make you feel bad about America, because they hate America, because they’re all pinko-commie-traitors, so let’s just sweep it all under the carpet and not worry about it and feel good about ourselves. And a bunch of people treated it like a breath of fresh air.
TL/DR: “Reagan made white people feel comfortable with their prejudices again, and they loved him for it.”
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
I know exactly by Reagan became such an icon to the Con Cult. Here’s an anecdote that illustrates why.
During my college years in the 1980s, one of Reagan’s actions involved getting congress to slash the Pell Grant. This has such a devastating effect on students that one of my college friends realized he was going to have to drop out of school because without the Pell Grant, he couldn’t afford tuition anymore. (Reagan started the trend of slashing federal support for colleges, adding the sociopathic quip “The government should not be in the business of subsidizing intellectual curiosiity.” No, asshole, that’s exactly what the government should be in the business of subsidizing because another word of “intellectual curiosity” is basic scientific research which is the engine behind all technological progress and economic growth, you ignorant senile halfwit.)
Anyway, a few weeks before he was going to have to drop out of college, by friend told me he was going to see a re-election rally where reagan was going to speak. I said to him: “What the fuck? Seriously, this guy’s vicious policies are destroying your chance to get a college education, and you’re going to go to a rally to listen to that asshole give a speech????” To which my friend replied, “Yeah, mean, but Reagan’s just so cool.”
There you have it.
Ronald Reagan is the cruel man with the kindly smile who seduced an entire generation into agreeing to a buncho f sociopathic reactionary crazily destructive social policies because he crooned about those vicious destructive policies with honeyed words in a kindly avuncular tone, with twinkling eyes and winsome charm.
Ronald Reagan accomplished the miracle of making the people whose lives he destroyed love him.
That’s a fantastically rare talent. Only once in every two or three generations do you encounter a sociopath with that kind of charm and kindly exterior, a sociopath able to sweep an entire nation off its feet and make them feel prideful and delighted and cheerful and buoyantly thrilled about social policies that will destroy their country and impoverish the population and turn their society into a living hell of degradation and brutality and cannibalistic dog-eat-dog torment.
No wonder the conservatives are looking for another guy like that.
Chris
@Anne Laurie:
I think all these attempts run aground of the little problem that 90% of the American population has no idea who these people even are, let alone what they did. I doubt if more than a handful could even tell you if they were Republicans or Democrats.
Kropadope
@mclaren:
Reminds me of this one dude I heard of who used to rule Germany.
Aleta
@mclaren: whew. well written.
Hob
@Betty Cracker: “I wonder if there were really deep undercover spies like that?” — Well, sort of. The series is very, very loosely inspired by the real Illegals, deep cover agents who lived here for many years posing as US natives, and in some cases actually did raise children. The big differences were that 1. they weren’t doing all that much spy stuff, definitely not the kind of life-or-death missions that happen on the show, and 2. most of them were only active in the 21st century, not during the ’80s, at least as far as we know.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: What percentage of the French know who Gaston Doumergue was?
fuckwit
@Kropadope: And one who ran Italy, and one who ran Russia, and one who ran Japan…. there were quite a lot of them around in the 1930s it seems.
Debbie
@Mike J:
Yeah, Reagan really showed Granada who’s boss! Whatta man!
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
Who? :D
That’s kind of the problem with Icons (like what the right needs Reagan to be); they need to be recent enough to actually be relatable, because anything more than a couple generations is just ancient history for most people. Either that or they need to be really really iconic, but even then they probably won’t be relatable – most French people know who Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins are, but how many of them would associate them closely with the politicians and factions of their own time?
Kropadope
@fuckwit: In their cases, fortunately, people mostly figured out just how awful they were in retrospect. Reagan didn’t really commit any atrocities on par with those leaders, but the slow-rolling calamity that he unleashed is still causing immense suffering long after he left office.
Mike G
@mclaren:
The Repukes really have been the Stupid Party for a long time.
They’re the revenge of the stupid people, the thuggish and bullying, the people who don’t want to think; there’s way too many of them, and Repuke educational policies make sure to generate plenty more all the time.
delk
63 dead in the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut.
Reagan cut and ran.
Even with Democrats in control, no endless hearings.
Linnaeus
Read Rick Perlstein’s book on Reagan (well, the first one he’s written). It explains a lot.
Linnaeus
As an aside, the late Cold War (which I’m defining here as 1970s-80s) really needs some good historical analysis. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I’m finally done with this damn dissertation.
Cervantes
@fuckwit:
Ballard was great. Did you see his late-’60s review of Mein Kampf?
@mclaren:
When was that?
@Betty Cracker:
Former CIA employee Joe Weisberg based that series on “the Illegals,” a number of deep-cover Russian agents in the States who were finally rounded up in 2010.
Cervantes
@Linnaeus:
Topic?
Linnaeus
@Cervantes:
I’m writing about natural history, the fur trade, and imperialism in western North America, circa 1780-1840.
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ve called twice tonight. It hadn’t been found by the second call at 9 pm.
Valdivia (The Terrible)
Since I have been reading about the Araucanian Frontier and the founding of Buenos Aires I feel a little out of historical time here. If I fast forward 5 centuries in the next few minutes I might be able to come up with something!
Chris
@efgoldman:
A CIA recruiter I ran into on the ASU campus once told me that actually, plenty of CIA people did see the writing on the wall. The higher-ups just weren’t paying attention.
Now, could she just have been full of shit and tooting her agency’s horn? Of course. Always possible, especially at a recruiting event.
But I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand either. I think Casey, the CIA director of the time, had a thing for simply rewriting his analysts’ conclusions when he disagreed (prompting a congressman on the intelligence committee to complain that the so-called intelligence the government was getting were often simply “Casey’s ideology.”) Certainly we saw in the early 2000s just how far a hyper-politicized leadership is willing to go in jerking around the professionals in the intelligence, defense and foreign service communities – and most of these people were already making policy in the Reagan/Bush years.
sm*t cl*de
@Chris:
That’s the strange thing about Reagan nostalgia. If the Reagan administration was the high point of US prestige and prosperity, then perhaps people should be asking themselves what policy realignments from that era were responsible for the subsequent decline… rather than looking back and wanting to inflict more of the same.
Bitter Scribe
@Southern Beale: Actually, SB, I remember them being that way in the mid-60s, when I was just a kid shooting a BB gun that inexplicably came with a subscription to the NRA newsletter.
mclaren
@Cervantes:
I stand corrected. Ed Meese was not convicted in the Wedtech scandal. He was charged with complicity by the independent counsel.
Source: Wikipedia entry for Wedtech scandal.
So Meese resigned in 1988 to avoid indictment.
That’s the thing about the Reagan maldministration, so many people resigned to avoid indictment that it’s hard to keep the scorecard of indictments and convictions straight.
By W’s presidency, everything was simplified. They just followed Nixon’s dictum: “If the president does it, that means it’s legal.”
workworkwork
@schrodinger’s cat: “The Americans” is an awesome series. I was in my twenties during that period and I get a kick out of not knowing which side to root for.
Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are amazing.
Tenar Darell
@mclaren: And, because no one was ever prosecuted then, GWB was able to go back to Nixon’s dictum. I lived through it, but I still don’t understand it.
It’s like the more corruption there was, the less we could understand it as a country. I remember the Watergate hearings, but by the time of Iran-Contra, and 9/11 and torture…some were punished to no one went to jail… and we end with who is there to be outraged at who actually made the decisions ever is punished?!
Tripod
That administration’s reaction to AIDS was immoral.
Raising the drinking age, the whole war on drugs, because his idiot wife was worried that Ronnie Jr. might be smoking the doobies.
PhilbertDesanex
They made Reagan a cult object from the start, the personal loyalty thing, like Those Countries parading around with the Leader’s pictures.
I remember before he was governor,in 6th grade schoolyard, ,’if you’re not for Reagan, you’re a Communist!’. No much change since, really.
mclaren
@sm*t cl*de:
It’s irrational, but quintessentially human. Cognitive neuroscientists have found that what matters isn’t facts, but how you feel about the facts.
See “Neuroscience proves stories trump facts.”
Ronald Reagan made people feel great. He told stories that filled people with optimism and joy. The blunt fact that his presidency degraded and started down the path to destruction most of the things the average middle-class person values in America is an abstraction that doesn’t really hit people. People remember the stories Reagan told, not the facts of his presidency. The isolated facts of the Reagan presidency are disconnected: ever-increasing government surveillance, endless unwinnable foreign wars, a society turned into an armed garrison camp with the start of Soviet-style “let me see your papers!” undeclared martial law, most of the GDP gains going to the top 1% rather than the middle class, a government that teaches classes in torture (the School of the Americas) and that murder citizens of other countries without a trial or criminal charges, destruction of the basic rule of law, submergence of skeptical critical thinking in a sinkhole of fundamentalist religious faith, an executive branch that operates in secrecy to violate the constitution, a society run a war footing with constant warmongering, infrastructure that’s collapsing, higher education made increasingly expensive for all students in many states and unaffordable in most other states, deteriorating K-12 schools, science run by ideology rather than evidence, cancellation of basic scientific R&D projects like the Superconducting Supercollider in favor of tax cuts for the rich and weapons systems that don’t work…
…The fact that Reagan systematically put policies in place to set all these vile destructive trends in motion is irrelevant to the wonderful stories Reagan delighted his audiences with. Stories that made everyone feel wonderful, but stories which in most cases just weren’t true. The blunt reality of the misery Reagan’s policies inflicted on Americans never made a dent in how people felt good about America during the Reagan presidency.
This is perfectly understandable, it’s just irrational. The analogy here is with a junky injecting heroin mixed with rat poison. The junky is killing himself but feels great while he’s dong it. In fact, the junky feels so good, he injects ever larger amounts, wasting away, developing open sores, his teeth rotting, his veins closing up, gangrene setting in.
But man, it feels so good–!
mclaren
@efgoldman:
See 78 above. I was incorrect. Meese was charged, but resigned to avoid indictment. So many people were charged with so many crimes in reagan’s administration that it’s hard to keep them all straight.
Valdivia (The Terrible)
@workworkwork: I agree. I find myself rooting mostly for Phillip, Elizabeth can be cold as ice. Both actors though are really great in it. And the daughter. Oh boy. Is she going to be trouble.
Omnes Omnibus
@PhilbertDesanex: I was a junior in high school when Reagan was first elected. Two candidates, Reagan and Anderson, came to my town and spoke to high school students. When Anderson came the gym in which he spoke was set up so that everyone see and hear well. When Reagan came, they set it up so that a bunch of students were ranged behind him and then handed out Reagan signs. That way they could use news footage of the event to “show” that the kids loved him. Four years later, I was in London during his reelection campaign. I voted absentee for Mondale: I also found that the perfect defense to Brits asking how Americans could have elected that guy was saying “Um, Thatcher?” or words to that effect.
NotMax
Reagan thread? Like a nightmare come true.
‘fess up, kiddies. Who ate the brown acid that brought out such an abominable thing?
(Yeah, yeah, Woodstock was pre-1980s. Joke-etic license.)
mclaren
One of the quintessential quotes of the Reagan administration:
Source: President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, Lou Cannon, pg. 40.
Compare with the more infamous but essentially equivalent Rove quote from Dubya’s presidency:
Source: “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” The New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004.
Notice how much more folksy and charming, even amusing, the first (Reagan) version sounds, compared to the totalitarian Orwellian tone of the second version. That’s the real difference between Reagan’s presidency and Dubya’s. Reagan made people feel comfy and happy with being oppressed and degraded, whereas Dubya didn’t bother to lay on the charm or charisma or use honeyed words or a delightful wryly humorous folksy tone.
Ronald Reagan: a kinder, gentler sadism and degradation.
Major Major Major Major
My favorite Reagan moment is probably the whole mental asylum clusterfuck in California. He did the classic conservative move:
1. This public institution is fucked up. Let’s privatize it to improve the lives of the patients, after we shut down the public ones of course.
2. Shut down public program.
3. I never said I was going to set up a subsidized private program!
I deal with/see the consequences daily even now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Valdivia (The Terrible): and that one character who had that ending at the end of the last season! What about that character? I wanna know what happens/ed to that person! (by which I mean, the secretary). NO SPOILERS!
And fuckin’ John Boy Walton! he’s really good too.The whole cast is really strong.
Omnes Omnibus
Does anyone remember ketchup as a vegetable?
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: The most egregious part of that is that tomatoes are fruit.
/
Valdivia (The Terrible)
Though I was a teenager during the Reagan years down on South of your border the effects were visible. Costa Rica specially since we have a border with Nicaragua and the Contra mess spilled in to our side of it. Must say though, that as much as I know given the Lat Am connection reading this thread is depressingly illuminating.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: I have had people who put sugar on raw sliced tomatoes use that as an explanation. I don’t don’t buy it. A little salt and pepper only.
Major Major Major Major
Oh, I forgot to mention that Hinckley was one of the fellows that Reagan’s “shut down the asylums” movement, um, ‘liberated’.
Valdivia (The Terrible)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All the characters are quite amazing. The blonde neighbor FBI guy, John Boy Walton, and that story line with *that* character has been really quite something. I also find that though a spy show it is probably one of the better explorations of family dynamics on tv today. Complex, nothing is easy.
@Omnes Omnibus: No little drizzle of olive oil?
Kropadope
@Major Major Major Major: The dictionary definition I have of vegetable:
…indicates to me that all fruit are vegetables.
Chris
@Valdivia (The Terrible):
Yeah, Reagan’s work in Central America might actually be the biggest stain on his legacy (from a God’s eye point of view of what got the most human beings killed, not from an America-centric POV of what he did to our political system). If there’s anything in his legacy that comes closest to his spiritual successor’s Iraq War, that was it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia (The Terrible): That is okay as well.
Valdivia (The Terrible)
@Chris: The 14 families in Guatemala and the 17 in El Salvador had been long at this game but man, the wars of the 80s turned that to 11. Add to that the creation of the Maras. The exporting of the death squad model of fighting guerillas from Central America to Iraq etc. Yeah direct line from Reagan to Bush W.
@Major Major Major Major: @Omnes Omnibus: In that vein I submit avocados. In Brazil they are eaten with sugar. I eat them the Mexican way, salt, pepper, lime.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ketchup as a vegetable, the nun-murdering Contras as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers, Reagan helping liberate the Bitberg concentration camp in WW II (he never served in the army — see Ronald Reagan’s wartime lies: The president had quite a Brian Williams problem, salon online, 7 February 2015, yet he told the Israeli prime minister he was at the liberation of Nazi death camps ), forest fires have caused more pollution than all the smokestacks in America, the Russian language has no word for “freedom” (the word is “svoboda”), ICBMS can be recalled after they’re launched, if you’re near a nuclear blast all you need to do is wear light-colored clothing and you’ll be fine, South Africa had “stood beside us in every war we ever fought” (they were constitutionally obligated to support the Axis side in WW II)… the list goes on. And on. And on. And on…
Unlike most people, I remember every last horrible detail of the Reagan presidency. Particularly this bit:
That this man had his finger on the nuclear trigger scared the living shit out of me.
mclaren
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Best show on television.
The Americans has been renewed for a fourth season.
Things will get really interesting if the show makes it to 1985, when Gorbachev comes to power. Next year will be 1984, era of the mass public anti-nuke movement against SLBMs in Western Europe. Can’t wait to see what’s up next season…
JasonF
A fun party trick to do next time you’re in a conversation with a die-hard Reagan worshiper is to get them to try to explain how it is simultaneously possible that communism was an unsustainable economic system and that without Saint Reagan, communism would not have fallen.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Actually, he did serve in the army during WWII – mostly in PR and motion picture unit assignments.
Where the hell do you get the idea that South Africa had a constitutional obligation to support the Axis in WWII?
KS in MA
@Linnaeus:
Cool!
Citzen Scientist
@S. cerevisiae: Good one. And love your nym.
Chris
@Valdivia (The Terrible):
I wish I could remember the guy’s name (I heard it first here at Balloon Juice, actually), but there was an Army guy who was up to his eyeballs in Iran-contra, who later on in the Iraq War was responsible for helping the new Iraqi government set up “special” police units (which may or may not have taken part in the ethnic cleansing of the mid-2000s).
What we know about Iraq is already horrific enough; I’m not at all looking forward to what starts coming out in twenty or thirty years when people write memoirs, stories come to light, historians go digging for new material…
@mclaren:
With the benefit of hindsight, the eighties might actually be the most objectively terrifying decade in history. It starts out with one superpower run by Brezhnev, a conservative who by then was almost completely senile, and then just before he dies, Reagan comes in, another senile hard-liner whose dementia progresses as the years go on. And for a few shining months, they were both in power. Because if there’s anyone you want with with a finger on the nuclear button, it’s that kind of geriatric loony.
It’s a wonder the human race survived the decade at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linnaeus: Does Mackinac play its part in your work?
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
From the documented facts.
Source: Wikipedia article on South Africa in WW II.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris:
James Steele. I have actually met him. He commanded 2ACR when I was an LT in one of the artillery units who provided direct support for them. He is actually one of the most charismatic people I have ever met. One noticed noticed him. None of that justifies anything he did in CA or Iraq.
Valdivia (The Terrible)
@Chris: I remember seeing an article in even the liberal New Republic but couldn’t find it, instead I found this. I am sure when all the horror of it comes out, what we know now will seem like a walk in the park.
Kropadope
@mclaren: That appears to say the opposite of what you think it does.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren:
From what you quoted and what I linked to. South Africa was a Allied not Axis country during WWII. ‘Tis a fact, mate.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Never happened — in two senses.
Quick explanation follows; it’s been a long week and I have to turn in.
To save money so they could spend it instead on various abominations, the Reagan Administration proposed new school-lunch rules that would have reduced (relatively expensive) protein portions, allowed school districts to count inexpensive substitutes as bona fide nutrients, etc. This last tactic was exemplified in the proposed regulations by a reference to relish being a (sort of) vegetable; ketchup was not mentioned.*
Until Newsweek mentioned it, and mocked the idea, at which point all hell broke loose and the Administration had to withdraw the proposed changes.**
* Sense 1
** Sense 2
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Damn, another “truth” of my youth wiped out.
Cervantes
@Linnaeus:
That is interesting. History Department, may I assume? Good luck with the research and writing — and have fun!
One question: in the context of your topic, do you run into and have you discussed the adventures of Aaron Burr and Zebulon Pike? I assume so, but perhaps that’s not really one question.
In any event, thanks for elaborating. Have a great evening!
jl
@mclaren:
” forest fires have caused more pollution than all the smokestacks in America, ”
No, just the trees being trees did that all by themselves, IIRC the crooked nut Sety or Interior James Watt said, by taking in CO2 and emitting oxygen, which was reactive and caused air pollution haze. I remember reading in the news that Reagan’s press secretary, Brady, made fun of Watt’s and Reagan’s attempt to blame trees for air pollution. Brady was looking out a press airplane window over a forest and said ‘Look! Killer trees, killer trees!’
jl
@jl:
list of Reagan admin scandals from Wikipedia, explaining ‘crooked’ in description of Watt:
Reagan administration scandals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals
Edit: which reminds me that a lot of the crazy (and IMHO by traditional Christian standards, heretical) Xtianist Dispensationalist fundies started getting influence during the Reagan administration. Stuff like ‘we are good stewards of the earth by using it all up for our benefit, then Christ comes back and the world ends’.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: How Brady managed to work there is rather beyond me. He seems to have been a rather decent sort even before he got shot.*
*You know what I mean.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: Watt seriously wanted to cut as many trees as possible. He was a devoted drill baby drill, cut baby cut nutcase.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Oh, I remember Watt as cartoonishly evil.
Villago Delenda Est
My favorite Reagan moment?
I don’t recall.
Valdivia (The Terrible)
@Villago Delenda Est: win.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: @Valdivia (The Terrible): Seconded.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I have a confession to make. Statute of limitations time having gone by and all that. While I was in the army, a very good friend of mine was up for a well beyond TS security clearance. He listed me as a reference. I got a call from the security people. I told them he was the person outside my family that I would must trust to have my back and all that. Then they said, “We have heard that he drinks and parties a bit. Are you aware of anything compromising that he has ever done?” I thought for a second about someone who was completely trustworthy and the stupidity of the question and I said, “No.” My reasoning: anything stupid that I saw him do while drunk was seen while I was too drunk to be reliable witness. He got the clearance. I eventually became a lawyer.
Yatsuno
@Linnaeus: You’ll come across certain ancestors of mine who were wandering the Prairies about that time period. I’d be amazed if you didn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: Mine too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: Also, how are you doing? Up for jogging yet?
Suzanne
@Yatsuno: Hey hey hey, how’s the recovery?
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: He is, apparently, a tease.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Nah, he’s hip.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Well played.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jerzy Russian: You think that’s bad?
I share a birthday with Sarah Palin. Which proves that all Aquarians are not wonderful smart people.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: When one of my soldiers in the Division G1 shop was up for a mere secret clearance, he asked me if he should confess to the security vetter that he had indeed smoked dope once. I asked him this was experimentation in high school, right? You didn’t start toking up regularly? He affirmed.
I then advised him NOT to tell the security vetter that. That to the best of my knowledge, he was an upstanding and trustworthy soldier, and this one incident would hopelessly screw up his security clearance, oddly enough because he was being honest about it. The system is perverse in that way.
I advised my boss of this (the assistant G1…I was G1 plans officer in the shop) and he personally reiterated my advice to the soldier. The G1 overheard and confirmed it as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I admitted to experimentation while in college. It did delay my TS/BI. I didn’t lie. I just thought about the occasions where i I was a competent witness and talked about them. The guy in question is the straightest of straight arrows. I have lied for him in the past – not at his request, but for his benefit. I do not know that he would do the same for me. So, I would never put him in that position.
ETA: How did a SigO end up in the 1 shop? Did you mean 2?
Gian
it was cool to wear buttons of a political sort among some people.
my favorite button of the time
“Jane Wyman was right”
if this link works you can see a picture:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/112308584428839551/
catbirdman
Reagan and Watt is when Republicans pivoted from being moderately anti-environment to embracing the full-frontal assault on the planet it that is now a hallmark of their brand. Fuck both those fuckers and everyone who venerates them.
Gravenstone
@Villago Delenda Est: I always wondered how my buddy from college, who grew pot in his closet for fucksakes, got what I assume had to be at least a high level security clearance. He started out as a comm officer on an Ohio class.
Anne Laurie
@Gian: Yep, my much-worn favorite said IMMORAL MINORITY (because Reagan was using Jerry Falwell, of unblessed memory, to support his deeply un-Christ-like politics under the rubric of a “Moral Majority”).
Omnes Omnibus
@Gravenstone: Well, the Navy is full of pervs and freaks. It happens.
fuckwit
@mclaren: I remember reading an analysis of Reagan, back when he was in his first term, I think, which included a quote by someone from Europe or Africa, who said “Reagan is a tribal leader. He is not a modern leader.” That always stuck with me. Reagan was like a tribal shaman, a carnival barker, a salesman. He used emotion and superstition. A demagogue, basically. He wasn’t a modern, technocratic, post-Enlightenment, post-Industrial-Era type of leader of a highly complex technological society. He operated like a witchdoctor/shaman of a tribe, or a bronze-age emperor/priest. He governed by spinning tales.
Origuy
Ronnie Gilbert of the folk group The Weavers died Saturday. Irene Goodnight
RonzoniRigatoni
@fuckwit: Back then I wasn’t paying much att’n to anything, but knew Ray Charles had died. So, I commented to my country postmistress, “Gee, it’s nice the Post Office is flying the flag at half-mast for Ray Charles.” “Dummy!” she retorted, laffing. “Ronald Reagan just died.” “Well shit,” sez I, “maybe we should nail another 20 feet to the flag pole and fly it even higher.”
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: Hey, that’s my line!
Rand Careaga
My favorite Ronald Reagan moment? That would be June 5, 2004.
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you. I remembered the story, just not the guy’s name or who had told it.
@Valdivia (The Terrible):
Thanks for the article. Doesn’t cast a good light on Petraeus…
g
How about when he traded arms to terrorists? Or when he illegally funded Death squads?
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Reagan became a conservative icon before the Cold War ended. They loved him the most while he was escalating the Cold War.
It was mostly by beating Carter and Mondale in unbelievable back-to-back landslides and presiding over an economic boom, while speaking words that were incredibly right-wing-radical at the time (regardless of his administration’s actual policies). Basically the rough liberal consensus that had governed US politics since the Great Depression broke at that moment. Conservatives couldn’t not love him.
J R in WV
@Anne Laurie:
And there we see the answer to why the Republicans see plans to put them in a FEMA camp for re-education and elimination everywhere, all around us.
It’s projection again; they always planned to do it when necessary, so of course Democrats plan to do it to them!!
All their fears are easily explained when you understand that it is always projection. They think everyone wants to do the “hookers and cocaine” weekends, because they all want that for their birthday. They think everyone secretly wants to torture political opponents, because they all do. They can’t even grasp how it could be to NOT want the same things that all Republicans want!
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@delk: I spent a week on a hospital ward with one of the victims of that bombing. They pumped that kid full of enough morphine to take down a rhino and he still screamed through the night every night.
Fuck Reagan and his fake ass tough guy act.
cmorenc
@schrodinger’s cat:
The point that “accents are very hard to fake” gets repeatedly proven in movies where movie actors/actresses from other places attempt roles requiring them to speak in a southern (US) accent. As uncomplicated as southern accents superficially seem to be to imitate, it’s in fact extremely difficult for a non-native actor/actress to convincingly imitate one to the ear of native southerners, even with the best dialog coaches in the world helping tutor them. Kim Bassinger’s attempted southern accent in “Cold Mountain” being a prime example of a failed attempt.
Chris
@g:
Traded arms to terrorists SO THAT he could illegally fund death squads. How’s that for cartoonish villainy?
kuvasz
That would be March 30, 1981; the day the Gipper met John Warnock Hinckley, Jr.
A guy
Best Ronnie moment was continually kicking the crap outta libs
EthylEster
I read the twitter stuff and have not seen mention of one of my “favorite” Reagan moments: When asked what could be done about a mistakenly launched ICBM, he said they could be recalled once launched.
Hitchens:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/not_even_a_hedgehog.html
Zinsky
The Reagan Administration had more people indicted than any presidency in American history:
http://anationbeguiled.com/?p=9671
The corrupt, evil bastards!
priscianus jr
My favorite Reagan moment was January 20, 1989, the moment he ceased being president.