B174-DES118
The Reagan Myth
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 11/13/04
‘The
power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have not got it.’
-George
Bernard Shaw
No, not the 1
that he preferred Huggies over Depends- but the 1 about winning
the Cold War….Anyway, late last year there was a brouhaha over a telefilm
called The Reagans that was to air on the CBS network. Right Wingers were
agog that the film reputedly had the audacity to portray ex-First Lady Nancy
Reagan as a bitchy domineering shrew and ex-President Ronald Reagan as a senile
puppet of Right Wing Masters who did not seem to realize the difference between
being the President & acting the President.
So what
was the problem? Even Reagan appointees like David Stockman and Donald Regan
have long since admitted that no one was home at the Reagan White House, that
then-Vice President George Bush was out of the loop, and a few Republican
powerbrokers of the decade have admitted that the ‘Trickle Down’ approach to
tax reform was a disaster. I guess the Reagan apologists disliked the fact that
most Americans don’t look back at the 1980s with the gilted fervor that they
do, despite the historical revisionism that occurred even as it was happening.
Even Reagan Speechwriter & shill Peggy Noonan admits in her book What
I Saw at the Revolution: ‘He
doesn't really hear very much, and his appearance of constant good humor is
connected to his deafness. He misses much of what is not said directly to him,
but he assumes it is good.’ In other words- SENILE!
Then, the
bastard had to die on 6/5/04. Rather, his body died. His mind died about 30
years earlier, due to Alzheimer’s Disease, although the family only publicly
admitted it when they could no longer hide the fact, nor stench from his
diapers, in 1994. Now that a few months have passed I want to comment on the
man’s life & death. Despite the Right Wing’s lunatic claims of a Left
Wing Media, the Teflon President’s 8 year free ride continued into death, with
nary a negative comment from the major media outlets. His State Funeral- where
the body was flown to DC, from California, to lie in state, then back, all on
the public dole (ironic, eh?)- became a national holiday. Yet, it was as big a
lie as many others Reagan propounded. From ‘Morning in America’ to ‘family
values’ to AIDS awareness to the media manufactured ‘crack’ epidemic to
‘Star Wars’ to the firing of air traffic controllers (PATCO) to the
beginning of the decline of middle class buying power (steadily growing since
World War 2) to the demonizing of the word ‘liberal’ to ‘Supply Side
Economics’ to the ‘War on Drugs’ to the bastardization of the word
‘conservative’ to the documented senility of the President to Iran-Contra to
‘Trickle Down’ the Reagan 80s were a decade of regress for the USA. They
were also a time when style finally overtook substance as the dominant meter of
political effectiveness. Yes, it may have begun with Kennedy, been twisted by
Clinton, suckled by W., but in the annals of the American Presidency there was
no administration more wholly enraptured by the idea of mythos than the Reagan
Presidency. So much so that there was no margin for error in the mythmaking- it
was immediate & wholesale. Fortunately, just about all of these lies,
fallacies, and flat-out sillinesses have found the Main Street dumpster- even as
a few John Birchers suckle on.
Instead of
Reagan-bashing the national media quickly sided with Reagan, especially after
his surviving the assassination attempt by John Hinckley. Yet, what long odds
did he face? By rendering criticism of Reagan verboten, Conservatives kyboshed
their own philosophy- for Reagan was not a Conservative. It’s also difficult
to fool history. Worse than the media’s stoop-kneed fealty to Reagan was that
even Senator John Kerry, the Democratic Presidential nominee, cancelled
engagements during Reagan’s multi-day Death Extravaganza! He vividly opposed
much of the Reagan policies, yet acted as if it were somehow unpatriotic, or
impolite (or impolitic?) to criticize a dead man’s life. Imagine Fox News,
Rush Limbaugh, or Dick Cheney taking time off to honor, or praising, President
Carter when he dies.
But, of all
of the myths spun in those years there is one that has yet to be expunged from
the bosom of most Americans- much less Conservatives. That is the canard that
Ronald Reagan ‘won’ the Cold War. Even Richard Nixon decried this claim as a
myth. Before just touching on some of the more obvious specifics that disprove
this notion, let’s just take the statement at face value. Let’s agree that
it was so. Let us now ask what the cost of this victory was, for surely such
sober thinkers, as Conservatives decree themselves, would have to admit that a
Pyrrhic victory is one worth arguing the costs.
To gain
Reagan’s ‘victory’ the tax burden- supposedly relieved- in this country
was shifted further on to the backs of the middle class and away from the
rich, as the whole tax burden of the country actually increased- despite myths
to the contrary- but still could not keep up with the record military waste,
requiring that most families have 2 incomes, thus making the ‘nuclear’
family ideal Republicans cherished obsolete, meaning parental guidance was
lessened, meaning more kids had free time to experiment with sex & drugs,
which was handy since more kids needed to work since there was a greater chance
their parents were stuck in lower-paying ‘service’ jobs which replaced
higher paying manufacturing jobs. The greater time & buying power afforded
the young allowed them to help spread AIDS via unprotected sex, because birth
control funding was cut, and drug use, funded by the drug-dealing contras &
other ‘anti-Communist’ drug-dealing CIA stooges in Central America and
Central Asia, which only furthered the view of decadent Ugly Americans
plundering the Third World, fueling extremist groups like the Taliban and Al
Quaeda to denounce us even as we paid for their education in terror tactics in
the Afghan-Russian War. In order to defeat Russia- a foe we never lost a single
life to in 20th Century combat (save for a handful of Americans who
tried to stop the 1917 Revolution on Russian soil)- Reagan helped arm Saddam
Hussein, which precipitated Gulf Wars 1 and 2. He also supported dictatorships
in Latin America which fueled the rise of narco-terrorists like Pablo Escobar, a
man protected by his countrymen because he stood against dictatorship &
built baseball fields for poor children, even as he was responsible for far more
death and carnage in America in the 1980s than Osama bin Laden has inflicted in
the 2000s. Oh yeah, Osama was one of those men trained in terrorism by
Reagan’s CIA. Want more? Remember that tax windfall the Reagan rich got
as the middle class sagged? They spent their windfall investing in LBOs, which
led to wholesale mergermania, which led to reduced quality and service levels in
everything from telecommunications to the airline industry to banking to the
drug & food industries. As the LBO pyramid schemes collapsed the Savings
& Loan industry went with it. America was stuck with bailing out S & Ls
to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars. But average people were saving
less, because they were earning less, and encouraged to consume more. So where
did all the money to pay for the military buildup come from? From a debt that
was so large that even President Clinton’s smoke and mirrors could not make it
go away for more than a year or two and is now on the bill for people who have
yet to become functioning gametes.
Let’s also
ask if the world is a better and safer place. To most of the states of the
former Soviet Empire new dictatorships have replaced the old, crime and poverty
are on the rise, and previously checked ethnic excesses- like the genocides in
the Balkans, Africa, and Iraq have been unleashed. So, too has nuclear
responsibility shifted from a single Soviet Premier to tin pot potentates in
Korea, Israel, and the Subcontinent. In America bad dreams of nuclear mushrooms
have been replaced by real memories of falling skyscrapers, economic stability
is a thing most people under 35 do not even recall, and every one of the Reagan
myths above have proved wisps.
Still, it’s
a good thing that any murderous regime is gone. Even, it can be argued, if the
costs may have outweighed the benefits. But the idea that Reagan’s wasteful
buildup of the military was what won the Cold War is downright silly. It’s
akin to seeing a camel whose back could break if a feather were added &
instead dropping Halley’s Comet on it. Reagan was merely the bank guard asleep
on duty when the Soviet collapse happened. Does anyone hold Nixon responsible
for the Apollo Moon landings or Clinton for the birth of the Internet?
There were 2
main reasons the Soviet Empire fell- 1st was its own internal
cannibalism, waste, and rot, and the 2nd was decades of American
Presidencies which opposed it. Let’s look at the latter 1st.
Despite the myth of FDR’s being run over roughshod by Stalin at Yalta, it was
FDR who initiated the Manhattan Project with the immediate aim of defeating
Germany and Japan, but the long-term goal of checking Soviet aggression. It was
another Democrat- Harry Truman- whose administration formulated the Truman
Doctrine of American opposition to all Soviet aggression, based on the Domino
Theory, & employed in the Berlin Airlift. It was former General Eisenhower
whose Presidency carried on the Cold War from Korea to South America to Vietnam
to the Bay of Pigs planning. JFK got us through the Cuban Missile Crisis
(imagine had Reagan been at the helm then!), continued the Cold War & truly
dealt what was probably a far greater financial blow to the long term Soviet
economic future than Reagan’s military buildup by engaging in the decade-long
race to the Moon. LBJ expanded the war in Indochina, taxing Soviet coffers.
Nixon fractured the Soviet-China relationship which led to more wasteful defense
spending by the Soviets against a next door superpower. Ford & Carter
expanded support for Soviet opposition in Latin America and Africa. Yet, the man
at the end of the line when this all came to a head, is solely responsible? Thank
you, thank you, I will now take credit for the Big Bang since obviously it
was all meant to lead up to moi.
In truth, the
Soviets saw their economic demise coming in the late 1970s, after wasting their
country’s wealth in space and a 3 decades long tit for tat engagement with
America. They sought to cut spending on the military so they could still retain
power. It was not until Reagan’s wasteful spending allowed Kremlin hardliners
like Yuri Andropov to portray us as expansionist aggressors again that the
teetering Soviet Empire righted itself and extended its reign for another
decade. Yet, even Andropov was not a Stalinist- more bravado over tooth. In
1982, stung by the Afghanistan disaster, he set about trying to strengthen the
Soviet economy by disengaging it from foreign struggles. Far from winning the
Cold War Reagan was more akin the football kicker who missed a game-winning chip
shot at the end of regulation time, then tried to claim credit for victory when
the Soviets threw a game losing interception in overtime! I haven’t even
mentioned the role of 1980s Japanese investment, & Soviet debt to that
country, in tearing apart the Soviet political infrastructure. Diplomat &
historian George F. Kennan, the man who in the 40s & 50s crafted the
American Cold war policy of containment said, ‘The
suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence
decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another
great country on another side of the globe is simply childish.’
Reagan’s militarization strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union, &
delayed the Soviet Union’s fall.
Proof of the
rot of the Soviet Empire comes from the fact that they could not- by 1980- even
defeat Afghanistan on their own border. We did this a couple years ago in a few
months- from half a world away. Imagine trying to convince Europe that we were a
threat if we could not invade and capture Baja California! Yet, Reagan defeated
the Soviets by telling Gorby to ‘Tear down this wall!’? Just like he
stood up for peace & liberty by funding the butchering Contras in Nicaragua
or the ‘anti-communist’ rebels who murdered nearly 100,000 of their fellow
Angolans? In short, Reagan’s winning the Cold War has as much credence as
Saddam Hussein’s having ‘weapons of mass destruction’- another convenient
Right Wing myth.
So why
has this downright silly myth persisted while 1-by-1 the rest of the Reagan
deceptions have fallen by the wayside? Rather simply it’s because the other
myths had no other manifestations of their ‘supposed’ truths. Family values
did not square with curtailing women’s right to an abortion, the 100s of
American Marine deaths in the bombing of Lebanon disproved Reagan was a strong
military leader vis-á-vis Carter’s Iran hostage crisis, his shoe-polished
hair belied his mind & body’s infirmities, Iran-Contra proved he had no
regard for the law, nor ethics- the Contra killers were not on a par with George
Washington & co., trickle down economics never moistened the majority of
America, the Great Communicator was only so when he had a teleprompter in front
of him, & others’ words, & the firing of PATCO led to the worst decade
of air safety since before the Great Depression- that Washington DC’s airport
was renamed after Reagan is a piss in the face of the fired PATCO air traffic
controllers, & all working class Americans. But the Soviet Union did
fall, & Presidents tend to get unfairly blamed for alot of things they
deserve no credit for, as well as get praise for the same reason. Reagan was an
effective President, but that’s not equivalent to being a good 1, for almost
all his effects were negative. Most Presidential polls rank Reagan in the bottom
of the top ½ of Presidents, usually citing this very ‘effectiveness, &
‘winning the Cold War’- in short, based on negative traits, &
non-existent 1s. I’d rank him in the bottom 1/3, even the bottom 10. Yet, true
believers soldier on in their merry mythmaking. To them I’d ask, if Reagan
were somehow God’s chosen man, then why did God punish him with Alzheimer’s?
(Eerie, that the man who opposed stem cell research may have benefited from it.)
Fortunately historians are a far more impassive lot than most true believers
& this myth will similarly be vetted. Until then, just remember- if it were
not for the end of the Cold War we’d not have the Rainbow Alert system we now
have. Sure beats a drab old fallout shelter, doesn’t it?
[An expurgated version of this article originally appeared on the 10/04 Hackwriters website.]
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