Ronald Reagan

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A true statesman, if one existed.

God, guns, and freedom U.S. Politics

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“”Someday, it might be worthwhile to find out how images are created, and even more worthwhile to learn how false images come into being.

—The horse's mouth

“”Finally, I just stopped caring. Luckily, by then it was the '80s, and no one noticed.

—Reverend Lovejoy encapsulating the Reagan era spectacularly in "In Marge We Trust," the 22nd episode of Season 8 of the The Simpsons.

“”How far up your ass does this guy's dick have to be before you realize he's fucking you, man? People are just, "I like him. I don’t know what it is. He looks good on TV, he brought back patriotism. Goddamn it, he's a good American. Hold it, something's slapping my ass. Oh, my God, he's fucking us!" "Well, Nancy and I feel that, a man you might know as John Wayne once told me, that, a man you might remember as Jimmy Stewart--" Shut the fuck up. Answer a question like a man, you fucking lying B-actor dickweed...Mr. President, sir. With all due respect.

—Bill Hicks in his 1989 Special Sane Man

Saint Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6), a.k.a. "Ronnie Raygun" and "Teflon Ron" (1911–2004), was the GOP's messiah Sith overlord of the Galactic Empire 40^th President of the United States, a B-movie actor, PR expert and racist, with a long career in "freeing the world from the evil grip of Communism". Scores of problems in the modern USA can be traced to him moving the center of American politics far to the right, even if he did not hold some of these reactionary positions himself.

Originally a dead-dog Hollywood Democrat, old Ronnie got his start in politics by giving The Speech at Goldwater's Presidential nomination in 1964. (E.J. Dionne Jr. called it "The most consequential moment of the Goldwater campaign" despite the fact that it "had absolutely no impact on the outcome" because of how it later inspired so many conservatives.) The marriage of politics and Hollywood, which scarily resembled Rome during its Age of Decadence, was pretty inevitable in hindsight, kicked off with a bang, with Goldwater himself describing the Reagan Revolution as "ostentatious". Never mind Barry; his nose was out of joint because the man who gave The Speech kept on giving The Speech for himself, and so, sixteen years, following a series of four questionable presidents — that one who did Nam', that one paranoid crook, that one klutz who pardoned the crook, and a guy cursed with bad luck — he was anointed Ronaldus Maximus I, defender of the realm.

Reagan is probably one of the most, if not the most, misunderstood presidents in recent memory. Despite his occasionally endearing wackiness and disdain towards life-sustaining flora, Reagan would, by twenty-first-century standards, be considered a perfect caricature of an agreeable liberal centrist keen on maintaining America's integrity and ensuring that effective policy is achieved via positive bipartisan solutions despite Teapublicans forever claiming he was a stalwart defender of strong, right-wing, conservative values, and "would never-ever dream of cooperating with brain-dead snowflake leftists on any issue, and even claiming that he even so much as resembles anyone left of Ted Cruz would be a clear indication that the individual making such a claim is a godless commie and socialistic anti-American supporter of the deep state" as they would say.^{[citation NOT needed]}

In all seriousness, the Republican Party of today treats him as if he were a deity of some sort, often worshipping him as if he were their one true god. In reality, if he were still alive today, they would probably treat him as if he were to the left of John McCain, Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, or Lindsey Graham — (who aren't true Republicans): a pro-immigrant globalist RINO who hates America and wants to destroy the United States by letting in all of the Mexicans and Jihadists. The right, being the revisionists they are, would probably never accept that he is basically a more libertarian-leaning Hillary Clinton.

If you want to know how the United States was transformed into an international laughingstock over the course of 40 years, this would be a good place to start.

"Acting" career

Isn't he dreamy?

Ronnie's most famous roles include violating the "never play across from an animal" dictum in Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), acting in Army promotional films during World War II, his part as "The Gipper" in a football movie, and being President of the United States for eight years in the 1980s. Not that actors necessarily can't become great presidents — but Volodymyr Zelenskyy arguably had a more successful stint at the acting game.

Reagan (while still a Democrat) served as President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1937 to 1949. During that time he orchestrated one of the guild's largest strikes (which resulted in actors receiving higher royalties and residuals.) He later did a 1967 to 1975 stint appearing as the Governor of the state of California (but who hasn't?). Oddly enough, despite being SAG president, he became a zealous union-buster who de-fanged American organized labor and cast unions as lazy pinko thugs, sending them into a downward spiral that continues to this day, which included eviscerating wages and working-conditions. Apparently, the noble and hard-working actor needs a union, whereas the miner, factory worker, and air-traffic controller do not.

Don't give him too much credit, however. When working in Hollywood he also helped out Joseph McCarthy and HUAC through telling the FBI of suspected communists in Hollywood at the time. Of specific note is his testimony to HUAC in 1947, where he said that labor disputes in Hollywood were allowing for communist infatuation.

War hero

Ronnie claimed more than once that he was present during the daring liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. He was actually describing a Hollywood film. However, he did serve in the Army from 1942 to 1945.

Odd term in California

Reagan's term as governor of California is a strange look into what Republicans were like before their party was taken over by men like, well, Ronald Reagan. As governor he "erased a substantial budget deficit inherited from the Brown administration (through the largest tax increase in the history of any state to that time)." He signed gun control into law, primarily in response to guns being used by the Black Panthers. He signed legislation easing access to abortion and made California the first state to allow for no-fault divorce.

Presidential career

Results of the 1980 Presidential Election

Democrats for Reagan & Bush Bumper Sticker, showing that even many Democrats were willing to support him.

See the main article on this topic: Wedge issue

Reagan redefined politics in America. His influence can even be seen in the "New Democrats", who arose after Reagan ended the golden age of liberalism, which began with FDR. He turned millions of Democrats into Republicans (who were called "Reagan Democrats" and primarily consisted of socially conservative Democrats who voted for the party due to economic policy or because of tradition) and shifted the country rightward. And those aren't voters that the Democratic Party can quickly win back.

• Evangelicals who were deeply concerned about abortion and gay rights being normalized in America, which was kind of funny because Reagan never took an official stance on either issue
• Gun nuts (lol) and sovereign citizen types who were terrified of Democrats stealing their guns and imposing martial law
• White nationalists who saw the demographic changes in America and felt helpless to stop it

This is the base of the current Republican Party, so it looks like Reagan will have to take responsibility for this one. The good news is roughly half of Americans won't get off their asses to vote, so it didn't matter what his policy proposals even said at all.

Reagan had the benefit of running against a particularly unpopular President, Jimmy Carter. Even many Democrats were not a fan of his administration, launching an "Anybody But Carter" (ABC) Movement in an attempt to deny him the nomination. Ted Kennedy ran for President largely on the basis of hoping enough Democrats would support somebody different for him to get the nomination, and even after Carter won the nomination Kennedy did everything possible to distance the Democratic Party from the Democratic President at the convention, doing things like attempting to include platform planks that were direct rebuts of actions of the President. Of particular note was Kennedy not directly endorsing Carter during his speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, which many believe is what cost Carter a second term.

Foul play?

“”There shouldn't be unethical things in a campaign.

One of the most important parts of the election was the Iran Hostage Crisis, which occurred after "a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages" in 1979. It turns out, during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, the Reagan campaign decided to cut a deal with the Iranians behind the crisis, promising them that Reagan would give them a better deal if they refused to release the hostages after the election than Carter would. Given that many feel the Iran Hostage Crisis is what cost Carter the election, many have since taken note that this is what caused Carter to be denied a second term.

Reagan also stole the debate book Carter used before their debate occurred in 1980.

Dysfunction junction

God fearin' American with a wife and a flag.

A ballet dancer son did not go over well. A daughter who decided to run for the Senate (and support the Equal-Rights Amendment) did not go over well either. In 1982, Ron and his brother Neil helped to bury Maureen, which is too bad since she would have been a more honorable public servant than her father.

Ironically, the one person who could claim the title of "heir to Reagan" is his son Ron Reagan — a liberal and an atheist who had a radio show on Air America Radio. While making a guest appearance on Real Time, Ron Reagan expressed his amusement at the fact that the modern GOP glorifies his father, having elevated him into godhood, which, as both he and Bill Maher agreed, is ironic because Reagan had several center-left social and economic policies that would not fly with today's far-right conservatives, which is pretty much the entire GOP these days. However, in an earlier episode, Bill Maher contradicted this and called "bullshit" on that stance, stating that "Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union-busting, race-baiting, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual who cut rich people's taxes in half, had an incurable case of the military-industrial complex and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom. Sounds like he would fit in just fine."

Michael Reagan (born John Flaugher) might be more up your street. Similar to Reagan, the Donald acts rather Alzheimerish at times, in contrast with how the billionaire asshole behaved back in the 1980s. In Reagan's case, it is kind of sad. For Trump, it is downright terrifying. Half of Reagan's domestic and economic policies were garbage. Still, at least the guy was a passionate and over-idealistic poster boy instead of a selfish, authoritarian opportunist with no policy at all. Trump has literally been trying and failing to make people think he is some sort of second coming of Reagan, even going as far as to appropriate Reagan's "Make America Great" slogan and adding an "again" at the end. The irony of this all is that Trump vocally expressed his dislike for Reagan on numerous occasions, never saying anything remotely positive about him until the 2015 race for the White House.

Great obfuscator

Uhhh...

“”In all of the books that have come out about the administration, it's been extremely difficult to hide the fact that Reagan didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on. Whenever he wasn't properly programmed, the things that would come out of his mouth were like—they weren't lies, really, they were just kind of the babbling of a child. If a child babbles, it's not lies, it's just sort of on another plane. To be able to lie, you have to have a certain degree of competence, you have to know what truth is. And there didn't seem to be any indication that that was the case here.

—Noam Chomsky

In many ways, Reagan was sort of a peek into the Republicans' future: why not make elections completely symbolic activities? The population can keep voting; we'll still have the caucuses, big promises, eight candidates, a catchphrase for every occasion. But the people they're voting for will then be expected to just read off a teleprompter, and won't know anything apart from what somebody tells them (and sometimes not even that).

Reagan started to manifest Alzheimer's in his second term, according to his son Ron, though his brother Michael disputes this claim. It's definitely plausible that he was kept in the dark about the Contras, considering he couldn't remember the name of his chief-of-staff during the 1990 hearings. This was a concerted attempt by the administration to cast Reagan as an aloof, dim-witted president who didn't know what his aides, and often what he himself, was doing. While the tactic ultimately proved beneficial during the investigation into Iran-Contra, it only solidified the public perception that Reagan was neither altogether "there" mentally or in control of his administration. It is to be said that, unlike Baron von Nepotism, Reagan, before 1979, was actually able to amass a pretty good cabinet, comprising both Republicans and Democrats, their positions each based on merit, because Ronald was probably intelligent enough to at the very least understand that he did not know squat about certain things.

Assassination attempt

“”Getting shot hurts.

—

In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot Reagan in an unsuccessful attempt to impress Jodie Foster. It's worth mentioning that this made Reagan the president who broke the Curse of Tippecanoe (which means Dubya probably owes him a life debt). Hinckley then spent his time in a psychiatric hospital until 2016. He now lives with his mother within a gated resort community in Williamsburg, Virginia, only a two-mile walk away from Busch Gardens. Few of the residents are actually aware of it. Foster has not visited him and has since come out as a lesbian.

A sterling record of fiscal conservatism

Federal debt during the Reagan years: Small gummint at work.

Those in denial will try to paint Congress as the "profligate spenders" who wouldn't let St. Ronnie have his fiscally conservative way. Right on that "not having his way" part, he often wanted to spend more than Congress. Whoops.

Broken Promises

“”You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.

—Dick Cheney shows his hand

“”Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue, you have to learn how to say no.

When it came to the federal budget, Reagan held the record for most spending by a conservative until, big surprise, Dubya came along. He ran up the debt to a height unseen since World War II, blowing a massive load of dough on the SDI program. Reagan also founded the Church of Tax Cuts by accident. In the early 1980s, he implemented his trickle-down scheme with a massive tax cut, much of which went to those struggling multi-millionaires. However, he raised taxes later in his administration several times because he could learn from his mistakes. The current Republican Party has erased that last part from memory... as well as all those record deficits.

Who's to blame?

On the rare occasion Republicans acknowledge the record deficits, they typically argue that Reagan was not to blame, and that it was instead Democrats in Congress who caused it to explode. The issue with this claim is that, although Congressional spending did occasionally play a role in the increase in spending seen during this point in history, it is nowhere near as much as Reagan's defenders claim. Media Matters notes that "Ronald Reagan never submitted a balanced budget to Congress." They go on to point out "Reagan's own budget director placed the blame for deficits at the door of the Reagan White House, calling their economic plan a 'reckless, unstable fiscal policy based on the politics of high spending and the doctrine of low taxes," and quote Al Franken noting that "Over the eight years of the Reagan presidency , the Gipper asked Congress for $16.1 billion more in spending than it passed into law."

Magic of the Marketplace

“”Will we, before it is too late, use the vitality and the magic of the marketplace to save this way of life, or will we one day face our children, and our children's children when they ask us where we were and what we were doing on the day that freedom was lost?

—Reagan in 1977

“”Reaganomics. Based on the belief that the rich had too little money and the poor had too much. That's classic Reaganomics. They believe that the poor had too much money and the rich had too little money so they engaged in reverse Robin Hood - took from the poor and gave to the rich, paid for by the middle class. We cannot stand four more years of Reaganomics in any version, in any disguise.

—Jesse Jackson

The 1977 speech that Reagan gave, from which the quote above came, was given at the annual Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture. The speech gave rise to the myth and soundbite ("Magic of the Marketplace") that Reagan gave frequently during his later presidency, encapsulating his anti-regulatory stance that capitalism can solve any problem.

The ideology behind the quote have a long pedigree however, dating back to National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which began fighting business regulation in the 1930s when it had become explicitly libertarian. NAM's association with libertarianism can be dated to its 1939 convention when it began promoting an idea Sun Oil Company President J. Robert Pew, the idea of the inseparability or indivisibility of different types of freedom, those protected by the First Amendment and one that is not, "industrial freedom" (later promoted as "free enterprise"). NAM also promoted the false ideas that free enterprise was a founding principle of the United States, and much later that the other freedoms followed from free enterprise The problem with these false ideas was that had to convince the public of things that were observationally false. The Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal largely rescued capitalism from the Great Depression, not only were many Founding Fathers slave owners but slavery was written into the US Constitution, and many Native American lands were expropriated. Marketing came to the rescue for NAM.

NAM was critical in finding employment for both Ludwig von Mises and Mises' student Friedrich Hayek. Hayek's most influential book, The Road to Serfdom (1944), was nuanced and rejected the idea of laissez-faire capitalism, making it unsuitable for general readers or industry propaganda. Eventually, NAM members decided they needed an academic libertarian who would dispense with nuance and who could write a book with popular appeal. The man they found was Milton Friedman who wrote the very popular Capitalism and Freedom in 1962. These three men, Mises, Hayek and Friedman, were patrons of NAM, though they were never paid directly. Friedman continued his promotion of libertarianism to the public, eventually appearing in PBS TV series in 1980 called Free to Choose. 1980 was also the year that Reagan became President and introduced the soundbite myth of the "Magic of the Marketplace" to the broader public.

Reagan later seemingly conceded that the idea was an article of faith, that one had to have a "willingness to believe in the magic of the marketplace", rather than it being a demonstrable fact.

Junk bond bubble

Then there was the Savings and Loan industry's unprecedented bailout, which was only eclipsed by the bailout following the 2008 banking crisis. Following deregulation of the S&Ls earlier in the decade, new S&Ls popped up like crazy and created a mini-housing bubble. In 1987, Reagan replaced the retiring Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, one of the more sane and level-headed chairs in Fed history (whom the President relied on for stamping out inflation), with Alan Greenspan, now remembered as one of the biggest airheads in Fed history. That being said, things would have gone a lot smoother economically if he would have pulled a hickory and killed central banking. He would have had a much easier time doing this; he had nukes.

Greenspan promptly swooped in to save failing thrifts with easy money in conjunction with Reagan's big bailout after a wave of S&L failures. This managed to prop up enough zombie institutions to create a ticking time bomb that Reagan pawned off on George H. W. Bush. The S&L industry exploded again under Bush after an oil shock and market crash. Ultimately, the S&L scandals led to over 1,000 indictments by the time it all blew over. Economist JK Galbraith said of it:

“”In its shortest form, the scandal has been the extensive looting of the savings and loan associations, the looting being effectively that of government-supplied money. The total take is not yet known; it will certainly be upward of $200 billion, maybe much more, or several thousand dollars for every tax-paying American family. The golden misadventures of General and President Ulysses S. Grant and the greatly celebrated Teapot Dome speculations of Harry F. Sinclair and Albert B. Fall, duly adjusted for changing currency values, are microscopic in comparison.

"The Reagan Boom"

Big dollar sign! Big! Big!

A large part of Reagan's economic policy was a big military buildup. The Soviets' demise was in large part the result of their attempt to keep up. The stated philosophy of "less government and less spending" never actually came into play. Reaganomics, as a real practice, was a myth (very Republican). Aside from about four years of an inefficient economy, this sort of worked out in the end. Due to this buildup, which had the Soviets rightfully concerned, they just did not have the resources to contend with American Ascendancy's growing power. Three presidential administrations' worth of detente may have decreased tensions for a time, but it was viewed by many as appeasement, even if it came from good faith. The whole concept just did not work, and Reagan's ridiculous military expenditure is pretty much how the U.S. curb-stomped the commies into dust. If Reagan had not done so, the Cold War would have probably kept dragging out, and Reagan would be seen as just another meh president.

The Reagan tax cuts had zero to do with the advances in technology that we saw under Clinton. This is, in Al Franken's words, the "crown jewel" of revisionist GOP bullshit: By crediting the tech boom to Reaganomics, they can claim credit for all of Clinton's successes while distancing themselves from Ron's failures. Why was the internet invented (cue Al Gore joke)? Military spending. That takes taxes. How we communicate today? Fiber Optics. Completely subsidized by the government (as have been every upgrade in infrastructure since the start of the United States).

We're not sure what planet you are living on in which a guy gets a tax break, suddenly becomes a programming genius, and walks out into his garage and creates Half-Life. But we want some of those drugs. If they were available, maybe Mass Effect Andromeda would not have been such a goddamn disappointment. What happened to you, BioWare?

Foreign policy switcheroo

No, no, Mr. President! That man is a communist!

“”Freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.

—The little comment that led to the worst nuclear confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Whoops.

“”I'm satisfied that we do have a foreign policy.

Reagan is probably most remembered today for using his Reagan Smash to destroy the Soviet Union. Or so conservatives would have you believe. His rhetoric was undoubtably anti-communist, with Kenneth Franklin Kurz noting in his history of the Reagan years that he "effectively revered to the rhetoric of the 1950s, though two of his predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, had attempted to thaw Cold War relations by opening arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union and making diplomatic overtures to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China . . . Reagan was unequivocally hostile to Communism, in a way that American foreign-policy leaders had not been, at least publicly, since Nixon visited China in 1972." However, what he actually did in regards to policy is much more complicated.

In reality, after his near-disastrous "evil empire" rhetoric and attempts to heat up a new arms race, Reagan actually worked closely with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev... which many Republicans at the time blasted him for. We don't negotiate with terr'ists commies. The Soviet Union was already collapsing under its own weight. The death of Leonid Brezhnev, coupled with the collapse in OPEC oil prices (that Reagan had little to no control over), opened up the way for liberalization when transitional leaders like Andropov and Chernenko died in quick succession. Gorbachev, who was something of a Hail Mary attempt to keep the USSR together, started a new era of reform through glasnost and perestroika. Reagan managed to find himself in the right place at the right time and take advantage of this situation. One speech about a wall and voila, an instant hero of the galaxy.

To be fair, prominent Soviet bloc dissidents such as Lech Walesa and Natan Sharansky do tend to see Reagan as a pivotal figure, not so much due to his policies but because they see him as providing the inspiration needed to get independent movements within the USSR off the ground. Gorbachev himself also credits Reagan as having been instrumental in ending the Cold War. Still, not much actually came of Reagan and Gorbachev's talks (though the INF Treaty was significant). The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, etc., all happened after Reagan left office. Reagan just had some damn good charisma and was an appropriate figurehead needed at the time for morale. Actual policy on domestic and foreign issues aside, both of them being particularly strong in one area (and not so strong at the other), President Obama, the Trajan of our age, had a lot in common with Reagan in terms of how they presented themselves, and how they were able to both provide solid civic leadership skills during their respective decades.

Ronnie's tomfoolery

Ronnie in the Oval Office with some Afghani "freedom fighters."

With 138 officials implicated, the Reagan administration went down as one of the most corrupt in history. The stuff that never stuck to Teflon Ron include:

• Iran-Contra
• Rigging HUD loans, for which 16 members of the White House and the Department of Housing and Urban Development were convicted.
• St. Ronnie's Chief of Staff and Press Secretary were fined and probated for illegal lobbying activities.
• "Sewergate," which funneled EPA money into Republican campaigns. Twenty EPA higher-ups were removed from office.
• Inslaw Affair in which the Department of Justice was accused of pirating software. Never investigated.
• Creating the Office of Public Diplomacy, which was shut down in 1987 for illegally disseminating pro-Contra propaganda and harassing, threatening and slandering journalists who refused to go along.
• Smuggling cocaine into the US to finance his overseas agenda.
• Operation Cyclone in which the American government sold weapons to Islamic terrorists fighting the Soviets, which contributed to the later rise of Al-Qaeda.
• Supporting brutal African dictators including but not limited to Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Hissène Habre of Chad, and Samuel Doe of Liberia.

Reagan was a particular favorite trope of celebrated futurist author J.G. Ballard. A chapter in his 1969 modernist novel The Atrocity Exhibition was entitled Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan, and saw Ballard successfully prosecuted for obscenity in a UK court. The chapter was written as a kind of bizarre public relations study from some crackpot think tank. Ballard once had copies of it distributed to delegates at a Republican conference, who did not seem to realize it was a piece of satire. Considering what would come next, Ballard may have been a bit too early.

One of his more long-lasting actions was to appoint leaders of a conservative bill mill called ALEC to his White House Task Force on Federalism; the ALEC goons developed and implemented state policies that led to lower taxes and less regulation on businesses. Now in the bed of the Republican apparatus, ALEC won support from major corporate and individual donors, who pushed through their policies on the state level. Such policies advocated by ALEC include voter disenfranchisement, for-profit schools, private prisons, payday loan companies, Stand Your Ground bills, and restricting union influence.

Angel of Death

The Gipper promotes the good ol' fashioned American value of smoking. Oh, what's that in your lung?

“”Sick unfortunates.

—What you definitely want the "leader of the free world" to say during a global health crisis.

“”We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.

—Reagan on the issue of national hunger

Reagan arguably helped cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American citizens — if not tens of millions of people worldwide — by vehemently ignoring the growth of a new epidemic that occurred during his time in office: AIDS. In April 1987, one member of the White House even admitted "that President Reagan has never discussed AIDS with Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and has yet to read Koop's six-month-old report, which predicted 180,000 deaths from the disease by 1991."

He allowed Nelson Mandela, for no reason other than irrational hatred of black people, to be targeted as a terrorist threat, and when Congress passed an anti-apartheid bill, he vetoed it, if for no other reason than to please racist donors. And it would not be the only time he would pander to them.

On the topic of South Africa, Reagan was a famous spin-doctor for the apartheid government. Although he never defended apartheid, he constantly denied it even existed. In 1985 he said that the nation had "eliminated the segregation we once had in our country." (They hadn't.) He said "Blacks can own property in heretofore white areas." (They couldn't.) The following year, he claimed "The infamous pass laws have ended." (It hadn't.)

Ronald Reagan with Habré at the White House

He saw it perfectly acceptable to support a plethora of bloodthirsty dictators and terrorists, so long as they were fighting against those evil commies. One of the first major covert actions of the Reagan administration involved providing paramilitary support to Chadian militants led by warlord Hissène Habré in a 1982 coup d'état, to "bloody Gaddafi's nose", as Alexander Haig put it. In May 2016, Habré was found guilty of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people, resulting in his life imprisonment. Other freedom fighters supported by the administration include Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq (against Iran... the irony, it burns of chemical weapons), Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Jonas Savimbi in Angola, General Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala, and the junta in El Salvador. He authorized billions of dollars worth of financial support and armament for Afghanistan which got picked up by a fellow known to be the son of a man named Laden.

This lack of tact led to the budget-cutting of non-military programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, federal education programs, and the EPA. While he protected entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, his administration attempted to purge many people with disabilities from the Social Security disability rolls, which is effectively a cut as well.

Murder — it has many faces and is most ugly when its face is power. Sounds like a typical president.

Ascent to God's side

Shortly after his presidency, Reagan began a long and (as it always is) ugly battle with Alzheimer's disease, and in the last years of his life, made very few public appearances. Upon his death in June 2004, a weeklong period of worldwide mourning occurred. All non-essential activities were curtailed so The People could weep for their fallen idol. Also, any taxes due on income earned (or unearned) during that period were waived. The processions as his open casket was brought around the countryside would often stretch for tens of miles as well-wishers offered St. Reagan one final "Godspeed."

He was canonized upon the instant of his death, by popular acclamation. Republicans were not the only ones to shout out his name at any chance they could. President Obama had a habit of often calling out Reagan for being "so amazing", whatever that means...

WWRD?

Smiles all around!

When Reagan was elected, there was an immediate wave of news articles and magazines asking the hot question, Just how did this amazing man get to be so wonderful? The answer was given as he hires the best people for the job, and gets out of the way! And that legacy is still with us: the idea that a manager doesn't have to really do anything except settle disputes, usually by throwing one or more subordinates to the wolves. It would help if managers from the CEO on down did their fucking jobs, which is to manage and not just "get out of the way."

Let's not forget Reagan's busting of PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization). While Reagan was in favor of the right to organize and bargain collectively, he opposed government worker strikes because it's illegal. Reagan’s dismissal of skilled strikers somewhat unwittingly led to a dramatic decrease in unionized labor power. Workers in the private sector had used the strike as a tool of leverage since World War II. But after Patco, that weapon was largely lost. Reagan’s unprecedented dismissal of skilled public workers encouraged private employers to follow suit. Phelps Dodge and International Paper were among the companies that imitated Reagan by replacing strikers rather than negotiating with them.

Over time, the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan’s mass firing not as a focused effort to stop one rogue union from breaking the law (as Reagan sold it). Rather, it was a blow against unionism itself. Without a counterweight to management power, it's not at all that surprising that upper management and shareholders have taken a larger and larger share of profits—and then used that newfound wealth to lobby for tax policies that let them keep as much of it as possible. Worse yet, they have conned working-class people into believing that the most affluent Americans are job creators right out of an Ayn Rand novel, and the rest of us are just leeching off their genius.

Since Reagan was the proto-neoconservative, anything he did was infallible, and his successors sought to mimic his every move. When you think Reagan, you think of small government, facing down foreign powers and giving the Democrats a drubbing. These are very much things the Republicans are still emphatic about accomplishing. When you think of Lincoln, you think of him freeing the slaves and reuniting a divided country using progressive social change. Not so much on the agenda right now. Reagan just makes a better philosophical touchstone for their immediate goals. This later led to the modern divide in the GOP though, with the whole neo and paleo divide, with the latter group being the self-anointed "Disciples of Reagan", while to the neoconservatives' credit, they have, as of late, proved to be far more reasonable, level-headed, and moderate than their Wacko-bird counterparts, being the far more Reagan-esque ones. Even creepier, the paleocons seem to have this odd Reagan fetish, continually wanting to stroke the Gipper whenever they get the chance. Likely, they do not even remember who in the nine circles of hell Reagan even was. The paleocons rose as reactionaries to the neoconservative policies at the time. Many of those former Reagan voters ended up endorsing, get this, Bill Clinton. That being said, save for maybe some guys down in the Rust Belt, the average supporter of the Ronald would not have voted for the Donald.

Though he generally did not discuss social issues, specifically while serving as president (most likely not to piss off his socially conservative supporters), Reagan, very similar to Barry Goldwater, seemed to be more in favor of things such as abortion and gay rights. Precisely, in regards to the former, his more tolerant stance on the issue is best indicated by the fact that he actually signed pro-choice bills while he served as governor of California. While Reagan is admittedly responsible for bringing the evangelicals into the Republican Party, he had always been aligned with the more libertarian "New Right" that arose during the 1960s, along with individuals such as Goldwater himself and National Review founder William F. Buckley, even going so far as to say "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism." Though the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 took the Conservative Movement rightward, where the word "conservative" came to imply "social conservatism" as opposed to its original meaning in the 1960s. Back then, "conservatism" was less a reactionary fundamentalist dogma and was instead simply a term used to describe their ideological ethos, or "the conservation of Classical Liberalism" - when the Republicans actually wanted small government (not the "small" government they want today), cared about civil liberties, and considered themselves to be the "party of immigration" (New Deal social democrats generally opposed increased immigration, due to being supported by unions and being generally for a welfare state); also, ironically, one major issue that they passionately believed in was the Separation of Church and State. However, after twenty-five years of libertarian-dominance, Reagan and his GOP could do nothing to stop the Religious Right's steady coup to co-opt the party for their own, which would significantly affect specific issues.

But, in contrast to this much-forgotten Republican era of liberalism, it is also to be argued that the world in 1980 was not the same as it is today (like the Soviet Union not existing). Nonetheless, this minor temporal detail has not stopped various Republicans from claiming the mantle of (or being proclaimed as) the Second Coming of Reagan.

It's gotten so bad that Republican strategists believe it's singlehandedly suffocating the party.

Reagan and astrology

Reagan's wife Nancy was obsessed with astrology (apparently the administration's "most closely guarded secret"), and this brand of woo played a large role in the Reagan White House, even affecting the scheduling of the Reykjavik summit between Reagan and Gorbachev. Strangely enough, this doesn't seem to have affected his support from the fundie base one jot or tittle.

Reagan's policies today

Hilariously, if Ronald Reagan were to run today, he would probably be considered a RINO given his willingness to raise the capital gains tax to 28%, refrain from waving an axe at Social Security, be prodded into funding Japanese reparations, pull out of Lebanon rather than 'stay the course,' and engage in diplomacy with the Soviets. He also supported, of all things, limited gun control, an end to the use of torture, and gave amnesty to more than 3 million undocumented immigrants, in addition to signing a pro-choice bill as Governor and setting up a healthcare system in California. Last but not least, like fellow episcopalian conservatives Barry Goldwater, Tucker Carlson, and Ron Paul, he, like most of his early party, was also a rather big fan of separation of church and state, much to the shock of many of today's religious ideologues.

Proud of His Ignorance

“”I never knew anything above Cs.

“”At halftime during its Thanksgiving football game, CBS broadcast an interview with Ronald Reagan in which the President-elect reminisces about his days as a radio sportscaster and recalls his penchant for enhancing events by "making things up."

—Paul Slansky

“”None of us really understand what's going on with all these numbers

—David Stockman

One of the most telling things about Reagan, especially at the time, is just how ignorant he was when compared to other Presidents. Ralph Nader once quipped that he was the first President to own more horses than books, and left-wing authors Mark Green and Gail MacColl wrote two entire books (There He Goes Again in 1983 and Reagan's Reign of Error in 1987) documenting his various mistakes over the course of his time in the public.

Mind you, everybody makes a mistake here or there--and even somebody unusually prone to slip ups wouldn't be a terrible political leader on the condition they were actually interested in the truth, and this is where Reagan's Administration really dropped the ball. On various occasions, they were caught directly lying to the American people, and instead of just admitting a mistake--or even attempting to defend it--they would just openly admit to not caring about how wrong they were. Examples include:

• Reagan cited a non-existent British law which states that a criminal found to be carrying a gun will be tried of first degree murder regardless of crime and executed if found guilty. When it was pointed out this was wrong, Press Secretary Larry Speaks simply said "Well, it's a good story though. It made the point, didn't it?" Speaks responded to another incorrect claim from Reagan by saying "If you tell the same story five times, it's true."
• Reagan mocked then-President Jimmy Carter calling the economy a recession and not a depression, while adding that Reagan's misuse of the term "shows how little he knows." When Reagan's aide Lyn Nofziger was asked about, he said "I think it was Mondale who said that, and he didn't say it the same day [Reagan had said the economy was in a depression]. I think it was the day after, but it's good enough for us."
• Reagan defended his support for an anti-abortion bill by saying "I think the fact that children have been prematurely born even down to three-month stage and have lived to, the record shows, to grow up and be normal human beings, that ought to be enough for all of us." An aide of his later explained no such record existed, and that Reagan knew this.
• When George H.W. Bush's Press Secretary was asked about mistakes Bush had made in a televised debate, he replied "if reporters document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe two hundred people read it."

Reagan would even sometimes make fun of those who were more educated than he was. During the 1980 campaign, he said that "when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary." As if attempting to use words which actually express a situation accurately is something to be made fun of.

That Time Reagan Lied About Telling The Truth

Early on in his career, Reagan would tell a story about the importance of telling the truth: You see, back when he was playing for his high school football team, Reagan scored what would have been the winning touchdown had he not been offside. Reagan then informed the ref about this; it was ruled a penalty and his team lost the game, but nobody was angry because he told the truth.

When Reagan biographer Lou Cannon looked into this, he could only find one game which matched Reagan's description, and his team lost 24–0.

Ronnie the racist?

“”Turns out that God really doesn't have that much of a problem with racism. He doesn't even remember slavery, except in February. Personally, I hate black people, Ruckus. That's why I did everything I could to make their lives miserable. Crack? Me. AIDS? Me. Reaganomics? (chuckles) C'mon. I'm in the name.

—The Boondocks: "The Passion of Reverend Ruckus" Aaron McGruder & Rodney Barnes

One of the most common criticisms of Reagan is that he was a racist, with the evidence usually being his harmful effects on the black community and a handful of specific comments he made. For example, in 2019 audio was leaked of him calling African delegates to the United Nations "monkeys" who are "still uncomfortable wearing shoes." Patti Davis, Reagan's daughter, later noted that she was unable to believe Reagan made the remarks because he never knew the man to have racist tendencies.

However, even giving Reagan the benefit of the doubt, there is notable evidence that Reagan was, at the very least, perfectly fine with buddying around with racists and repeating their rhetoric. Gore Vidal noted in 1968 that Reagan had spent a large chunk of the 1960s campaigning for various segregationists and far-right groups, concluding he was not a friend to the black man. His "welfare queen" rhetoric was infamously racialized and used as a way to promote the stereotype that black people were lazy and using welfare paid for by hard working white people. His 1976 campaign used opposition to forced busing as a way to get supporters of George Wallace to cross over, and his 1980 Presidential Campaign infamously gave a speech on "states rights" "mere miles away from the site where three civil rights workers — one a student participating in Mississippi Freedom Summer and the other two CORE members — were murdered and buried in shallow graves by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964." ("States' Rights" being an infamous dogwhistle used by supporters of racist policies.)

As President, "Reagan began a sustained attack on the government’s civil rights apparatus, opened an assault on affirmative action and social welfare programs, embraced the white racist leaders of then-apartheid South Africa and waged war on a tiny, black Caribbean nation." His policies also lead to an increasing of the racial wealth gap in the United States to levels never seen previously. He also signed mandatory minimums into law, specifically of note is the 100:1 crack-to-cocaine disparity, which many note as being "racially discriminatory" given the significantly harsher punishment for crack, "which was disproportionately consumed by African Americans."

Other highlights include his decision to sign off on a plan which would grant tax-exempt status to segregated universities, which he defended by saying he has always been "unalterably opposed to racial discrimination in any forms." Of course, this is not true given his criticism of Civil Rights legislation causing him to say "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so." The following year, Reagan blamed the decline in quality of public education on schools attempt to comply with desegregation as demanded by courts.

Reagan failed to endear himself to the black community in 1983, when Thomas Ellis, an important figure in the rise of Jessie Helms, was nominated to an international broadcasting boarddespite the fact that "he belongs to an all-white country club, was a recent guest of the government of South Africa (where he has extensive holdings) and served as director of a group that financed research on he genetic inferiority of blacks."

Quotes from (and about) the Great Communicator

• "Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" — racist phone conversation with Richard Nixon.
• "Facts are stupid things." A mangling of John Adams' famous comment, "Facts are stubborn things."
• "All great change in America begins at the dinner table."
• "You can tell a lot about a fella's character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful." — explaining why he liked to have a jar of jelly beans on hand for important meetings.
• "The Sound of Music was on last night." — on why he went unprepared for the 1983 Williamsburg Economic Summit.
• "Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." — on his Bible knowledge.
• “It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.” — on why he didn't leave the profession.
• "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about." — on getting suckered.
• "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
• "Don't be afraid to see what you see."
• "What would this country be without this great land of ours?"
• "Well, I learned a lot . . . I went down [to Latin America] to find out from them and [learn] their views. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries."
• "One last thought - shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx - first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his 'State Socialism' and way before him it was 'benevolent monarchy.'"—Reagan, on the communist fascism of John F. Kennedy.
• "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"—Reagan on the fascism of FDR
• “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”
• "Just remember, for every person who is out of work, there are nine of us with jobs."
• "You know, if I listened to him long enough, I would be convinced that we're in an economic downturn, and that people are homeless, and people are going without food and medical attention, and that we've got to do something about unemployment." - Reagan on Michael Dukakis
• "You expect to see Jim Henson behind a curtain going, 'You moved him too far! Move his arms!'" — Robin Williams on Reagan's character tics.
• "He told me à propos Keynes that it must not be forgotten that he was a homosexual." — The British Ambassador to the US, explaining how Ronnie made his economic decisions.
• "What do I "think" of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think." — Ayn Rand
• "I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard." — Christopher Hitchens
• "You don't bury someone for five days...I thought that maybe they were burying him with spoons." — Lewis Black on Reagan's funeral procession.
• "President Reagan is a man with a very special sense of religion. Reagan sees a proper role for government and a proper role for God. It's very simple: Reagan's government helps the rich, and God helps the rest of us." - Cesar Chavez
• "When you talk to Reagan, you sometimes wonder why it occurred to anyone that he should be president, or even governor. But what you historians have to explained is how so unintellectual a man could have dominated California for eight years, and Washington already for nearly seven." - Henry Kissinger
• "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace." - House Speaker Tip O'Neill
• "He only works three to three and a half hours a day. He doesn't do his homework. He doesn't read his briefing papers. It's sinful that this man is President of the United States." - House Speaker Tip O'Neill
• "Emerging from a particularly credulous Southern California culture, Nancy and Ronald Reagan relied on an astrologer in private and public matters — unknown to the voting public. Some portion of the decision-making that influences the future of our civilization is plainly in the hands of charlatans." - Carl Sagan
• "Reagan doesn't understand numbers. Every time the figures point to trouble, Reagan rebuts them with a personal anecdote." - White House Aide
• "Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.” — James David Barber
• "He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless." — Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father
• "His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year." — Simon Hoggart
• "There are times when you really need him to do some work, and all he wants to do is tell stories about his movie days." — Unnamed White House aide
• "I absolutely believe President Reagan when he says he does not want to establish a state religion--that would require him to attend service." - Daniel Moynihan
• "An Explosion of such incredible ignorance that . . . he is not fit for public office of any kind." - Howard Fast on Reagan's comparison of the Contras to the Founding Fathers of the United States.
• "The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I. Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain." - Peggy Noonan
• "You've got to be careful quoting Reagan because why you do it accurately it's called mudslinging." - Walter Mondale

See also

• George H.W. Bush, his VP who later became President right after; the only time post-term limits that a single party controlled the White House for three straight terms.
• Carnivora — a "nutriceutical" that the makers claim saved Reagan's life. Or something.
• Milton Friedman, one of the founding fathers of Reagan's neoliberal ideology.
• Imperialism
• John F. Kennedy
• Jeane Kirkpatrick, his Ambassador to the United Nations, a hardline neoconservative who defended authoritarian regimes as long as they supported the United States.
• C. Everett Koop
• Nationalism
• Richard Nixon, who paved the way for Reagan's rise.
• Grover Norquist, a rabid hater of taxes and government who started the Reagan Legacy Project with a goal of memorializing Reagan in all 50 states.
• Barack Obama, same charisma, same adulation from partisans, same fundamental misunderstandings of their political legacies.
• Plausible deniability, the only way he managed to avoid so many scandals despite evidence directly implicating him multiple times.
• Reaganism, which he perfected after Nixon pioneered it.
• Red Dawn
• Bernie Sanders, whose policies read like a direct repudiation of Reaganism.
• The "Iron Lady", his British counterpart.
• Trees cause pollution
• Donald Trump - The "Party of Reagan" was always going to become the "Party of Trump." The GOP did not "lose their way," they reached their destination.
• Wingnut, many of which he empowered or influenced.

External links

• Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave to Lead GOP - All hail!
• He also comes in supercomputer format.
• The quotes that make nuclear historians shudder.
• How the Bible of Reagan shapes Republican politics
• See the Wikipedia article on October Surprise conspiracy theory.

References

Presidents of the United States

v - t - e

Washington (I) - J. Adams (Fed.) - Jefferson (Dem-Rep) - Madison (Dem-Rep) - Monroe (Dem-Rep) - J.Q. Adams (Dem-Rep) - Jackson (D) - Van Buren (D) - W.H. Harrison (Whig) - Tyler (Whig) - Polk (D) - Taylor (Whig) - Fillmore (Whig) - Pierce (D) - Buchanan (D) - Lincoln (R) - A. Johnson (D*) - Grant (R) - Hayes (R) - Garfield (R) - Arthur (R) - Cleveland (D) - B. Harrison (R) - Cleveland (D) again - McKinley (R) - T. Roosevelt (R) - Taft (R) - Wilson (D) - Harding (R) - Coolidge (R) - Hoover (R) - F.D. Roosevelt (D) - Truman (D) - Eisenhower (R) - Kennedy (D) - L.B. Johnson (D) - Nixon (R) - Ford (R) - Carter (D) - Reagan (R) - G.H.W. Bush (R) - Clinton (D) - G.W. Bush (R) - Obama (D) - Trump (R) - Biden (D) (incumbent)
*Ran for VP on the "National Union" ticket together with Lincoln but was otherwise a lifelong Democrat