Smile, Wrinkle and thick black helmet of hair:Looking back at Reagan

Only thing he has going for him is that Texas Chimpboy is worse -- and dumber. And that Ronnie and Nancy didn't spawn his sorry ass.

If this thread takes off, I'll be more than happy to give more substantive answers as to my dislike of all things Raygun.

But to put it most generally, he did exactly what #43 seems to be aiming at: deliberately gutting the government's resources for the expressed purpose of killing social programs. People remember the avuncular smile, but forget that every time they step over a schizophrenic bum, they're stepping over someone the avuncular smile cast out of a mental hospital -- all so the True Believers out in Orange County could sleep soundly, knowing their newly slimmed-down government couldn't meddle with the will of the market.

Plus, need we even get into the truly scary, truly sleazy shit we did in Central America?

God, that man scared me when I was a kid. He was the same age as our grandparents... most of us wouldn't even let our grandfathers hold the remote control, let alone have their finger on the nuclear trigger. See the nuclear fear thread for the rest of the story...

As if Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, the Pope, and the millions of Eastern Europeans who took to the streets had nothing at all to do with that ...

Well then, I suppose Bush #43 will bring about the democratic reclamation of China. Oh, wait ...

It's a testament to the U.S.-centric worldviews of many Americans that plenty of people sort of believe Reagan "defeated" the Soviet Union. As if everything that happens in the world is the doing of the U.S. President. Which makes sense, since so many Americans would have to struggle to name a single foreign leader -- or any country that's not clearly represented in "It's a Small World After All."

difficult to answer without entering the realms of talking about politics. basically, it was because a state that refused to embrace capitalism and the free market could not be allowed to exist, for fear of encouraging other countries to do likewise. the cold war was an attempt to crush an unfavourable ideology, and this was successfully achieved by waging a war of attrition against the soviet union (helped by the legacy of stalin's own isolationist policies), and scuppering the democratic election of far left governments across central america and indochina through mass bombing and sponsorship of thuggish right wing dictatorships. nowadays only cuba and a bunch of anti-globalisation protesters stand in the way of the march of neo- liberalism, you can maintain an illegal embargo against one, and shoot at the other.

As for anti-globalization protest: here is a debate that is consistently framed in the worst possible terms, with media and the protesters themselves equally to blame. A lot more work needs to be done to form a coherent message for the public at large, stressing that the mainstream of said protesters aren't necessarily against globalization as a concept, but against globalization as such: i.e., globalization on corporate terms, globalization without necessary protection of human rights and environmental responsibility, globalization outside of public view and impervious to public comment. Particularly painful to me as a person who agrees with that line of thought whole-heartedly but is religiously pro- globalization, in the sense of believing that my unemployed future- less relatives in Ethiopia deserve as much access to the wealth- generating machine of capitalism as anyone else.

Well, I know some Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians who would disagree strongly with that statement. All three of those countries are doing pretty well economically right now, thank you.

As for Poland, the resistance to the Soviets had as much to do with cultural imperialism as it did with economic imperialism. Remember that at least some portion of Poland had been dominated by the Russians for most of the period between 1790 and 1989, that the Polish-Russian rivalry/hostility predates even that, and the Poles and the Soviets had fought a bloody war in 1920 (which the Poles won, BTW). Then there's also the inherent cultural clash between the Poles (pro- Western, Roman Catholic, parliamentary republic/monarch) and the Russians (anti-Western European, Eastern Orthodox, autocratic regime).

That's going a bit afield of this thread's topic, tho'. And Ronnie Raygun still SUCKED.

"Domino" theory, Mike. Once you let one go, it's that much easier for the next one. And if they all go, then who are we supposed to sell things to? :) That's sarcasm -- and the "domino" theory does sound paranoid in retrospect -- but I think the root urge was perfectly valid: we believed in our ideology and wanted the world to be "right." Not to mention that we never actually "got into" Vietnam -- our hard-line posturing dragged us into something which, had we known beforehand how it would turn out, we would have thought thrice about.

And we did have the ultimate unassailable argument, which was that we supposedly supported basic democracy in every land. Ingenious in that it's not an argument against any particular ideological route -- only an argument that said route should be dictated by the public. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, there is one very cynical argument in support of our propping up fairly awful regimes: a good stretch of stable democratic-looking rule, corrupt or oppressive as it might be, is a step toward the sort of normalized rule that's necessary for the introduction of a decently-functioning democracy. I'm not saying I agree with that, only that I follow the logic being employed.

Total, total DUD. Official.

Maybe as far as human beings do, but not as far as politicians go (see Chimpanzee squatting in the Oval Office presently).

> He was a phony liberal--

Um, Clinton never really claimed to be a liberal; he was always pretty upfront about being a moderate. And anyone (other than those who listen to Rush Limbaugh) who thinks otherwise was in a coma from 1993-2001.

> he pretended to care while he filled his pockets,

Um, how exactly did Clinton "fill his pockets"? And would you like to have his his legal bills (fighting off Ken Pornstarr wasn't cheap, ya know)?

> manipulated people shamelessly, and liedliedlied.

As to the first, he was a politician ... it was his job (and the job of any politician) to manipulate people. As for being a "liar," other than lying about not getting head from Monica what else did Clinton lie about?

Nitsuh on globalisation: *word for word* what I feel. The simplification of all these issues (not least by Blair who condemns all protestors as an "anarchist circus" and refuses to discuss any of the issues at length or in depth *at all*) is perhaps the most shameful thing about the media in the last few years, and that's some fucking achievement.

Didn't Reagan turn the US from being the world's biggest creditor to the world's biggest debtor? I think I read that somewhere - quite an "achievement".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/94/Contra_flyer.jpg/451px-Contra_flyer.jpg

haw!

A quote from our beloved veep, Mr. Richeard Cheney: "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

Boy howdy, are we going to pay for that sterling bit of wisdom. Big time!

Why the hell were we in Vietnam? Like it would matter that it became communist. Like it would harm the US in some way.

Interesting article on the topic:

The Old Revolutionaries of Vietnam, by Tom Hayden

As for being a "liar," other than lying about not getting head from Monica what else did Clinton lie about?

-- Tadeusz Suchodolski, Saturday, July 28, 2001 8:00 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

lol democrats

i guess hitchens was wrong, bill actually did have one person left to lie to

on RR and Alzheimers

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39561/bill-oreilly-reagan-alzheimers/

ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1985, a short article appeared on page A12 of the Washington Post under the headline “Managua Said to Get Military Copters.”

The article stated that “Recently stepped-up shipments from Warsaw Pact countries to Nicaragua include at least two Polish Mi2 helicopters that can be used as gunships,” attributing this to “government officials with access to the latest intelligence reports.”

The last of the story’s seven paragraphs clarified that just one of the Polish helicopters actually was “equipped with launchers for air-to-ground rockets.”

This was about the hottest of hot political topics at the time: the battle between Nicaragua’s socialist Sandinista government and the U.S.-backed Contra brigades trying to overthrow it. While the Contras had been directly financed by the U.S. starting in 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, after several years public pressure eventually forced Congress to cut off all military aid....

When National Security Agency analyst Deborah Maklowski got into work the Monday after the Post’s article appeared, her branch chief jokingly asked her how much money she’d gotten for it.

That’s because, as Maklowski recounted in 2004 for SIDtoday, the NSA’s internal newsletter, she’d just written a report on this subject and distributed it internally. “The only change” in the Post article from her analysis, according to Maklowski, “was the lack of classification. … The Post had not seen fit to edit my text at all!” (The Intercept is publishing Maklowski’s account today alongside 261 other articles from SIDtoday.)

As Maklowski told the story, she had “been following a deal in the making between Cenzin, the Polish government entity that handled foreign military sales, and the pro-Soviet Sandinista government of Nicaragua. … When I got the specs on this one [helicopter] and saw that it would be equipped with rocket launchers, I put out a report.”

Maklowski continued: “My guess is that the White House, which was looking for anything that would help make a case with Congress for support for the Contras, just unilaterally decided to release the SIGINT [signals intelligence] to the press, without asking and without sanitization, as yet one more piece of evidence of Soviet (well, sort of) support for the Sandinistas.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/07/reagan-administration-cavalierly-leaked-nsa-signals-intelligence-apparently-without-informing-the-agency/