Is it coincidental that both Reagan and Thatcher had dementia?

[calimary]

5. I found it karmic and MOST satisfying when I read an article about his fading days

Last edited Wed Apr 10, 2013, 03:23 AM - Edit history (1)

in comfort (of course) at home. There was a passage detailing reagan seated in an easy chair, in one corner of a dark little library-like "office" room at home in Bel-Air, with the curtains closed, blanket draped over him, Nancy fussing over him as usual, and aides coming and going. Of course his Secret Service detail was close by. There was a description of a snow globe with the White House in it, on one of the shelves among the memorabilia in the room. And at one point he was described as looking at it (or somebody showing it to him) and saying "does that have something to do with me?"

Gotta admit - I found that EXQUISITELY satisfying in a karmic kind of way. Whether you admired or despised him (count me among the latter) you have to admit he had one helluva great life. Movie star, TV star, SAG president, commercial spokesman (hell, GE BUILT his fancy all-electric Pacific Palisades home for him - in which he did a lot of commercials as a GE spokesman), nationwide radio commentator, fawning rich people crawling all over him and showering him with their support and sponsorship, California governor, President of the US for two terms, fancy ranch in Santa Barbara, fancy home in Bel-Air that his rich friends bought for him, etc etc etc. What a life! An amazing life in anybody's book. A life ANYONE would be proud to have lived. Rich, famous, popular, protected, fawned over, cleaned up after, able to sell and shill and smooth-talk with the best of 'em, downright worshipped by far too many. I STILL burn with hatred for this bastard even as I write this.

And in the end, it was all taken from him. All his memories. All gone. GONE! He lived long enough to lose it ALL. All the King's horses and all the King's men. That big-ass fancy-ass hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars' worth of presidential library with a whole fucking Oval Office replica AND an Air Force One in it, and a BIG slab of the Berlin Wall, surrounded by hot-'n'-cold-running sycophants 24 hours a day, and the statues of him and the buildings and roads and schools and monuments named after him, and the photos of him with Gorbachev and Thatcher and every other world leader AND fabulous awards and honors from Queen Elizabeth and the Pope, and a gravesite of elegance and splendor and opulence and 24-hour guards - none of which he ever had to pay for. And he was ultimately robbed of it ALL. Unable to remember ANY of it. To have lived that kind of life - at the VERY VERY VERY TOP of the human ziggurat, and he was unable to remember ANY of it. It was all wiped away. In the end, none of it existed for him anymore. Or meant a THING. Like it never even happened. It was all taken away from him while he sat there, increasingly mindless, helpless, and drooling. And - HORROR OF HORRORS!!!! OUT of the spotlight!!!!! Fade to black. It ended in NOTHINGNESS. While he was still alive to "see" it, more or less. ALL of it taken away, leaving him a pathetic irrelevant helpless shell.

Miserably small, and VERY cold comfort, but somehow I found it beautifully fitting and profoundly well-deserved in a karmic sense. How appropriate that it should end that way for him.