Ronald Reagan died today. This is CNN’s write-up. I was born the year Reagan was reelected and so don’t remember much about his Presidency; my only exposure to him has been through history books and retrospective articles. Honestly, I don’t think I liked him and his policies very much, but hope that his passing was peaceful, nonetheless. Alzheimer’s is a difficult disease to cope with for both family members and medical staff; I wish no ill on any of them.
Update: I addressed the issue of whether or not this post was meant as hagiography in the comments section. That aside, I found a couple of good pieces on the pieces of Reagan’s legacy you’re likely not to hear about in the next few days: “Reagan’s Liberal Legacy” by Joshua Green from the Washington Monthly — which has been linked to by a few others, as well — and, most especially, “Ronald Reagan 1911-2004” by Steve Gilliard from his blog..
Bla bla bla wish them no ill…ok so I am only four years older than you, but we can both read: have you already forgotten what this man DID? He wasn’t just a not-so-great president, or someone with whom you and I disagree. He actively and purposefully harmed and hurt and discriminated and KILLED. Just because he didn’t get deposed, didn’t lose the war, didn’t shoot himself in a bunker but rather lived to be 93 and ill–that does NOT change the horrible, horrible things this man did ON PURPOSE OUT OF HATRED AND CRIMINAL INDIFFERENCE. The people killed through his negligence and homophobia during the AIDS crisis are just the tip of the iceberg. The very tip.
It’s infuriating, but predictable, that the news networks are kissing this monster’s coffin. But to “tune in” to Alas and other liberal commentary sources and see the bastard being eulogized like he wasn’t all that bad after all…ridiculous.
I think you misunderstand me, Jasper.
I’m fully aware of what Reagan did, and have no respect for him. This does not mean, though, not even for a minute, that I wish that he’d died horribly while raving madly or in a great deal of pain. I wish that Reagan had been punished for the things he did, but I have no desire for him to have died badly.
What I wrote was not an attempt to eulogize him as though he wasn’t all that bad afterall, nor was it an attempt to kiss his coffin. I’m sorry that you feel my comments weren’t harsh enough, but I refuse to accept that because someone is a monster they shouldn’t be afforded a certain level of respect: the wish that their passing from this world was not painful or frightening. He was in many ways a terrible person, but I cannot wish that even disease and time had made his death torturous.
I agree. I wish no ill to the family, and think the way he died was sad.
Neither do I belive he was a monster, though I disagree strongly with his politics and feel he did the country more harm then good.
Steve ( Steve Gilliard’s News Blog, thank yoiu for the link) ended his blog with this statement, and as I can’t say it better, I’ll let him say it for me:
“Reagan’s legacy is a dark one, one of backing murderers and robbing America of a fairer future. It wasn’t that he was an evil man, or a bad one. It is what he believed and what he supported caused so much pain and misery for so many people, who had to live with the results of his policies.”
Jasper sounds so full of hate there isn’t any room left for reason. In many ways Reagan was a giant among mere men and the fact you think he is a “monster” clearly shows the pitiful state of the educational system. Pathetic.
Larry,
I may not have agreed with what Jasper had to say, but your comments were rude and are not welcome at this site. Nothing Jasper said was enough to justify your accusing him of being beyond reason or your implying that he is stupid, either as a result of his education or of his unwillingness to see what you consider to be Reagan’s merits.
There is plenty in Reagan’s legacy to provoke anger, as the links I posted in my update — particularly Mr. Gilliard’s write-up — ably showed. While I may not have agreed with the vehemence of Jasper’s comment, I do not think that he is either wildly off-base or beyond reasonable discourse.
All of us — Ampersand, bean, myself, and lucia — want to make Alas a place where people can feel comfortable expressing their opinions without fear of insult or attack. Please, be more considerate when commenting on this site in the future.
I have to agree with Jasper. It gets my panties in a right bunch (figuratively speaking, of course, I’m not a crossdresser myself,) when a war criminal of Reagan’s magnitude dies peacefully in their own beds. I felt the same way about Pol Pot. It’s disgusting that men like them are allowed to die free.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s not hatred, but a sense of justice that makes me feel this way. That man was a party to millions of deaths, among other things. He did nothing but piss on the weak his whole life.
The question is, if he had died horribly and painfully, would this have undone any of the harm he did? No; so why not wish him a peaceful passing to spare his loved ones pain?
I’m not so sure I’d call Reagan in particular a war criminal. I don’t like him, and think what his policies toward latin America were repugnant, but they don’t seem to really be that far removed from American policy toward Latin America since Truman.
The original post was hardly hagiographic. But this issue is a tough one. I’m torn–I suppose that many on this side of the political spectrum are torn–between (a) the desire to say something nice about an apparently nice man who just died after a horrible illness and (b) the (seeming, at least) obligation to point out–especially against the backdrop of right-wing attempts at canonization–that the man was a bad–perhaps a very bad–president.
What to do? I don’t know.
Take Jasper’s comments (“harmed and hurt and discriminated and killed”) one at a time, and see if any of the nation’s presidents pass the test.
“Discriminated” pretty much rules out everyone fron Washington to Franklin Roosevelt. Truman, who desegregated the Army, might pass. Lyndon Johnson, who pushed through the civil rights legislation, might pass.
“Killed” rules out all of the wartime presidents, so Lincoln, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, the elder Bush, and the younger Bush all drop off the list. (The other wartime presidents failed the discrimination test.) Between the Bay of Pigs fiasco, his support of the Diem coup in Vietnam, and his commitment to the Vietnam War, all squeezed into less than three years, Kennedy probably set the modern presidential record for boneheaded foreign policy.
“Harmed” and “hurt” involve more subtle value judgments, but the only contenders left are Ford, Carter, and Clinton. Clinton’s tacit support for Saddam Hussein and his general moral character rule him out, so taking Jasper literally, the only two relatively clean presidents are Ford and Carter. And 100 years from now, historians are going to rank Reagan higher than both of them, because from that distance, AIDS and Iran-Contra are going to be forgotten (have you gotten worked up about Teapot Dome or the influenza epidemic of 1919 lately?), and the liberation of the Soviet Union and its satellites will be remembered.
I’m beginning to wonder if being unable to see the forest for the trees is an ailment that results from a flaw on the “Y” chromosome, especially after reading Mr. Laquedem’s comment.
Yes, take my comments one by one, and literally and you see what a fool I clearly am! Also, if you take a clock piece-by-piece you will see what a useless instrument that silly thing is.
And I am sure that the AIDS pandemic is indeed comparable to the influenza epidemic of 1918 if you are a bloated white male politico. If you’re a kid in the Congo, a queer person anywhere, or a poor American woman of color, things look a little bit different.
Razor, we should forgive it because it’s the status quo? We should shrug and let them canonize a monster becuase his crimes were on par with other monsters?
And who said anything about dying horribly and painfully? Free, he died free, that’s the problem.
I dislike Ronald Reagan intensely. If I could go back in time to vote against him in any of his elections, I would do so immediately and with great glee.
That having been said, I actually do believe that there is a time for “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” and if the occasion of a death isn’t that time, I don’t know what is.
I don’t say this because Reagan was such a great guy, but because I believe that there are minimum standards of decency, and this meets those standards. ‘Respect for the dead’ meets those standards . . . not ‘respect forever,’ but for a little bit.
After Paul Wellstone’s death, there were those on the right who laughed and joked about it . . . there were prominent Right Wing bloggers who discussed, seriously, the possibility that it ‘was a good thing’ he was dead. After all, they disagreed with him politically, so why not be glad he’s dead?
The answer is: because that’s a horrible, inhuman thing to do. No matter who it is. No matter how much you disagree with him. Period. It’s true for us. It’s true for them.
It’s like the Geneva Conventions. We don’t just follow them because ‘their’ troops deserve to be treated well, we follow them because ‘our’ troops deserve to be treated well . . . but, more to the point, everyone, ours or theirs, troops or not, deserves to be treated well.
Whenever they execute a condemned prisioner, and I see the crowds outside the prison, cheering for his death, laughing, joking, chanting ‘burn, burn, burn,’ I always think of his parents, and how it must feel to see someone you love die . . . and to hear others cheer it on.
Wishing for Reagan to have had a peaceful passing is hardly hagiographic, it’s just simple compassion. Saying “I didn’t like him and his policies very much, but I won’t get into it here,” isn’t “whitewashing” Reagan’s life, it’s just “not attacking for 15 motherfucking minutes because he was human too, and has people who loved him.”
I’m not saying that we don’t need to fight to make sure his presidency is remembered accurately, I’m not saying Reagan gets a free pass forever, but to attack PDP for such a human thing as this simple courtesy seems to prove Nietzsche more right than I am comfortable with.
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you.”
—Myca
Actually, I think this post, by August J. Pollack strikes just about the right note. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he makes clear both:
A) He didn’t like Reagan or his policies.
and
B) He hopes that Reagan’s family isn’t suffering too much, and that Reagan himself passed peacefully.
That’s not too much to ask of anyone, I think.
De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum which Myca seems to be advocating is difficult to do when we are talking about a person whose decisions and policies led directly to many deaths. Reagan’s Latin America policy was largely a continuation of others’ true; but it was also a lot more extreme. I find it weird that people think it is polite to suddenly pretend a person was better than they were, because they are dead. No one here would do that with a foreigner, by the way. All of a sudden it woudl not apply. Imagine for a moment that we heard that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Do you think anyone would tell us “don’t mention anything bad he did; it’s poor taste after all, the man’s dead, spare his family”? It would rightly be seen as grotesque to do that.
There are many Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, and other Central Americans who remember horrible, horrible things happening in their countries because of Reagan’s policies. I am sure they don’t appreciate the idea that their memories are in poor taste.
There are also many people who died of AIDS because Reagan chose to ignore the epidemic, arguably because he felt it was God’s justice or something like that.
For those two major things alone I don’t see why he deserves a fictional obit because of the idea of “don’t speak ill of the dead.”
If I heard that OBL was dead, my first thought would be something along the lines of “OK, it’s over now. He’ll never hurt anyone again. Maybe now we can get on with life.” I’ve never understood the need to dance on someone’s grave for the evil they committed during their lifetime, and it just squicks me somehow.
Remembering people’s actual deeds is not the same as saying “Oh goody, he’s dead.” It is about being honest. I am not HAPPY that Reagan finally went. Nor, to be really brutally honest, am I sad. But I do not like sugar coated obits about public figures that have a public record, that’s all. What I am saying is we sugar coat our own leaders because of this “de mortuis…” thing but we would not have such elevated taste if it were an official enemy. I don’t think there’s any use in politely pretending some sinner was a saint, just because they are now dead.
I didn’t say anything about forgiving or canonizing Reagan for following the status quo. And reading more about him, Reagan’s foreign policy was particularly repugnant. But we shouldn’t pretend that America’s problem with Central America is Reagan and Reagan alone.
I don’t know what I want to say about this. It’s just that American policy toward Latin America is so atrocious, has been so atrocious for so long, and I’d hate to think that we’d just blame Reagan and leave it at that.
For Myca and others, I don’t know Reagan as a person, nor, do I think, do anyone else posting at this blog. All I can judge Reagan by are his policies, and his policies, from teargassing protestors as governor of California, to willful negligence of the AIDS epidemic, and many others are atrocious. And I don’t see why I should pretend they’re not just because he’s dead.
Uh, Isaac….I just read a book about the 1918 flu epidemic, which was overshadowed by WW I.
If an epidemic of similar size hit the United States now, 1.5 million people would die from the disease within three or four months.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people who think Reagan was a great president. There are also a lot of people who believe Coke and Pepsi have tangible differences.
I’m just going to let this pass, and by next week most people will have forgotten all about it. Oh, and get ready to buy Clinton’s autobiography.
A final solute to a visionary who’s policies helped tear down the wall; a president that took the US from a pathetic, nearly defeated country to a proud, benevolent superpower standing astride the world; a man who set forth policies that would turn around our economy and made the prosperity of the 80’s and 90’s possible; and as a young Marine, my commander and chief.
Hm… “benevolent” isn’t the first word that comes to mind when thinking of the United States’ foreign policy, or indeed anything the U.S. government has done in its entire history, but…
*shrugs*
I can hardly call someone remiss for not wishing pain and suffering on another person, hough he might have been the cause of pain and suffering for others. I don’t think it’s really anyone’s *duty* to be an asshole, although certainly it’s sometimes a person’s *right*…
I didn’t say for one minute that anyone ought to pretend they like Ronald Reagan, or that his policies were less than abhorrent. In fact, I specifically mentioned that making sure history remembered him accurately is important, and that continuing the fight against his policies is important. I’m just saying that there’s nothing wrong with hoping that his passing was quick and clean.
What bothers me is that guys like ‘Jasper Lily’ and ‘C Bryan Lavigne’ seem to be using a litmus test when talking about Ronald Reagan where if you’re insufficiently vicious, somehow you’re whitewashing his regime. Well, I don’t wish a painful, fear-filled death on anyone at all, no matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done. That’s part of why I oppose the death penalty absolutely. We don’t need to pretend we’re sorry about bad people dying, but we can just remain quiet for a little bit. I guess I just believe that the least we can do is ‘not wave our torches and pitchforks and chant ‘burn, burn, burn.’ I mean, jesus, guys, that’s Fred Phelps territory . . . and Phelps believes he’s justified just as much as we do.
No one here would do that with a foreigner, by the way.
That’s not true. Don’t make unfounded assumptions me because I’m an American.
—Myca
Larry – the majority of your comments would be better directed at Bill Clinton – Bush I’s recession intervened.
I did not benefit one iota from the 80s; my hometown of Pittsburgh was in an economic shambles during the Reagan years. My father’s business went from prospering in the late 1970s and early 1980s to hemorraging money in the mid-to-late 1980s when he sold it.
Portland, and Oregon in general, did not benefit from the 1980s. Its glory days were the go-go high tech 1990s, presided over by William Jefferson Clinton.
In both my hometown and my adopted hometown, the 1980s were a decade of decay, or as the sports euphenism goes, “rebuilding years.”
Aaron,
Maybe the CIA put LSD into our water supply and it was all a hallucination? I guess it was just one giant mass illusion that inflation was finally brought under control, that interest rates dropped to a decent level, that 20 million jobs were created, that unemployment dropped to historically low levels, that tax cuts fueled the investment that created jobs all while fighting the cold war. Did every city or community benefit equally? No, there are always exceptions. Occasionally a heavy smoker will live a long healthy life, but that exception doesn’t invalidate the rule. Clinton? He stood on the shoulders of giant named Ronald Reagan.
Larry, what about the brave East Germans who stood up to their Communist oppressors? What about Gorbachev, who’s wise policies led to reforms, such as his decision not to send any Soviet troops to quell the satellite states, turning, for instance, the Czech Violet Revolution from a potential bloodbath into an entirely peaceful transition of power. Do these people not have more of a stake in bringing down the Iron Curtain than a guy who sold long-range missiles to Iran?
Raznor, Well I am sure you know more than the major players at the time. Maybe you could send Thatcher and Gorbachev your sources on the “real” inside scoop:
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:
“President Reagan was one of my closest political and dearest personal friends. He will be missed not only by those who knew him, and not only by the nation that he served so proudly and loved so deeply, but also by millions of men and women who live in freedom today because of the policies he pursued. Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the Cold War for liberty, and he did it without a shot being fired. To have achieved so much against so many odds and with such humour and humanity made Ronald Reagan a truly great American hero.”
Gorbachev:
“I would say that Reagan could be called one of the great presidents of the USA. It’s precisely because he made a huge contribution, to beginning the end of the Cold War… It was under Reagan that we signed the treaty eliminating short and intermediate-range missiles. That was a major first step. After all, at the time we were heading towards the brink of a nuclear disaster.”
“I don’t know whether we would have been able to agree and to insist on the implementation of our agreements with a different person at the helm of American government,”
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl:
“His [Reagan’s] consistent championing of freedom contributed decisively to overcoming the division of Europe and Germany. We Germans have much to thank Ronald Reagan for.”
“Ronald Reagan was a man who achieved great things for his country,” Kohl said. “He was a stroke of luck for the world, especially for Europe.”
Former Lithuanian parliamentary Speaker Vytautas Landsbergis: “A man died who believed in freedom and changed the world. This is President Ronald Reagan, to whom Lithuania is grateful and will remain grateful for his firm resistance to the Evil Empire, giving us an opportunity for us to regain our freedom and return to democracy.”
Gennady Gerasimov, who was the top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s: “Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal”
Myca, once again, I have never expressed a regret that Reagan didn’t die a “painful, fear-filled death,” nor will I ever wish such a death on a person. And I don’t think anyone else has here either. What I take issue with is the fact that he died in his own bed, a free man. I’m not concerned with his death, I’m concerned with his life before he died.
If you acknoweldge the man’s crimes you should be abhorred that he didn’t spend the last 20 years of his life in a dark hole in some grimy prison in South America. All this wishing peace on his family and hoping he died quietly is just glossing over the truth: that no matter how painful and horrible his death actually was, he got outta life blessed. Lot’s of people die painfully every day, odds are that at least one person who has posted to this thread will die such a death, but not everyone commits countless atrocities without ever being held accountable for a single one.
Doh! I forgot to close that bold tag.
“Clinton’s tacit support for Saddam Hussein and his general moral character rule him out,”
I’ve been avoiding this debate, but I have to point out: Reagan was a strong supporter of Hussain. Clinton, in contrast, was anti-Hussein.
From Andrew Sullivan’s weblog, here is his view of Reagan and AIDS. Sullivan is a conservative and a provocateur, and many here will probably find him too apologetic of Reagan, but he’s trying to be a bit more thoughtful than some of the mainstream eulogies in Newsweek et al.
Larry: The “record-low levels of unemployment” were under Wiliam Jefferson Clinton. At times, some areas, like Fargo, ND, had 1.0 percent unemployment in the 1990s.
Interest rates were raised by Fed secretary Paul Volcker to crush inflation. My family took advantage of them to invest in CDs, which kept on paying high interest rates after the rates dropped.
Interestingly enough, one of the places that also suffered during the 1980s was…..Texas. Yes, Texas, because of low oil prices around 1986-87. Where you stand depends on where you sit, and Pittsburgh, Oregon, and Texas, among other places, had poor economies during the 1980s.
Oh, and a shoutout to Alsis – the music and fashion of the 80s sucked compared to other eras. Reagan had little, if anything, to do with it, but let’s dogpile on the 80s some more.
so, Larry… are we really supposed to take seriously the words of politicians as to how great another politician was?
No, jam. You’re supposed to take Larry’s word ‘cuz he’s a MARINE !! And SOLUTE him, too ! [snort]
Minor nit, Raznor: It’s “Velvet Revolution.”
And, yes, I still do really want to hurt Culture Club and make them cry. [shudder] Thanks, Varro.
“so, Larry… are we really supposed to take seriously the words of politicians as to how great another politician was?”
Certainly not! After all, all politicians with opinions different than yours are either liars, dupes, or just plain stupid. You have an opinion, these so-called experts don’t back you up, therefore they are definitely not credible people. In fact, they are probably monsters guilty of unspeakable crimes.
“Certainly not! After all, all politicians with opinions different than yours are either liars, dupes, or just plain stupid. You have an opinion, these so-called experts don’t back you up, therefore they are definitely not credible people. In fact, they are probably monsters guilty of unspeakable crimes.”
exactly, Larry! it’s like you read my mind! wow!
except you forgot the part about how, in addition to being monsters guilty of unspeakable crimes, they are also stoopid-heads… ;)
goddammit, I knew it was the Velvet Revolution, damn this keyboard. DAMN IT!!!
Anyway, to Larry’s point, I don’t care what policy makers say, it’s not their opinions that will tell us what happened. Any student of diplomatic history will know that you can’t get all the details from what policymakers say publicly. There’s much more to say. And besides you don’t even offer an argument to counter the example of East Germans and Czechs and Hungarians bravely standing up to the Communist leaders probably had more to do with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall than Reagan. Or do you have more quotes of speeches that don’t even address the issue?
“Anyway, to Larry’s point, I don’t care what policy makers say, it’s not their opinions that will tell us what happened…dada yada yada ”
My response in all or in part to Jam a couple posts above probably applies to this as well. Obviously if they don’t agree with you then they are not correct.
“And besides you don’t even offer an argument to counter the example of East Germans and Czechs and Hungarians bravely standing up to the Communist leaders probably had more to do with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall than Reagan. ”
There were lots of people that had a hand in the downfall of the USSR. Even the underlying weaknesses of the system itself had a lot to do with it (as Reagan wrote about in the 70s). There isn’t much doubt NOW that the USSR would eventually fall of its own accord, but without Reagan that might have been 10, 25, or even 50 years later. Most people forget that in 1980 not many people in the west thought that the USSR was on its last legs. In fact, in many peoples minds it was the US that was on the brink of defeat not the USSR. The US’s policy of containment had been a failure.
Reagan had new way, fighting it on every external front directly or indirectly, escalate the conventional arms race, and at the same time open up relations with Gorbachev for “nu-ku-lur” arms control and friendlier relations. Military pressure, political pressure, economic pressure, and friendlier relations all contributed to hasten the USSR’s demise. Many of the major players at the time know it, but first hand knowledge isn’t very convincing to some people with their own beliefs. And I have no illusion that any of this is convincing to you, but there it is: just another opinion.
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