So Ronald Reagan finally died; the eulogising will start in five minutes. Having seen what happened when that other
embarassement, Richard Nixon died, I have no doubt Reagan will be praised up the wazoo in the coming weeks. And of course, the loonies who want to name everything in the country, from the dimes to airports named after him will only be strenghtened in their efforts.
Now my first political memory is a feeling of disappointment after hearing Carter lost the 1980 presidential elections (I was six years old…), so I’m not entirely unbiased about the guy, but even so the truth is he was a disaster as a president. He wasn’t a president, he acted being a president. He won the 1980 elections because he let his election staff do dodgy deals with Iran. He then oversaw the first major onslaught on workers right and the welfare system in the United States, started a massive and largely unnecessary buildup of the US military, halting Cold War detente even almost causing World War 3 when he forgot the mikes were on and joked that “the bombing will start in five minutes”.
Meanwhile his war on Communism grinded a lot of innocent people up in El Salvador, Nigaracua, Honduras amongst others, while it also made it necessary to trade weapons with Iran illegaly, in order to be able to finance those noble freedom fighters, the Contras. While his wife financed well intentioned but crap comics against drugs, his own administration was making sure cocaine could flow into the country on a larger scale then ever.
And he thought it was a good idea to lay wreaths on the graves of Waffen SS members.
For all those reasons I can’t care less that he died and I can’t pretend its a great loss to humanity. Besides, he got to die peacefully; some people were less lucky, thanks to him.