June 11, 2004 6:22 AM

Can we please get a grip on reality??

Over the past few days, I've been listening to and reading about people who are doing everything short of nominating Ronald Reagan for sainthood. To be honest, I am quite disturbed by this trend. It's as if the country has suddenly found itself in thrall to a mass willing suspension of disbelief. Do these people who are now worshipping at the altar of Ronald Wilson Reagan really understand who the man was and what he stood for? Or have they simply decided to ignore all of the messy and inconvenient little realities?

While watching CNN yesterday morning, I watched an interview with a couple from Raleigh, North Carolina. The woman spoke about what a great American Reagan was, and, since he was such a moral and upstanding person, that she could hold him up as an example to her children. I almost choked on my tea when I heard that one.

Moral and upstanding? Wasn't Reagan the same man who knowingly broke the law in trading arms for hostages, and then lied directly to the American people about it- in a nationally-televised speech from the Oval Office? Wasn't he the same President who supported apartheid? Who backed Saddam Hussein? Who was virulently anti-labor? Who was so strongly anti-environment that he once said that environmentalists wouldn't stop until the White House "looked like a bird's nest"? Whose tax cuts primarily benefitted wealthy Republicans?

It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

- Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan was the same President who consistently managed to oversimplify complex issues into stories that he sold to a public desperate for simple solutions. For a man who spent so much of his life on movies sets, becoming President simply meant taking his act onto another stage. He may have been many things, but a shining beacon of morality he wasn't. People need to stop lionizing the man and WAKE UP AND SMELL THE KITTY LITTER. Reagan was not a great President, nor even a great politician. He was as craven, manipulative, and dishonest as any President; he just disarmed people with a winning smile and a quick joke. Most Americans have chosen to ignore that reality.

Ronald Reagan did have one gift that Americans adored- and justifiably so. He had a way of making the impossible seem possible. He was so clearly at ease in the bully pulpit of the Presidency that everything he did and said seemed genuine- even when he and his minions were breaking the law they were sworn to uphold. His particular gift was in tellilng Americans what they wanted to hear and making them feel good about themselves, regardless of how dire the circumstances may have been.

Yes, he may have been "The Great Communicator", but the Teflon President was not the saint that so many Americans seem to be remembering him as. Far from it.

I've taken a lot of heat from Conservatives for stating what clearly seems a very unpopular opinion of Ronald Reagan. I make no apologies for feeling as I do. I am merely being honest about what I see as a mass national delusion. You don't have to like it, you don't even have to read it. I don't expect to be universally loved, but I do have to be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning. I'm simply being honest. Deal with it.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on June 11, 2004 6:22 AM.

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