Forgetting Ronald Reagan

It’s not easy to forget Ronald Reagan, not with all the Freeways, Airports, schools and Libraries – not to mention the nuclear powered aircraft carrier- that now bear his name.

Isn’t it curious that this man who was obviously beginning to lose his memory in the last days of his presidency, who completely lost it by the end of his life, should have bequeathed his ‘forgetfulness’ to the rest of us? If you read the magazines and listen to the right wing pundits in the last few weeks, you’d think that, collectively, we are all suffering from some degree of dementia.

Here’s what I remember about Ronald Reagan:

When he was Governor of California, and environmentalists were trying to save the Redwoods from being turned into ‘board feet,’ Reagan said, “You’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.” And “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.” When cutting funding for school lunches he declared Ketchup a vegetable. (No need for broccoli and carrots.) Then he cut the funding for psychiatric hospitals, turning the mentally ill out into the streets, where they struggle to this day. He was just warming up.

The first thing Reagan did as President was to send Bechtel executives to China. That was his VERY FIRST act as President! I remember it so clearly. He was more interested in his political backers making big money selling nuclear technology to the Chinese than he was concerned that his grandchildren might be confronted with a nuclear- armed China. I remember my outrage.

He went on to do so many other things. Remember

“Iran-Contra?” (In defiance of US law, Reagan sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages. Then, also in defiance of US law, used the profits to arm Nicaraguan death squads.) Remember REAGONOMICS? He de-regulated big business and everything else he possibly could.  Removing economic oversight, he presided over a massive transfer of the wealth in this country.  He cut the taxes of the rich, arguing that their wealth would ‘trickle down.’ It didn’t; the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the deficit soared. He cut spending on education, welfare and food stamps, seeming to believe that the poor were poor by choice, or because of their own deficiencies.  While posturing as the champion of ordinary working people, his economic policies set in motion the train wreck from which we are struggling to extricate ourselves.

Do you know where George Bush got the idea to call North Korea, Iran, and Iraq the  “Axis of Evil,” in his State of the Union Address in 2002? (Such an idiotic provocation from our Head of State!) Reagan had famously branded the Soviet Union ‘the Evil Empire,’ – so George had to one- up him. Reagan then launched the Strategic Defense Initiative, derided by critics as magical thinking, and nicknamed  ‘Star Wars.’ The Defense establishment made billions. (Defense was the only area of the budget that Reagan didn’t cut.) Then he invaded Grenada! (Grenada?)

Yes, Reagan DID say, “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall.” And that was good. And he did eventually make friends with the Evil Empire and reduce nuclear arsenals. (The far right, who now lay claim to his legacy, called him an ‘appeaser’ for that.) And he was affable and genial, and made people who didn’t understand his economic policies feel good – for awhile. But things like the Mortgage Meltdown, and the billionaire ponzi scheme that Wall Street has become had their genesis in the Reagan years.

In Eugene Jarecki’s documentary Reagan, which chronicles Reagan’s evolution from actor to corporate pitchman to politician, we hear the voice of the 40^th President saying, “Someday it might be worthwhile to find out how images are created – and even more worthwhile to learn how false images come into being.”

How prescient that he should so observe!

False images come into being when powerful people want them, or need them, to serve their own political agendas.

Noam Chomsky observes, ‘if you want to control a population, keep them passive…and give them a god to worship.

Reagan was a pitchman for corporate America. Now he’s a demi-god, on his way to full deity status, (a la North Korea?)

The image of Great Leader –however awful or inept he was, is used to unify, pacify and control an ignorant populace. 

I found out today that the hospital at UCLA is now the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. (I flew into Houston recently and found myself  at the George HW Bush Intercontinental Airport. (International wasn’t enough for his sycophants?) Now there are two places I can’t go!

Americans for Tax Reform seeks to name at least one notable public landmark in each U.S. state and in every county in the country after Ronald Reagan, to “ensure that ”future generations will understand the greatness….blah blah.” (I’m quoting from their web site.)

We need to understand WHY they are doing this. What end does it serve to turn Reagan the flawed into Reagan the hero, the saint, the god? Why obscure the lessons of his failures?

If people are bedazzled and confused, seduced by the myth of the ‘family-values’ patriot whose very name makes them proud again to be American, they will not see clearly what is really being done in his name. And to see what is being done, we need

look no farther than today’s headlines…..

LA TIMES 2/18/11.

“In Wisconsin, 20,000 protest a Republican bill targeting labor.”

The bill proposed by the Republican governor, whose major contributors were the Koch brothers, will take away from public service employees (like teachers and policemen) the right of collective bargaining;

(Remember Reagan’s firing the striking air traffic controllers, thus beginning a coordinated assault on organized labor?)

Attempting to balance the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it, while tax cuts to the mega-rich continue, is pernicious, and should be criminal.  But there’s an even more insidious dimension to Union busting. The unions, who generally support liberal candidates, are the only organizations capable of making major contributions to political campaigns other than corporations and their PACs. Destroy the unions, and the conservatives will be able to buy pretty much whatever elective offices they want. Union busting is corporate strategy.

LA TIMES 2/18/11

“Debit card fee limits hit a snag….Proposed limits on the hidden fees behind most debit card purchases – caps designed to bring down prices for consumers- could be changed or delayed after an outcry from the financial industry and lawmakers.”-

(Remember Reagan deregulating the Banks (which lead to the S&L crisis?)

After the nearly catastrophic collapse of our financial system in the final months of the Bush Administration, after all the hand-wringing about the need for financial reform and regulation, we can’t even get a cap on Debit card fees?

The irony is, and has always been, that flag waving (and now the deification of Ronald Reagan) is used to confuse and pacify the very people who are most harmed by the policies his ‘heirs’ espouse. Keep us distracted with Super Bowls, (with military jet flyovers that only the TV audience can see, that cost the tax payers $400 million,) a steady stream of sporting extravaganzas and 24 hour TV and there won’t be a critical thinker left among us to object to the corporate takeover now in full swing in this country.

The right wing-nuts, wrapping themselves in the flag and invoking Reagan’s name, claim to carry on his ‘vision’ and his ‘values, ’ are deliberately creating a myth to serve their own political ambitions, to enrich themselves at our expense.

I was thinking this morning, ‘the next thing they’ll try to do is put Reagan’s face on a dollar bill.’ (Although I’d like to get Andrew Jackson, the Indian -Killer off the $20, replacing him with RR won’t be much of an improvement.) Then I went on line, and low and behold, there is a bill pending to put Reagan’s likeness on the $50 or the $10. And that’s not all!  Already twenty one governors have agreed to proclaim February 6 Ronald Reagan Day!

This is serious stuff, contrived to make sure the next generation has no idea of what RR actually did, and to make the invocation of his image sufficient to justify all kinds of insidious political mischief.

Dementia is sad in a family, dangerous as hell in a county. We don’t need gods. We need awakened intelligence, and political courage to tell the truth and to work for justice.

Remember how they (we) tore down that statue of Saddam Hussein in Bagdad?  There’s a false idol being enshrined in our midst, which must be destroyed before it is cast in bronze and mounted on granite. We have to 'tear down that myth,' Ms. and Mr. America, while we still can.