How Reagan Saved America!

I was about 14 in 1980, and I remember how Ronald Reagan saved America.

What Reagan saved us from was "self-realization".

After the disillusioning 60s and during the self-indulgent 70s there was a real distrust, even loathing of politicians and politics and government in general. Three Mile Island had shattered our faith in the men with the White Coats, Vietnam had shown us that the Generals and the War Profiteers run wars, and that we, the people, are cannon fodder. The OPEC embargo showed us that we weren't the ones who called the shots to the rest of the world economically, and that a bunch of illiterate third world despots could get together and really screw us up. And then the Iranian hostage crisis was beginning to show us that our meddling in Iranian politics could have blowback.

When bryllcream Ronnie was elected, all of that changed. He puffed out his chest, stood in front of the American flag and showed us all that we could still be proud to be Americans. He got back into bed with the corporations, and for the ten years that followed, the prevailing ethos of "greed is good" became popular again. He taught us that we don't have to feel guilty about the homeless, that their condition is their own fault and that we can guiltlessly ignore them. He restored the lustre to the military so that Mai Lai was forgotten and "Top Gun" reintroduced *(I even got a buzzcut and a leather jacket to be like Tom Cruise). He taught us that environmental pollution was not a thing to be "regulated" but evidence of good ole fashioned industrial might. He won the Cold War (with a little help from a covert -wink wink- war in Afghanistan that featured our in-beddedness with the likes of the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden) by giving the Russkies their own Vietnam.

Finally, he taught us that you can say you are for fiscal responsibility, and if you have that keen look in your eye when you say it, you can run up budget deficits to your heart's content and the American people will be stupid enough to believe what you say, rather than what you do.

In short, he restored to us the comforting delusion of "goodness" and "apple-pie-ness" and Happy Days fun that keeps Americans from weeping at the destruction our selfish and reckless way of living inflicts on our victims at home and abroad.

And ain't that something, Ronnie? Gee. That sure was swell.

Nicaragua (sp) and the legitimate government.

So many crimes that to attempt to post even a fraction of them would have been impossible.

Bankruptcy, foreclosures on homes, loss of small business. The list is even longer.

Yup... it goes on, and on, and on...

And the Fact that Obama would hold him up as ANYONE to EMULATE blows my mind!

People I know from Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Columbia and Nicaragua remember Ronnie Raygun with at least as much fondness. Ah, the good old days.