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policomic

This is right on the money, Lance. A lot of what the country is suffering through now is the legacy of Reagan: deregulation, fantasy-based economic policies, and the kind of financial Calvinism that says the rich deserve to be even richer, because obviously they deserve it (or else why are they rich in the first place?). But the worst thing the Gipper cursed this country with was exactly what you talk about here: bull-headed hostility to the idea of a common good, and government as an agent of that idea. Reagan didn't invent Americans' anti-government superstition, but he took that know-nothing, crank ideology to the very seat of the government it supposedly disdained, and set America against itself. It's no wonder we've come to our current, desperate state of affairs.

sfmike

Thank you for the revisionism. It still makes me sick when right-wingers hold up Ronnie as a saint-like figure. He was just plain evil without even realizing it as you point out, which somehow is even worse than fully self-conscious villains like Dick Cheney (sorry for naming Voldemort but he still hasn't been destroyed).

Ed D.

Two things to amplify.

Reagan legitimized greed. He told us that the free market was about self-interest (true) and then narrowed the definition of self interest into strictly monetary terms. Adam Smith told us the pinnacle of self-interest was the love and admiration of the community around you. Wealth is part of that of course, but not all of it or even the larger part of it.

The Prince was advised to not be concerned if the people didn't love him... as long as they don't love each other.

Reagan's main thrust was to cut the people from the government so that the government might be controlled by business. He did a good job. There are a couple of generations of folks who think just that. And they don't get that what is needed now, is their participation. Letters to the editor, calls to the congress persons, talking to the neighbor across the hedge on a Sunday afternoon. That is participatory democracy.

Yes, Lance, you hit it just right.

But I think we also need to lay some of the blame at the feet of Robert McNamara. We got him to apologize for the Vietnam war, but not for the changing of our collective mind set to be dominated by numerical statistics. Not that stats are bad... but they are not the whole picture. Ronnie used that as well, as did the leveraged buyout kings of the 1980's. Uncountable things like quality of product, love of community, the contributions of non-workplace mothers became relatively worthless because they couldn't be quantified. McNamara and his Whiz Kids of WWII are largely responsible for the death of wisdom and real value in the face of numerical analysis. Long term building surrendered to short term profits. And here we are.

Doghouse Riley

Well said, sir, but I think you've underestimated Reagan. Banal and asinine, sure. But always at the service of Evil.

minstrel hussain boy

yay lance!

Ole! mi amigo!

John Royce

You gained a fan with this one, Lance. Excellent points and well said.

It is way past time for the Cons to learn the definition of the word "accountability." Perhaps objective truth will cleanse the Right-wing infection.

America needs to rediscover itself. We DID fight the Right in WWII ... that is common knowledge, correct?

Belvoir

Extremely well said. The past 8 years, the way the nation has been divided and at each others' throats- where did that all start? I've read Nixonland, for sure, but Saint Ronnie seems to have made it a national ethos. I've got mine Jack, and all you teachers, cops, unions, nurses, firefighters and air-traffic controllers... parasites all!

The exaltation of greed, of begrudging the poor and working class the meagre benefits they got.. Reagan was the start of something quite malevolent in our society, a deliberate fraying of our social contract here.

nobody

My cell phone cost $20 and every three months I buy an airtime card for another $20. Given how many pay phones I see each day here in Austin, TX (for the record. they're all gone), would one of the damned pundits please explain why my cell phone is a 'luxury'? Lance, I hate these people but not, at least, to the point where the hate is destroying me. Not yet, at least... (If the wrong wing had 25% of a functioning brain they'd realize that the ability to plug in a charger for it is far more significant, but they do not yet they still dominate the media?) EXPLETIVE(S) DELETED

Mike the Mad Biologist

Ronald Reagan was no FDR. FDR:

"Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."

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