ronald reagan. The "legacy" (from the depths of HELL).

[calimary]

I was asked to make this an OP. Thank you guys for suggesting that - it's my honor!

I think I realized the first time I heard one of his radio commentaries what a dangerous man he was. Dangerous in that he sugar-coated all kinds of horrible, stingey, cheapskate, selfish, un-Christian, myopic, shortsighted, penny-wise/pound-foolish ideas that NEVER should have seen the light of day, much less find any favor with anybody anywhere. HORRIBLE stuff. And the "kindly" affable old uncle shtick he presented, soooooooooooo slick and silky and folksy and aw-shucks.

I worked at the FM rock-format sister station of this AM talk station that ran reagan's commentary. It was a strategy he adopted after he lost the presidential nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976. He went back to California and a number of very wealthy republi-CON tycoons and industry chieftains gathered around him and funded him and helped him build an increasingly appealing and high-profile platform that would keep his name and voice and statements in the news and in the public eye and ear. Ensured that he didn't fade away and wasn't forgotten - so he could rise again to fight another day, and preferably win next time. They propped him up and gave him his cue cards and watched him sell the "gospel" of that freedomy-freedomy thing, of trickle-down and the bullshit about the free market being a magic cure-all for everything that ailed America. And as the actor he was, he did splendidly! He sold that shit just like he sold that GE all-electric home and anything else he pitched.

And I'd catch some of those commentaries, and I remember being very troubled. This guy was trouble. He was GONNA be trouble. We had to do something! And nobody did. Nobody cared. Everybody just really liked his pleasant old affable persona a lot. They'd listen to anything and forgive him anything. They felt he really understood, connected, and was somehow one of them, even though he was a Hollywood celebrity and governor of California and slicky-boy smooth-talking spokesman and aw-shucks harmless ol' fella.

Harmless MY ASS. I knew people were gonna bite. I knew people were gonna go for that shtick. I knew they were gonna fall all over themselves to see in him what they wanted to see. And they'd love it when he'd lull them back to sleep with his pleasant folksy talk and demeanor, that aw-shucks stuff that was worth more than the Crown Jewels. People loved that stuff and they ate it up. It sounded SOOOOOOO good and so comforting and so soothing and so harmless.

And look what he did. Look at the "reagan revolution" he started. The blight he caused to sicken our land. I blame him for just about everything that's gone wrong with our country. Whatever is happening now started with ronald reagan. He made it okay to be selfish. He made it okay to be a cheapskate. He made it okay to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. He made it okay to turn the poor and mentally ill out onto the street. He made it okay to balloon the war machine while too many people starved. He made it okay to put down the poor as moochers and welfare queens and all kinds of other lies and fabrications and fairy stories. As phony as any of the fiction he starred in.

I will go to my grave hating and despising ronald reagan more than any other individual in history. If I could, I would systematically go around the country removing his name from every award, every bridge, every ship, every school, every highway, every airport, every government building, every foundation, every scholarship, every monument, every ANYTHING. Starting with what should still be the Simi Valley Freeway and moving straight across the country all the way to what should still be known as the Washington National Airport. He was the most dangerous man in America, if not the world - because of the shit he sold and made to seem respectable and desirable. That bastard singlehandedly caused more hardship, did more damage, and wrought more wreckage, despair, and desolation than any other figure in history. And we are STILL paying for it, through the nose, today.

From the original thread by Pretzel_Warrior:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022090530

[iemitsu]

1. I'm glad you made this an OP. Good analysis of the Reagan legacy.

You brought back my memories of that time in our past (that has has such a negative influence on our present).
I remember feeling the same as you about Reagan when I first heard he was running for President. A slick, greasy salesman. A man who had sold the fantasy of the frontier west so long he became the embodiment of its mythology. Either chosen by God (Manifest Destiny) or by natural selection (Social Darwinism) , Ronald Reagan rode into our political scene, a rugged individual in a big, white hat, who was going clean up the town by ridding it of corrupt bureaucrats and replacing them with hand-picked guardians of conservative values. These would replace trained civil service people for the beneficiaries of the spoils system (his henchmen).
His message, as you note, was always to sell something ugly, sugar-coated with smooth justification to make it seem worth swallowing. I was appalled to find people I grew up with attracted by his spiel and doubly so to hear the media label Reagan, "the great communicator". He never really said anything. He just spoke in a way that hypnotized his audiences, at least those with suggestive personalities or those open to the fantasy he sold. He was not a great communicator. It was difficult to distill his message from the prattle.
It was during his reign that I began to distrust the media. Their concerted effort to bolster a mediocre man's image and enable his sweeping changes to our system was obvious and upsetting (no internet for alternative sources of information).
Oh, and you forgot to attribute to Reagan one other gift. He brought good-old, American racism out of the closet, that it had been put into by the Civil Rights movement. Today it once again flourishes in the open air.

[ewagner]

9. It was said at the time of his election...

"Reagan made us comfortable with our prejudices"

He seduced America with Norman Rockwellian images of a time and place that never really existed.

Note: I grew up believing I was a "liberal Republican".....because of Reagan I left the Republican Party and never went back.

[iemitsu]

41. Well, you were a darned sight smarter than those who became republicans

because of Reagan.
There was no chance that was going to happen to me.
Reagan had the appearance and demeanor of everyone's grandfather, a bit prone to adopting a know-it-all tone when explaining his ideas and proposals to us young folk. He was hokey and old-fashioned.
It was had to believe he promoted such evil policies. Many still don't believe he did, even when they recognize that his policies were bad. They debate when the old man lost his marbles. Before the first election (was he in on the Iran scandal)? After being shot? Certainly before the second election. Even I have a tendency to blame Poppy Bush for the worst of what Reagan sponsored.
I think your slogan from the time, "Reagan made us comfortable with our prejudices" perfectly describes what I saw happening to my friends and acquaintances, who (from my perspective) soul their souls during that time.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

2. Thank you for adding your great writing as their own

I don't think people under 30 can appreciate how bad Ronnie was.

[cordelia]

3. I would recommend this a thousand times if I could.

I hated that piece of shit from the get-go. HATED him. Still do.

The more he was exposed for who he was and what he represented, the more the hate grew.

And the right wing hate machine still invokes that scoundrel's name. Speaks volumes about them.

[unblock]

4. the man was the republican anti-kennedy.

kennedy said ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

reagan said screw that, where's my tax cut? where's my loophole? where's my subsidy?


kennedy made public service and civic duty fashionable.

reagan made greed fashionable.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

5. If Ronnie Raygun's name is on a cesspool somewhere, you have my permission not to change it.

Same goes for nuclear waste dumps, sewage treatment plants, strip mining operations and frack sites. In fact his name should be on as many of those as possible.

[hopemountain]

6. the shrine to the false god

while in socal last month my sis and i were driving to pasadena when she brightened and said "we're going to be driving by the ronald reagan library, would you like to go?"

she then described how much she enjoyed & was fascinated by her visit and the walk back through his presidency - a time when she was too young to really know what was going on politically. sis is a designer and was particularly enraptured by the decor of the era. she had gone there with her friend, a die hard reagan worshipper. yes, unfortunately, there are many of them - young republicans who have no idea what the man was really like.

i know i nearly had a heart attack at the suggestion. "what's the matter?" she asked, glancing my direction and seeing my revulsion.

i held back not one word! i ranted about his heartless selfishness and his abandonment of the mentally ill and poor with his policies and propaganda and how his greed & twisting of democracy in the republican party platform persists to this day - similar to your perfectly expressed post, calimary.

he was not a good man at all.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

13. That, too...

...eom.

[calimary]

15. Welcome to DU, hopemountain!

Glad you're here! And it's sad but true - he was not a good man at all, at least as far as his policies that foisted all kinds of bad things upon this country. You want to know where the anti-union/screw the worker stuff started? When reagan fired the unionized air traffic controllers. Their union was PATCO. He sure took care of that. And how unfair of all those greedy ol' air traffic controllers to want a little bit bigger pay checks, considering all the ungodly stress that comes with that job.

He was the one who chose james watt as Interior Secretary. One bastard picks another bastard. james watt once testified on some panel, wide-eyed and sincere as all hell, that "when the last tree is felled, Jesus will come back." He was dead serious. When I saw that, I wanted to scream!!!!! He's the one who went around the country speechifying about how our precious natural lands and unspoiled wildernesses and national forests and public lands needed to be opened to "ALL THE PEOPLE!!!" And it sounded sooooooooo goooooooood. Sold that one to hundreds of thousands of gullible reagan-worshippers. What he REALLY meant when he said "ALL THE PEOPLE!!!" was the people who you would WANT shut out of our precious natural lands and unspoiled wildernesses and national forests and public lands: oil drillers, lumber clear-cutters, strip-miners, and more. THAT was the "ALL THE PEOPLE!!!" that he was talking about. Now mind you, he was careful NOT to spell out what he meant, and who that nameless, faceless, anonymous group of "ALL THE PEOPLE!!!" actually was. There was a REASON why those "wrong elements" were locked out of our national parks and forests and wetlands and wilderness areas. TO KEEP THEM FROM DESTROYING EVERYTHING, THAT'S WHY!!! Earth rapists, every last one of them.

Dear GOD, I hated james watt. I was SO glad when - of all people - nancy reagan did him in. She didn't like how he dissed the Beach Boys, who were supposed to headline a 4th of July concert on the Washington Mall, I think it was. He disinvited them because he said they attracted the "wrong element." That was evidently just a little too much for Queen Nancy, who professed in public to like the Beach Boys a lot and took great umbrage at what he'd said. And then she set about her own lethal sneaky little stab-in-the-back whispering campaign within the White House, and he was dead meat in short order. She also did it to donald regan and drove him from his job also. She thought he was making her precious ronnie look bad. No loss there, either.

What a bunch of ruthless scheming jerks that whole sorry lot of them were. GOOD RIDDANCE TO THEM ALL!!!!!! I ground my teeth for eight long miserable years while they were in power. It took every bit of professionalism I could summon to speak of them in my newscasts with any semblance of objectivity.

[hopemountain]

22. yes! i'd forgotten about

watt! geeez. and the attack on unions. thanks, calimary. and, might i add - you were a newscaster during the days when professional journalism included being objective - so people could hear the facts and make up their own minds. objectivity and sticking to the facts is something younger journalists lack the discipline to practice.

[calimary]

27. Thanks!

We didn't have any Pox Noise back then. And CONservative cranks were viewed as just that. Cranks. They weren't lauded and praised and showered with big money and regular face-time. They weren't worshipped. They weren't held up as role models and admired and damn-near worshipped. They were laughed at and scorned as the cranks they were. Now they're limbaugh and glenn beck and the vainglorious guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-Vanity, and those male and female bimbos on Pox Noise in the morning. We still measured our work by the Walter Cronkite yardstick. That's when an anchorman was widely regarded as "the most trusted man in America." And he was well worthy of that title.

[Mr.Bill]

7. He taught this country

the prosperity of borrowed money.

Ask any wingnut you know which president was the first to double the national debt. They never answer that question correctly.

[Skittles]

8. REAGAN MADE GREED AND IDIOCY FASHIONABLE

SHAME ON ANYONE WHO BOUGHT HIS ACT

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Please, No!

Don't make us re-name our Ronald Wilson Reagan Memorial Septic Mound and Drainfield.

Other than that, a wonderfully on-target rant.

[ewagner]

11. Jackpine...

you ARE a treasure!!!

[calimary]

28. I couldn't agree more!

[SunSeeker]

12. He was always lauded by the media as the "great communicator"...

but to me he was always a stomach-turning, evil paid spokesman for the worst in our society.

[Mr.Bill]

14. He was good at reading speeches

that were written by someone else. That was the sum total of his talents.

[k8conant]

34. I always said he was lost without his script.

I also hated the fact that he (former president of the Screen Actors Guild) was the biggest union-buster.

He really shafted the Air Traffic Controllers.


I was a federal employee at the time, sorry for the toothless (no striking!) nature of our NTEU, but a proud member. If it hadn't been for the union I would have been shafted by the Reagan greed and foolhardiness.

[hunter]

36. "great communicator" my ass. More like poster boy for the banality of evil

Reagan is in hell somewhere raking leaves out of Satan's swimming pool.

[SunSeeker]

42. Yes, if there is a hell, he's there. nt

[allan01]

16. re:ronald reagan. The "legacy" (from the depths of HELL).

i remember what he did to california. took 10 years to recover untill the next republican gov. dukemagian ( sp?) the austarity nonsense that is being pushed upon us does not work. his (ronald reganss) backers , occidiental petrolium, others. really did it to us that time

[PufPuf23]

17. I also despise Reagan.

I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley when he was governor of California.

I resigned from Federal service after 16 years when Reagan was POTUS in my 30s.

My Dad, who was an over aged WWII volunteer, loved FDR enough to name his only son -me- after him. His schooling ended in 8th grade. I went to work for the Feds as a teen so as to not spend another summer crushing rock, building road, or logging starting age 14.

My Dad and I were close especially for the 16 years after my Mom passed on but we did not agree politically. I am glad he passed on before 9-11 for his/our sake.

My Dad loved Reagan. He did not get the disconnect. He was still registered Democratic and was a member of the Operating Engineers (heavy equipment) Union. He always voted Democratic for POTUS up to Reagan.

He was angry that I worked for the Feds, was anti-war, smoked pot, had long hair, and went to that hippy school.

I was one of 3 individuals out of 92 in my program at Cal to graduate highest honors. I paid my own way and did not start university until age 21 as was career Fed age 19 and arrangements were made that I could work part time at a Fed Research Station in same agency associated with Cal. My parents did not attend my college graduation.

My Dad was a wonderful man that never laid a hand on me but rarely gave me approval in life decisions.

I went back to Cal and earned a Haas School MBA and went into corporate (and some government policy) management consulting until I burnt out and quit over what I saw in the belly of the beast. We always worked for the bad guys. Most clients were financial institutions or the corporations they funded. Lots of mergers and acquisitions. I got to travel alot (plus to me then) but was sickened by what I learned about the world.

My Dad hated Clinton too and watched Fox in the 1990s. He was in his 80s and I was late 30s during GHWB when I put myself into therapy. I was my Dad's favorite person to spend time with and financial confidant. I learned from the therapy my Dad was not going to change and I made adjustments. He had home hospice with me assisted by the county hospice agency (fine people). When he passed away, I found his pot stash and it was swag that would never go in my lungs. He was trying everything to stay alive.

I always realized Reagan was a stooge and cardboard cutout for truly sinster forces that have harmed our country.

But it was personal in that Reagan represents my biggest conflicts with my Dad, demonized my school, and declared war on and made a policy mockery that corrupted the Fed agency I had worked for close to half my life when I resigned. Many other talented liberal people left Fed service under Reagan.

One of the insiduous parts of the Federal bureaucracy since Reagan has been the tendency to retain conservative yes people rather than liberal creative people. This is accerbated by the preferential hiring of veterans that tend to be GOP and conservative.

[hopemountain]

26. it is no wonder

to me that marijuana emerged in common use for the younger generation of the time. in it's purer, unadulterated & natural form, the sacred medicine opened up the consciousness of many. thank you for sharing, pufpuf23.

[PufPuf23]

33. Thank you and welcome to DU hopemountain.

[libinnyandia]

18. Every time Chris Matthews on MSNBC says how much he admires him I hit the mute button.

[BlueJazz]

19. I knew, even as a young boy, that this man was a phony. I kept wondering why people thought...

...that this guy had ANY "Truth" in him.
That may have been the first time in my life that I realized that a lot of people are just-not-that-smart.
I felt almost betrayed and partly angry.

It was an eye-opening experience and I remember thinking that I've grown up some that day..

[Blue_In_AK]

20. He was horrible.

I lived in CA when he was governor and couldn't believe it when he won election the first time and then that blowout in 1984 was so disheartening. I blame him for all the bad things that have happened since.

[Rain Mcloud]

21. Reagan was a democrat until roughly 1954

He took a job with General Electric and joined the darkside for ever after.
They built him a sweet modern house too.
He made a record for GE in which he pronounced SSI/Medicare/MedicAid to be socialism.
Here is a clip from 1955:
[link:

|

[green for victory]

23. 666 St. Cloud Road, Bel Air, CA

Of all the places in and around LA that was where Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) retired to spend his final days.

[center][/center]

After they bought the place, Nancy was all freaked out and stuff, so she sent her servants (maybe even her astrologer) down to the city of LA and had the address changed to 668.

You can see it (the entry to the driveway- the house is hidden) pretty good on Google earth street view.

And then there was that whole being shot down and rising up again thingy...

[LibertyBell7]

24. I, too, am old as dirt...

...and lived through the start of Reagan's anti-democracy revolution.

I, too, knew at the time it was happening that the things he popularized were corrosive to the fabric of this country and its constitutional underpinnings. Starting with his declaration of war against our representative democracy (paraphrasing), "the government is not the solution — it is the problem," my logic-reaction was something like, "um...'in order to form a more perfect union' We the People are the government. Did that man just tell us we can't solve our own problems?"

Indeed he did. Through his starting the ball rolling on "trickle-down economics" (labeled "voodoo economics" by his primary challenger, Poppy Bush), I knew early-on that the country was in for a difficult time of rule by the country's plutocrats.

However, I'm not prescient. I could barely imagine, back in the 80s, just how far this revolution would advance, and that advance was aided and abetted by one of the later long-serving and beloved Democratic presidents — yes, I'm looking at you POTUS Clinton. From signing NAFTA to signing the death certificate on Glass-Steagall, Bill Clinton mightily contributed to our current our current economic mess and to the continuing rise of (what I "fondly" refer to as) the Corporazis that have completely taken over the Rethugs and all Blue Dog DINOs.

So, ''right on, dude!" You nailed it.

[calimary]

31. Welcome to DU, LibertyBell7!

Glad you're here! Corrosive is a great word to describe it, and him. Yeah, remember that - what was it? What he called the handful of "most dangerous words in the English language": "I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help." Now what the hell kind of thing is THAT to say? I wonder what hurricane and tornado and brushfire and mudslide and flood victims would say? I wonder what people whose bridge just collapsed would say?

What a vile meme he started! No wonder the corporatists of the world worshipped him, and why so many of the brainless knuckledraggers and knee-jerkers still speak of him in hushed tones.

Remember his "kitchen cabinet"? That's the name that the press gave to his tight little secretive cabal of off-the-books advisors. They weren't in the regular Cabinet or on the staff of White House advisors. They flew COMPLETELY under the radar. They were a group of ultra-wealthy businessmen and industrialists, mainly SoCal-based. There were people like car dealer holmes tuttle, william french smith who later served as Attorney General, and justin dart. That damnable schmuck justin dart was quoted as saying we should just keep about 100 acres of trees - "for the kids."

[Blue_In_AK]

37. If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all, don't you know?

[The Wizard]

25. He made crapping

on the least among us fashionable and worse, patriotic.

[Unknown Beatle]

29. I never thought I'd hate a president

as much as I hated Raygun, but then McMonkey came along. Sixteen fucking years of my life with two absolute assholes in charge! Sixteen fucking years! What a nightmare!

[Pretzel_Warrior]

32. Isn't that true? Horrible that both plus Bush I

Were able to desecrate our country.

[Lugnut]

30. K&R!

Thank you for your accurate assessment. Excellent!

[TroubleMan]

35. I've always said on here (and other places) that he was the worst president ever.

- even worse that GWB.

You didn't even get to the horrible part about Iran-Contra being responsible for the crack epidemic, while Reagan used his "just say no" campaign to enact draconian anti-drug laws.

He was the worst by far, not even Hoover or GWB can compare.

[indepat]

38. Yet, deification is

nearing. At least when made a God, maybe the term "Saint Ronnie" will go to the wayside.

[Matariki]

39. I have always thought this.

I hate when I hear what a 'great president' he was. He is probably THE most culpable for the deterioration of America's infrastructure, education, worker's rights, etc in modern history.

[Tikki]

40. When reagan was politicking in the early 70's for governor, maybe president..he stood behind a large

podium on a stage and pointed at young veterans in the crowd who had just fought a war for his sorry ass and
because these veterans were protesting injustices...ronald reagan called them traitors right to their faces.

I will never, ever forgive reagan for saying that. He was a king sized asshole for doing that. It showed
me who he really was.

Tikki

[Mnemosyne]

43. Thank you! Most excellent OP! nt