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Rant on Ronnie
Jun. 8th, 2004 07:28 amSo. I am cheerful because I finished the program (all hail Aldus PageMaker) and the hand-drawn cover for the program, for the 8th grade Promotion Ceremony tomorrow. And I am pleased with it. However, that's not why I'm trying to write in here before going to work.
Last night, on a forum where I use the same username as this place, I ended up posting a rant on Reagan, because I actually encounter (so to speak, electronically or whatever) not only liberals but libertarians and the occasional Republican there. I was glad to write it, and it can stand as my eulogy for that jackass.
-------------------------------------
Well, I'll say my own ranting words about Reagan. And no, I don't care to cut him any slack at all just because he died. Everybody dies. And I don't believe in "nil nisi bonum". Fuck that. If someone was politically rancid and horrible and used American tax dollars (which ordinarily many writers in this particular forum are so very concerned to preserve in their own pockets) to fund TERRORISTS (real ones, actual terrorists, who received a-b-c terrorist training from ANOTHER tax-funded American initiative, a training booklet put out by the CIA) in this hemisphere... then in my book, there is nothing good to say about him after his death. There are a few political deaths I won't mind hearing news of (Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger come to mind... unless I missed Kissinger's... but I don't think I did).
I was a freshman in high school when Reagan won the election against Carter. I remember being shocked and surprised. It was the first time I realized how shortsighted and shallowly influenced the American electorate could be. I wore black, the next day, to school.
And I remember clearly the John Hinkley (sp?) assassination attempt, too -- the news was announced over the loudspeaker in the field house and dozens of kids cheered and whistled, until the correction came out that he was still alive, when the cheers changed to disappointed catcalls. Why? Half of my high school was black, and students were all too well aware of the lying nature of "Reaganomics" and the opening salvos of the federal war on welfare. Trickle down, my ass.
For me, though, it was his revolting projection of his Cold War fantasies, left over from the McCarthy period, now being defrosted and put into a political microwave, reheated into constant, unremitting interventions into "hot wars" in "Our Back Yard". The Monroe Doctrine updated for the 1980s. Mine harbors. Support Contras (with drug money funneled through Iran, no less). Ignore any UN or World Court decisions or votes which condemn your actions. Support dictatorships from El Salvador to South Africa (remember "Constructive Engagement"?) just because any enemy of communism is a friend of the USA.
That's what makes him hateworthy, and the fact that he's dead doesn't change that. I won't laud him. I see nothing to laud. The "Great Communicator", FAUGH. All I can think of when I hear that is that insane press conference when he stuck up charts and blurry photos claiming that Cubans in Grenada were building military landing strips for bombers which could attack the US -- with nuclear bombs, no doubt. And used that CRAP to justify overthrowing a government and murdering hundreds of Grenadans. I met a veteran of Grenada, in grad school, a Marine. He shot a ten year old dead, because he thought the boy had a grenade. Uh huh. Turned out to be some piece of fruit. He still had nightmares about it.
And I knew a right wing FREAK at my own college -- Northwestern University -- who became famous for 15 minutes in 1985 or so, Frank Wohl, who had a hard briefcase with a bumper sticker saying "I'd rather be killing Commies" on it. It would be laughable, except that Wohl actually meant it, and not only meant it, DID it -- he went to Honduras and traveled with some Contras and helped them kill Sandinista soldiers. He photographed them kidnap a Sandinista soldier, an older man with a white beard, force him to dig his own grave, and then cut his throat, so there wouldn't be the sound of a shot. And Wohl sold the photos to either Time or Newsweek. The rumors on campus were that he got $50,000 for it, and intended to start his own arms trade business, on a small scale.
That attitude and those politics -- those are Reagan to me. I don't want to hear about his kindly nature or his penchant for fucking jelly bellies. I'm glad he's dead and I wish people would stop whitewashing his career and tell the damn TRUTH about him.
Anyone in the Bay Area who agrees with me should feel free to stop by my brother-in-law's place this weekend, where we're having a combined "We're Dancing On Your Grave, Ronald Reagan*" and Greens fundraising party. Write me via my profile (or via this entry, or via e-mail) for details.
Okay. I know this was a rant. But it was MY rant, and my personal, first person feelings and experiences of Reagan. I stand by it. Feel free to flame away.
Maeve66
*Yeah, that event name has been bowdlerized a bit.
Last night, on a forum where I use the same username as this place, I ended up posting a rant on Reagan, because I actually encounter (so to speak, electronically or whatever) not only liberals but libertarians and the occasional Republican there. I was glad to write it, and it can stand as my eulogy for that jackass.
-------------------------------------
Well, I'll say my own ranting words about Reagan. And no, I don't care to cut him any slack at all just because he died. Everybody dies. And I don't believe in "nil nisi bonum". Fuck that. If someone was politically rancid and horrible and used American tax dollars (which ordinarily many writers in this particular forum are so very concerned to preserve in their own pockets) to fund TERRORISTS (real ones, actual terrorists, who received a-b-c terrorist training from ANOTHER tax-funded American initiative, a training booklet put out by the CIA) in this hemisphere... then in my book, there is nothing good to say about him after his death. There are a few political deaths I won't mind hearing news of (Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger come to mind... unless I missed Kissinger's... but I don't think I did).
I was a freshman in high school when Reagan won the election against Carter. I remember being shocked and surprised. It was the first time I realized how shortsighted and shallowly influenced the American electorate could be. I wore black, the next day, to school.
And I remember clearly the John Hinkley (sp?) assassination attempt, too -- the news was announced over the loudspeaker in the field house and dozens of kids cheered and whistled, until the correction came out that he was still alive, when the cheers changed to disappointed catcalls. Why? Half of my high school was black, and students were all too well aware of the lying nature of "Reaganomics" and the opening salvos of the federal war on welfare. Trickle down, my ass.
For me, though, it was his revolting projection of his Cold War fantasies, left over from the McCarthy period, now being defrosted and put into a political microwave, reheated into constant, unremitting interventions into "hot wars" in "Our Back Yard". The Monroe Doctrine updated for the 1980s. Mine harbors. Support Contras (with drug money funneled through Iran, no less). Ignore any UN or World Court decisions or votes which condemn your actions. Support dictatorships from El Salvador to South Africa (remember "Constructive Engagement"?) just because any enemy of communism is a friend of the USA.
That's what makes him hateworthy, and the fact that he's dead doesn't change that. I won't laud him. I see nothing to laud. The "Great Communicator", FAUGH. All I can think of when I hear that is that insane press conference when he stuck up charts and blurry photos claiming that Cubans in Grenada were building military landing strips for bombers which could attack the US -- with nuclear bombs, no doubt. And used that CRAP to justify overthrowing a government and murdering hundreds of Grenadans. I met a veteran of Grenada, in grad school, a Marine. He shot a ten year old dead, because he thought the boy had a grenade. Uh huh. Turned out to be some piece of fruit. He still had nightmares about it.
And I knew a right wing FREAK at my own college -- Northwestern University -- who became famous for 15 minutes in 1985 or so, Frank Wohl, who had a hard briefcase with a bumper sticker saying "I'd rather be killing Commies" on it. It would be laughable, except that Wohl actually meant it, and not only meant it, DID it -- he went to Honduras and traveled with some Contras and helped them kill Sandinista soldiers. He photographed them kidnap a Sandinista soldier, an older man with a white beard, force him to dig his own grave, and then cut his throat, so there wouldn't be the sound of a shot. And Wohl sold the photos to either Time or Newsweek. The rumors on campus were that he got $50,000 for it, and intended to start his own arms trade business, on a small scale.
That attitude and those politics -- those are Reagan to me. I don't want to hear about his kindly nature or his penchant for fucking jelly bellies. I'm glad he's dead and I wish people would stop whitewashing his career and tell the damn TRUTH about him.
Anyone in the Bay Area who agrees with me should feel free to stop by my brother-in-law's place this weekend, where we're having a combined "We're Dancing On Your Grave, Ronald Reagan*" and Greens fundraising party. Write me via my profile (or via this entry, or via e-mail) for details.
Okay. I know this was a rant. But it was MY rant, and my personal, first person feelings and experiences of Reagan. I stand by it. Feel free to flame away.
Maeve66
*Yeah, that event name has been bowdlerized a bit.
