The Burning Legacy of Ronald Reagan

[acmavm]

Funeral Games
By CHRIS FLOYD

http://www.counterpunch.com/floyd06112004.html

Some cynics say that Heaven's newest sunbeam, Ronald Reagan, was called "The Great Communicator" because he delivered his innumerable lies in words of one syllable. But this is just a typically vicious liberal canard.

For Reagan truly was a great communicator, though not with words - or with facts, which he once called "stupid things." No, his genius lay in the manipulation of symbols to convey powerful messages that could no longer be voiced openly in polite society - messages of hate, envy, fear and violence.

Reagan officially launched his successful 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia - not the Quaker-founded "city of brotherly love" in Pennsylvania, but a small town in the piney swamps of Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers had been brutally murdered by local officials in 1964 for the heinous crime of registering black people to vote. This was the famous "Mississippi Burning" case, a stark symbol of the era of violent race-hatred and government-sanctioned oppression. The decades-long struggle to bring full constitutional liberty into this system was fiercely resisted under the rubric of "states' rights" - a codeword for the preservation of white privilege and black subjugation. Every Southerner raised in that system (such as yours truly) understood this secret language of public bigots.


<snip>

In 1980, candidate Reagan and his running mate, Bush I, committed treason by bargaining with Iran's extremist mullahs to prevent the release of American hostages before the election: a dirty deal confirmed by, among others, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who as president of Iran in 1980 had full knowledge of the negotiations, and former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin. At the request of Congressional investigators probing the Iran-Contra conspiracy, Stepashin, then head of the Supreme Soviet's Defense and Security Committee, carried out an extensive review of Kremlin intelligence files and sent Congress a remarkably detailed report on the Reagan-Khomeini pre-election tryst. All of this evidence, along with testimony from other direct participants in the covert op, was ultimately whitewashed by the timorous - or strong-armed - Congressional investigators. Again, the indispensible Robert Parry has the full story at Consortiumnews.com.

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[papau]

1. If the treasonous Reagan goes on our money, should Benedict Arnold also?

????

:-)

[Free_Thinker]

2. Bitburg

Ronald the Bonzo saluted the SS pigs in Bitburg cemetary, 'nuff said.

[donhakman]

3. .

[Martin Eden]

4. Another Reagan legacy: perception supplants reality

What the "Great Communicator" communicated were platitudes that made Americans feel better about themselves and their country. Well, not all Americans, but enough to account for the current fuss over his passing. Many people liked the man, but this popularity essentially blinded the public to the negative consequences of his policies.

Rather than go into those policies here, I call attention to how patriotism and the alleged promotion of American values provided cover for policies that tripled the national debt, increased the disparity between rich and poor, and supported tyrants and terrorists who killed thousands of innocent people in Latin America and elsewhere.

The most lasting legacy of the Reagan administration is how perception has supplanated reality -- a disconnect between how the public perceives our leaders and the true effects of their policies. A degree of disconnect has always been there, but Reagan's public persona and upbeat articulation of American values established an enduring and undeserving legitimacy for a conservative agenda that benefits a few at the top, fosters intolerance and backdoor racism among many who identify themselves as Christians, and implements a foreign policy that gives rise to anti-Americanism among third world populations that have been so adversely affected.

The vast majority of U.S. citizens were ill-served by Reagan's policies, and even less so by the current "conservative" administration. W. Bush is without a doubt part of the Reagan/Bush legacy. The effects of his policies are decidedly un-Christian, yet his biggest support comes from the Christian right. The erosion of Constitutional safeguards and the right wing assault on poltical dissent represent the gravest danger to American values since McCarthyism, yet those who proclaim their patriotism and proudly wave flags are the most vociferous enablers of that erosion.

Perception and reality are farther apart than ever. This is the most lasting legacy of the man for whom so many tears have just been shed, and because of whom so many tears and so much blood continues to be shed.

[Skittles]

5. may I remind everyone Nancy was with him all the way

she was his biggest influence; I am sickened by all this newfound compassion for her - please save it for their victims.