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Ronald Reagan dies

 
  

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grant
17:50 / 07.06.04
(it might be different story if Hinckley had succeeded while Reagan was in office.)

As I posted elsewhere:

Hinkley succeeded; this was the greatest secret of the 1980s.

Reagan, his lungs collapsed by the madman's bullet, was hastily replaced by a well-constructed animatronic replica. From that day forward, observers have noted, his warm, off-the-cuff humor was muted at public appearances -- his operators preferred to keep his comments limited to only those audio tracks assembled and stored before speaking engagements.

The Alzheimer's was a heart-wrenching cover story. The power elite within the Republican Party kept the myth of Reagan alive, a mechanical fiction, until it was both plausible and convenient for him to pass on. It is an election year with a close race; the time is right. Only now is Nancy able to show the world the grief that was so fresh so very long ago.
 
 
rizla mission
18:26 / 07.06.04
A pointless thought it may be, but I can't help thinking how nice it would have been if he'd kicked the bucket exactly 20 years ago.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
20:07 / 07.06.04
" A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it's not. "

And,

" My fellow Americans: I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. "

And,

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

So fair enough, he, or his writers, could be fairly funny when the mood took them, but purely because of what happened " on his watch " in Central America, whether or not he knew about it, I'm guessing that Ronald Reagan is now, as we speak, involved in a " spit roast " with Asmodeus, Lucifer, and the rest of the guys, and it's hard not to feel that if that's what he's doing now, it's entirely deserved. Let's face it, there aren't likely to be too many people in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, etc, who are going to be mourning the great man's passing.
 
 
Lord Morgue
10:46 / 08.06.04
Vidvis,
Bleh, I got jack of that kind of knee-jerk anti-everything attitude from my alterni-friends long ago. I mean, there's a point at which they're just against everything that their own country does, just because. That's not a philosophy, that's living in the shadow cast by someone else's world. And why don't they go live in these countries they champion? Oh yeah, because dissenting voices like theirs are silenced swiftly and permanently. This one guy I knew for years, my strongest criticism of his politics was that they were the kind of unworkable pseudo-anarchistic bulldada that only sounds good if you're stoned, and he was stoned ALL the time, DAY AFTER 9/11- stops me at the mall, says- "About time something like that happened." I give him a look, he adds "Oh, well, pity all those people had to die." I said "Yeah." and stalked off. Friendship over. Fucking smartarse stoner lefty/anarchist kneejerk anti-everything art student gloating over the deaths of thousands of innocents, just because he thought it was "America's comeuppance". I'd like to drop him in the middle of the grieving families of Al-Quaida's victims and see him explain it to THEM. Maybe I should have punched him or something.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:10 / 08.06.04
Not really a very comparable situation though, is it LM? Surely many people are not saddened by Reagan's death (at the age of 93, incidentally) because they believe that he was directly culpable/responsible for atrocities, whereas it would be much harder to say the same of all those whose lives were cut short on 11th September.

Now, if you want to make the case that Reagan was not responsible for any significant amount of human death of suffering, that would be another matter.
 
 
Sir Real
11:39 / 08.06.04
Apologies if I'm misunderstanding you LM, but I your reply has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote. (I notice that happens alot here. It's far for enjoyable, evidently, to argue against what one imagines someone says than respond to what they actually said.) I think my point corresponds to your responce to your cynical, asshole, ex-friend. It is simply a fact that as soon as you demonize the opposition, be they Reps., Dems., Labor, Al Qaida, U.S., or whoever, then all debate between camps ends. All you're left with then are pep rallies (do other countries have those?)
Please note that my problem with this exercise, solidarity building though it may be, is that it is anti-functional.
Again, apologies if I'm being redundant here. I'm just a boy who's intentions are good. O, Lord(Morque), please don't let me be misunderstood.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:42 / 08.06.04
To believe that the Republican 'victory' was solely due to the fraud in Florida is utter claptrap. In any rational society Bush wouldn't get enough votes for whatever numbers his brother could hand him to even matter.

Lie down and take it all the time don't you? Are you American? I suppose you just sat at home and smiled when it turned out that an unelected man was your president? So America isn't rational, tell us something new, we already know this and we also know that its citizens are either apathetic or completely insane. I don't know why that leads us to being nice about the death of Reagan...

moreover If you're outraged, you need to learn how to deal with reality better.

Bullshit, you should be outraged, you should have been fighting for what was right. Your nation has sickened me, you sit there and take it and take it and you have some small, cute little march about women's rights years after your president tries to fuck with Roe vs. Wade when he shouldn't even be there to do it. Your turnout for anti-war activity (doubling the numbers I saw in the press because we know the press lies) was pathetic. We are reality you nit- no one else is going to 'deal' with it, we have an effect on reality, and frankly when Bush gets re-elected and you're not outraged, well that's going to be kind of sad. I don't see you trying to do anything about the anti-functional political system that you have such a problem with.

Sorry, I'm a bit rabid about the US atm.
 
 
+#'s, - names
13:01 / 08.06.04
Getting all worked up about America is easy. Just remember that your Prime Minister held his hand the whole time. Easy to forget, isn't it? Oh, America is so horrible, but we stand here with honor. You sat there and let it happen just as much as any Americans did.
 
 
illmatic
13:08 / 08.06.04
I don't think stereoetyping a whole nation is going to do your argument any favours, Anna.

I feel a degree of distaste for the delight in his death, but then I think about what the man did in South America... well, can't say I'm sorry to see him go. I don't like the whole "they should suffer" line that some posters are using above, though if I or my family had been on the sharp end of American foreign policy decisions I might feel a bit different. I feel the same about the thing with Thatcher. What could does hating hating sometone old and powerless do? There's always another fucker in office whose much more deserving of your "affections". I try not to let anger and hatred dictate my day to day life too much, I don't see why they should dictate my politics.
 
 
Sir Real
13:48 / 08.06.04
You don't see me trying to do anything etc. Um, Anna, you don't see me at all. And let's be adults, or pretend if that's all we can manage, and leave out the name calling.
The sad fact is that too many intellgent people are more interested in venom spewing than in working towards any type of change. Wanna know why? It's because it's so much easier to be cynical than hopeful(in the short term, anyway). You get to sit around with your friends and complain about how the world is fucked because of (x). Cynical outrage is so hip, all the smart kids are doing it. It's nothing more than group bonding over learned helplessness.
You see how it works, right? You call me a nit and make a few 'taking it up the ass' allusions and I become more interested in proving you wrong than in hearing your point, had there been one. In my, possibly naive, view, the most effective way of changing things is to change the way people think. And again, not in some New Agey actualization process, but in helping someone see that maybe, for example, free market Capitalism isn't all that great for humans, or any other species for that matter. But you can't change someone's views by lobbing bombs from your camp into their's.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I have little faith in the political process' abilty to affect progressive change (although it does happen occasionally).
Maybe I'm naive, but I have great faith in the abilty of the most hateful bigot to learn the error of his thinking(although it seems to happen rarely).
Whatever the case, I'm tired of talking about Reagan. I never much liked him and he wasn't a good actor.
BTW Anna, we have to stop meeting like this. People will talk.
 
 
Sir Real
14:11 / 08.06.04
Now that I think about it(o, NOW he decides to think) it could very well be a cultural difference. I live in the southern U.S. and here we're polite even if we're getting ready to shoot you.
Please note: I am NOT suggesting that I'm getting ready to shoot you.
 
 
Baz Auckland
17:21 / 08.06.04
Non-partisan question: All the articles out there now praising him for ending the Cold War... how true is this? I'm too young to really remember much of the 80s...
 
 
Ray Fawkes
17:37 / 08.06.04
Arguably very true. Reagan's advisors made it clear to him that the Soviet Union just didn't have the economic power to properly support their military budget - especially if they tried to match America's might.

He responded by directing an aggressive stance, forcing the Soviets into an unsustainable race. A lot of people though it was crazy (and scary), but in the end it worked. The government of the Soviet Union forced their own nation into economic collapse trying to keep pace, thereby provoking their own fall.
 
 
grant
20:01 / 08.06.04
The standard rebuttal to that is that the Soviet Union was already a mess and Reagan either happened to be there at the right time or else accelerated an already inevitable process.

I dunno -- part of the deal with the Soviet Union was that no one was all that sure what was going on in there.

What I find interesting, in looking over coverage of that specific issue now, is how close he was to Gorbachev compared to the relationship between, say, Carter and Brezhnev. He was always having summits and stuff. His background as an anti-communist went all the way back to HUAC, so he was definitely *trying* to topple the Reds, but he was also enough of a "people are all basically decent" guy to try to get the dude to straighten up.

---

One phrase I'm close attention to in coverage of Reagan... and ESPECIALLY in pronouncements from or campaign stuff about the current administration is moral clarity. Watch out for it. I think it's become a code phrase for "good vs. evil mentality," and an ideological link between Reagan as mythic figure and Dubya's mythic interpretation of his own role.
 
 
w1rebaby
21:26 / 08.06.04
I think it's important also to recognise that "fighting Communism" was in many cases a euphemism for "fighting populism", something that wasn't by any means confined to the various expeditions that occurred under Reagan. While there were Communist ideologies and in some cases links to the USSR in many of the groups that the USG opposed at the time, the main point was that they were popular revolts.

vidvis, I think you may be confusing factionalism with hating Reagan. "He's the icon of the other team and now he's dead, ha ha" is not the only reason that people might be happy about it; that is presupposing the motivation based on the assumption of factionalism. Possibly the public display of such might help to reinforce divisions, I'll give you that, but I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with being pleased that someone you consider appalling has finally kicked the bucket.

I'm not particularly happy but it's really a bit late for his death to make me happy. He got away with it all.
 
 
Ray Fawkes
21:38 / 08.06.04
grant, I tend to fall in the "accelerated an inevitable process" camp. I think Reagan basically pushed the right button (in this case), whereas other presidents may not have had the guts and/or lunatic imperative to do so.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:42 / 09.06.04
I live in the southern U.S. and here we're polite even if we're getting ready to shoot you.

That's because you all have guns.

make a few 'taking it up the ass' allusions

Now why would you assume I was particularly talking about anal penetration?

In my, possibly naive, view, the most effective way of changing things is to change the way people think. And again, not in some New Agey actualization process, but in helping someone see that maybe, for example, free market Capitalism isn't all that great for humans, or any other species for that matter

I don't mean to be horrible (I think my last post was horrible and tantrumy but I stand by my point) but I think you are being a little naive. I agree that free market Capitalism isn't great but I know that no amount of talking is going to get my Tory MP or my friend Pete to change their minds and I rather suspect that a whole host of others will join hands with them and declare fmc a very good thing.

So anyway what's the point here, I think it directly relates to these things here.... Maybe I'm cynical, but I have little faith in the political process' abilty to affect progressive change (although it does happen occasionally). Maybe I'm naive, but I have great faith in the abilty of the most hateful bigot to learn the error of his thinking(although it seems to happen rarely).

I don't think you're cynical, I do think you're naive but I continue to fail to understand why this has anything to do with our reaction to Reagan revealing the failure of politics. We have far better examples, as I will keep saying, of the utter failure of the democratic system (I don't want to rabidly generalise the poor Americans who don't deserve my hate again).
 
 
Irony of Ironies
08:37 / 09.06.04
Compared to Bush 2, Reagan was a pussycat. While he was guilty of a whole bundle of bad things, as far as I'm aware he never set up a Gulag like Guantanamo. And while he paid lip service to the Christians, his heart wasn't in it (after all, he married a woman known for giving the best blowjobs in Hollywood) - unlike Bush, who's a wholehearted believer.

Personally, I'm a believer in reason as the only way we're going to ever stop shitting on each other and the planet, and as a rationalist I don't hate Reagan. Hatred is not good, ever. And I refuse to allow myself to take pleasure in the death of anyone, because doing so reduces me as a human being.

And especially, I can't find it in my heart to celebrate anyone withering away from Alzheimers. Whatever you think of Reagan personally, he had a family who suffered - probably more than he did - and who never did anything wrong. Unless, of course, you believe that the families of those who commit crimes should be punished too, in which case you have an interesting idea of what constitutes progressive politics.
 
 
Sir Real
10:34 / 09.06.04
In regards to the end of the war on communism: it was right after this when the war on drugs first reared it's ugly head. Gotta have an enemy, right?
And we have a point of agreement, Anna. I too find democracy to be a failure. But what do you expect in a world where half the people are of below average intelligence.(That was not a veiled insult, or unveiled for that matter)
For the record, I don't have a gun. Never have. Don't tell though; Granddad might disown me.
 
 
Ray Fawkes
12:37 / 09.06.04
In regards to the end of the war on communism: it was right after this when the war on drugs first reared it's ugly head.

Not strictly true. The "war on drugs" was initiated by Richard Nixon, whose administration coined the term. Nixon vocally equated drug use with an assault on American values.

His "war on drugs" stragety was actually a political follow-up/response to Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" stance.
 
 
Baz Auckland
14:19 / 09.06.04
(shudder). 'The Great Reagan = GWB' campaign is on. Just check out Bush's campaign website.
 
 
Hieronymus
19:47 / 09.06.04
I think for me, amidst all the Frank Capra-memorializing and petty, vindictive jubilance I've seen about the man, this has got to be the best summation I’ve read yet.

"Hollywood legend Ronald Reagan was 93 when he went to rejoin his makers—Thomas Jefferson, Louis B. Mayer, Lew Wasserman, and Barry Goldwater, in that order"

As Grant Morrison said. America is an empire of the electric light. Reagan just happened to know how to use it to his advantage.
 
 
bjacques
09:39 / 10.06.04
Why are we all speaking of him in the past tense? Everyone knows you can't keep a good President down! (Stoatie take note)
 
 
+#'s, - names
20:38 / 10.06.04
Morrissey wished it was the current president instead
 
 
bjacques
09:03 / 11.06.04
Yeah, we need *President* Dick Cheney with a free pass to do whatever he wants without having to hide behind a Bush.

Pop stars...
 
 
Lord Morgue
09:11 / 11.06.04
It occurs to me that if Bush II had been shot, Dan Quayle would have been President. Now THAT's scary.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:44 / 11.06.04
Tchyeah...Imagine having a pig ignorant, barely literate, socially inept, oratorial retard in charge of the biggest military machine in human history. That'd really freak me out, man.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:58 / 11.06.04
Also, remember the U-turn the Republicans did on stem cell research once poor old Ron started dribbling?

Suddenly those little zygotes didn't seem quite so human and protected by The Good Lord's Divine Grace after all. Au contraire, they suddenly seemed to be extremely useful for saving Nancy the incontinence diaper bill.
 
 
+#'s, - names
13:56 / 11.06.04
Also, remember the U-turn the Republicans did on stem cell research once poor old Ron started dribbling?
?
Since when?
 
 
grant
17:06 / 11.06.04
By the way, did anyone catch Thatcher's video eulogy?
I'm curious how it went.
 
 
Lurid Archive
17:21 / 12.06.04
I am disappointed with the lot of you. The man is dead, so you could at least find something positive to say.

 
 
Malle Babbe
21:56 / 12.06.04
A transcript of Thatcher's eulogy can be found here:

Thatcher as reported by Yahoo!
 
 
Saveloy
10:29 / 14.06.04
Greg Palast on Reagan

"People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three."
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:48 / 14.06.04
bjacques... politics aside, I'd vote for ANYONE if they were a zombie.

Look, I never said he was a nice guy... I'm not mourning the fucker. I just don't like enjoying anyone's death. If he'd died while IN office, the world may well have been a nicer place. But as an old retard, drooling away somewhere? It's like shooting fish in a fucking barrel.

I think the "pushing the right buttons" thing is about right- Russia was fucked anyway. It would have happened sooner or later. I don't think anyone could take credit for "bringing down Communism"- (aside from the fact that it was state capitalism anyway)- it's more along the lines of the Communists failing to hold it up.
 
 
bjacques
12:13 / 14.06.04
Actually, Reagan may have been more sensible about the USSR than is commonly supposed (subscription needed *cough* waag1 waag1 *cough* *cough*) [a drink of water later...] The article also confirms what I remember of Bush (41)'s response to the unraveling of the Soviet Empire, that it was all a trick.
 
  

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