You CANNOT tell the Truth about Reagan WITHOUT bashing him

[mopaul]

and if you say anything POSITIVE about his atrocious, shameful revolution, then, one, you are deluded, or, two, you are a liar.

[freetobegay]

1. mopaul

PLEASE TAKE SOME REAGANOL!

[mopaul]

2. aaaaahhhh......i feel better already

now a shot of 'milk of amnesia'......aaaaahhhhhh

[freetobegay]

4. ROFLOL

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Ode to St. Ronnie

His Grace! impossible! what, dead?
Of old age too, and in his bed! ...
Twas time in conscience he should die!
This world he cumber’d long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that’s the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.”

Jonathan Swift, from A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General

Above poem quoted in an article at the WSWS web site.Here's some more:

One is compelled to admit that there is nothing quite so awesome to behold as the total mobilization of the American media. Since the announcement of Reagan’s death on Saturday, the massive weight of this propaganda machine has been set into motion in what amounts to a vast exercise in historical falsification. The modern media version of the air brush is being applied to the years of the Reagan administration. The social misery in the United States caused by Reagan’s policies; the tens of thousands of lives lost in Central America at the hands of fascist death squads funded illegally by his government; the rampant criminality in an administration that was the most corrupt in 20th century America—all this and other similarly smelly details are being more or less ignored. One reads nothing of his defense of apartheid in South Africa, his funding of countless right-wing dictatorships, or even of his tribute to SS soldiers buried in a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. The media strives not only to suppress any objective appraisal of Reagan’s life and political career, but even to censor reference to the more unsavory elements of his administration’s policies.

The aim of this unrelenting propaganda is not only to mislead and confuse, but also to intimidate public opinion, that is, to foster a sense of political and social isolation among countless Americans who despised Reagan and everything he represented, to create in their minds, if not doubt about their own judgment, then at least a sense of futility about the prospects for dissenting views in the United States.

<snip>

........Though Reagan has departed this world, the accomplishments of his administration live on and are observable everywhere: in the staggering growth of social inequality in the United States, in the grotesque concentration of wealth in the hands of a small segment of American society, in the shocking decline of literacy and the general level of culture, in the utter putrefaction of the institutions of American democracy, and, finally, in the murderous eruption of American militarism.

www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/reag-j09.shtml

[PATRICK]

5. the most effective and subconscious

negativity is coming from sympathizers trying so hard they actually start bringing up the truth- which always has the staying power when revealed. The "buts" the qualifications are more damning than any rant here, no matter how more pointed and truthful the latter might be.

The power of the truth in these "memories" is becoming a subtly and more powerful force than you can appreciate right now. Which goes to show that loud show trials, humiliating punishments etc. can actually mask the truth and create reaction for revenge whereas these "leakages" piling up relentlessly these past days are drawing out the poison and discouraging the fantasies much more effectively.

Eventually this may strengthen my case for a super transparency in cleansing our past with truth- not numbing litigation. Many are beyond justice, surely beyond any hope of making up for the great harms done. But people should quietly and persuasively be presented with the healing truth.

The South in the Civil War tried the mantle of the American revolution. It did not fit then. The truth lasts when the hate and the fantasy ardor cools, when trial by combat is lost with the heart to carry on self-serving causes and faulty reasoning. In the midst of this Babel, this collapse, stand fast to ancient wisdom, the rightness that lasts, not the new forms of the misnamed "Right" that always boil over and fail.

You see their offensive arrogance and are tempted to answer in like kind with empirical truth. I see losers singing songs in the growing twilight of their idolatry and feel pity and hope.

[chimpy the poopthrower]

6. Do you realize you've made at least 15 Reagan posts in the last 2 days?

I really don't understand how comments like "Wouldn't it be funny if someone puked on Reagan while he's lying in his grave?" (not a comment made by you, mopaul, but made by someone else on a post of yours and similar to other posts I've seen) helps to enlighten anyone to the truth of Reagan's presidency or helps to bring anyone over to our side. It may surprise you to know that many liberals who recognize Reagan's presidency as a disaster for this country are at least on some level saddened by his death. I'm not one of them, but I'm not really the sentimental type. I find it ridiculous for the people who are making comments about "puking" on a corpse to try to act like they are really just interested in spreading the truth about his policies. Truth has nothing to do with it. This is all about hatefulness and ugliness and nothing else. Many writers, such as Eric Alterman, for example, have courageously written pieces highly critical of Reagan in the interval immediately after his death, that have not resorted to the kind of drivel I see so much on DU.

[Bunny]

7. I think you can tell the truth about Reagan without bashing him.

Truth does not = bashing, in my mind at least. Obviously, lots of folks here at DU disagree.

Maybe it was the whole "pissing on the grave" thing that set people off, I don't know. I also don't think that we need to call people deluded and/or liars for thinking he had positive attributes. I didn't see any myself, but I'm hardly infallible. Mopaul, just as they are free to have their thoughts, you and I are free to have ours.

I have no problem discussing my loathing of the man, and my refusal to feel even the least bit of sorrow that he is gone. I'll gladly say that I feel he was a terrible president, his policies bringing death and great misery to many thousands of people who did nothing to deserve it. I do not subscribe to the "speak no ill of the dead" mentality, at least not in this case. The more truth that gets told about him, the better. I'm seeing enough revisionist history being spewed, even here on DU, to choke a horse and it's galling, frankly. This week-long national jerkoff, culminating in Friday's mutual reagasm as St. Ronnie ascends into heaven is nauseating, but hardly surprising. There's folks who've waited YEARS for this opportunity.

I feel a slight level of sympathy for Nancy, even more for Patti and Ron Jr. I'm not gleeful about his death, I will not dance or piss on his grave. But I'll be damned if I'll be silenced into not criticizing his reign of terror, all in the name of "decorum".

The man brought it all on himself, by his own words and deeds.
He was a public figure, he is not immune to criticism simply by virtue of the fact that he has died. We are (still) free to criticize him, although I wait for the announcement of a constitutional amendment banning it.

I could have waited till he was in his grave to speak ill of him, but they don't seem to want to actually bury him, for cryin' out loud. By the time they finally inter him, people will no longer care. So I'm going to speak now, and I do not care what that may cause others to think of me. This is still America, at least for now...

[Judi Lynn]

8. Correct. To change the subject, have you improved the toilet Bush?

It seems to look even better than I remembered. Very cool.