cmaukonen's picture

    Reagan: the Real Story

    The real facts behind a lousy actor and worse president.

    He thought by anecdote and debated with sentimental homilies. Inconvenient facts were blotted out with self-justifying stereotypes: of Soviet beachheads, of Cadillac-driving welfare queens, of voluntary ghettos, of Communist hordes descending on Texas, of rich kids getting free school lunches, and of educational loan recipients turned stock brokers. To mobilize support for unpopular budget cuts, he cited anonymous letters from altruistic blind, elderly, and disabled citizens, who urged him to slash their benefits for the good of the country.

    His political convictions seemed the product of a creative catatonia. He insisted trees were a major cause of air pollution. He believed Trident nuclear missiles were recallable after firing, and dubbed the first-strike MX missile apeacekeeper. He claimed Karl Marx had invented the progressive income tax. Returning from his first trip to Latin America, he exclaimed that they’re all individual countries, which was apparently a revelation to him. He once addressed Samuel Doe, Liberian head of state, as “Chairman Moe.”

    Carrying out a devastating array of reactionary policies, he slashed social spending and transferred the “savings” to the Pentagon. In the twelve years of Reagan and George Bush I administrations, the U.S. spent $3,700,000,000 on military spending. Major emphasis was placed on an intensification of the Cold War, especially a massive build-up in nuclear weapons and a corresponding elaboration of nuclear war-fighting strategies and ideology. In October, 1981, the Reagan administration called for 1000 warheads on 100 MX missiles, 100 B-1 bombers, the development of an advanced, radar-proof Stealth bomber, the deployment of larger and more accurate D-5 missiles on Trident submarines, and more than 3000 cruise missiles on B-52s and B-1s (plus several hundred more on submarines), the rebuilding of the command and control systems, and a civil defense program outlining procedures to evacuate 150 million American citizens from 400 cities and build blast shelters to protect “essential workers.” In its five year Defense Guidance Plan of 1982, the administration revealed plans to fight and win a protracted nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Citing the Bible to justify his massive military build-up, Reagan dismissed the overwhelmingly popular Nuclear Freeze Movement as a Kremlin-instigated fraud. Instead of a freeze, he called for a space-based missile defense system popularly known as Star Wars (in hopes of making a U.S. first-strike more credible by being able to withstand a retaliatory strike). Jauntily, the Great Communicator invited U.S. scientists to plant lasers in the heavens and usher in world peace.

    With the exception of a brief period at the beginning of his first term, these policies proved quite unpopular, with the U.S. public preferring social spending to military spending by a wide margin, even if it meant an increase in taxes. Reagan ignored the irrelevant public (his view) and ran roughshod over his critics with generous doses of red-baiting, charging that “pro-Soviet agents” were disseminating “disinformation” to the media and Congress.

    He claimed Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev invented the U.S. Nuclear Freeze movement, and he dismissed West European anti-nuclear activists objecting to his plans to have a “limited” nuclear war on their soil as “bought and paid for by the Soviet Union.” He expressed disappointment at the demise of the House Un-American Activities Committee, dispatched the FBI to harass those who disagreed with his terrorist policies in Central America, and gave the FBI and CIA broad powers to conduct domestic surveillance, while reviving the McCarran Act to prevent critics of U.S. policy from entering the country. He also insured that films criticizing the U.S. were banned as “anti-American,” such as one depicting the life and work of anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott.

    Overall the Reagan agenda was to redistribute wealth upward by attacking the limited welfare system, busting unions, reducing wages, and expanding public subsidies to high-technology industry through the Pentagon system. These measures seriously weakened the New Deal social contract, causing a marked decline in social welfare.

    How anyone could possibly support or look up to this person, even as just a person, is beyond me. A complete disaster of a human being.

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    C, good info.   It's amazing how he is so adulated by so many.  I always knew he was indeed a charter member of the hardcore warmongers and 'let them eat cake' society.  But, this provides proof that he may be the perfect icon for the right wingnuts.

    Appreciate.


    Sadly, most of us knew, or at the least, strongly suspected the truth about him and we watched incredulously as he was, and still is, passed off as the "Greatest President in living memory" by the Republicans.  I got to "meet him" once, way back in 1972. He had come to my college to speak to the Young Republicans club (in 1972, they were considered odd by the rest of the student body, even in Oklahoma), and I was appearing in a play.  

    Most of the actors in the cast were, like me, staunch McGovern supporters, but we were warned by our director and the head of the drama department to 'be nice' and 'don't make a scene', so we stood there and he came in with his orange fake tan and his dyed hair and we smiled and shook his hand.  He made a couple of lame attempts at small talk, and then was quickly hustled off to his next appointment.  

    But I suppose that suspecting Reagan to be what, it turns out, he actually was, is what made this one of the greatest SNL sketches of all time: 




    Evidence of Ronnie's 'special relationship' with the Mullahs of Iran when the US embassy hostages are released minutes after he takes the oath of office, PBS later does a Front Line implicating Reagan campaign people with making deals with Iran, to hold the hostages until after the election, which is treason. Sets the stage for the later illegal secret transfer of US weapons to Iran who are fighting US supported Saddam in a war that kills hundreds of thousands, and in which Saddam uses chemical weapons made in part with US supplies. Robert Fisk, correspondent of the UK Independent writes of riding on a train in Iran during the war, with soldiers stinking of and showing signs of being exposed to chemical warfare. Rummy visits and shakes hands with Saddam during this period.

    Nightmarish recollections of Ollie North trading and selling arms and missiles to Iran, in some cases to gain release of hostages. Reagan denies, and the terrorists get out of control taking even more hostages, some killed, including Steve Kerr's dad, embassy and CIA employees.

    The original intent of the arms deals was in order to get Iranian money for the Contras (Iran had to pay more for weapons and spare parts for the Shah's military equipment because Reagan had banned weapons shipments to them, raising the price and the money to be made) General Singlaub and Secord run the arms operation in the war in Nicaragua, where priests and nuns were tortured and killed.  The operation exposed when Eugene Hasenfus C-123 cargo plane crashed with a load of illegal arms violating US law.

    The Israeli Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, leading to and followed by the deaths of 250 US Marines in their Beirut barracks, the botched US operation to protect citizens of Beirut and the quick exit afterwards. 

    The premature, against safety requirements due to cold, launch of the Challenger Space Shuttle so Reagan could mention them, and 'the first teacher in space' Christa McAuliffe, in his SOTU speech the next day, which speech was canceled and then attempts were made to cover up the known risks of O-ring failure at launch time temps. The shuttle blows up in seconds as the seals fail, as predicted by engineering tests. The seal design is then changed after a 2 year launch hiatus. Of course, the White House pressure to launch was 'deniable' and/or covered up, nothing written, even though it was known there was a communications set-up for Reagan to talk to the astronauts, and high level phone calls were made to shuttle directors in the days when the launch decision had to be made  (fuel loading required about a two day window).

    One final surprise is when George H W bush provides pardons for Caspar Weinberger, the former Sec. of Defense, and others related to what they knew and did in the Iran Contra scandal, the pardons made even though the honest, tenacious and no nonsense ('old-fashion Republican') special prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, who wrote a book on his investigation, Firewall, had not even indicted them for a crime.


    I had not thought it possible but worse than  Nixon.


    Nixon in retrospect was nothing as bad as Republicans since then. He was a liberal when he was not concocting penny ante break-ins. As bad as the GOP since?  No way. See Reagan above. BTW, Daniel Ortega, the evil leftist bad guy in Nicaragua, is still there, President of the country. The Reagan supported Contras are gone, and Texas has not been invaded as Ronnie tried to imply was possible when he said 'Nicaragua, it's only 2 days from Texas'.

    As I have said before, it seems the right runs the US, and it was the right that used the excuse of Watergate to let the Democrats get rid of Nixon, who was a secretive scheming guy, but a  very liberal President who the right hated vehemently (EPA, OSHA, China trip etc). It's a tale for school kids that Watergate 'cleaned up abuse of power' in Washington.


    And Obama likes Reagan and his policies ???

     

    WTF ???


    The American public believes Reagan was one of the greatest Presidents of all time. They lined up for miles to see him lying in state. To criticize Reagan would be political suicide.


    They lined up for miles to see him lying in state.

    And that WAS the last time Reagan lied.smiley


    Give the people what they want, and they'll show up in droves. 


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