Short Memories

Sure, it's unseemly to criticize an Alzheimer's-stricken nonagenarian who is likely a blink away from the grave, but it's far worse to paper over ugly history in the name of good manners. Ronald Reagan has given strong confirmation of his much-remarked physical strength and vitality by lasting this long, when it was apparent to many that he had already begun exhibiting signs of dementia by the mid-1980's. But as is expected of a 92-year-old man, especially one with an advanced degenerative neurological disease, Reagan will soon exit the ranks of the living ex-presidents and the pleas to the Vatican for sainthood will begin in earnest. Hopefully, our reluctance to speak ill of the dead will not allow traction for the forces who would rename every street in America Reagan Avenue, for he was and remains a manifestly unworthy object of national praise.

Ergo, I recommend Eric Alterman's latest entry at Altercation, Deconstructing Reagan.

Ronald Reagan was many things, but most undeniably he was a pathological liar. True, he also gave every impression of being an unbelievable moron (which is why Saturday Night Live could once parody his pathetic excuses for the Iran/contra scandal with a skit that depicted Reagan as—get this!—brilliant and competent). His worshipful, if fanciful, biographer Edmund Morris even called him an "apparent airhead." The President’s famous cluelessness was so obvious during his years in office that his defenders would attempt to deploy it as a defense of his actions, as if he were a small child or a beloved but retarded uncle. The President tended to "build these little worlds and live in them," noted a senior adviser. "He makes things up and believes them," explained one of his kids.

Alterman goes on to describe some of the, well, odder claims that regularly dropped from Reagan's lips - his presence at the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, imaginary messages from the Vatican, etc. But all of that by itself would have indicated nothing more than the onset of senility, a sin in nobody's book. Where I turn implacably convinced of Reagan's pure and unvarnished evil is any time I look at our behavior in Latin America during the 80's. And apparently, the same goes for Alterman, who spends a few paragraphs discussing Reagan's "fondness for genocidal murderers," focusing on Guatemala's Efraín Ríos Montt (who may well be returning to Guatemala's presidency) and the horrific Salvadoran death squads.

Of course, Reagan's mentoring and support of determinedly homicidal maniacs wasn't restricted to our hemisphere (e.g., Jonas Savimbi in Angola), that's just where he recorded most of his greatest hits. Alterman similarly doesn't touch on the explosion of the federal debt, the empowerment of our own Talibanic Falwell, Robertson, and company, or the black hole for cash and civil liberties known as the War on Drugs. Or any of the dozens of other reasons to label him an inexplicably popular disaster.

No matter how you slice this historical apple, it is rotten at the core. His tenure should be an embarrassment to Americans, not an occasion for misty-eyed reminiscing. Reagan was a joke of a president, though not a particularly funny one. I suppose, though, credit where credit is due: without Reagan, punk rock would have fizzled out years before it finally did. Unfortunately, by the end of the '80's, punk was as addled, irrelevant, edentulous, and revered for the wrong reasons as Reagan is today.

I suppose we've come full circle. Not only is the mantle of the Reagan Revolution being carried forward by a man who is, against all odds, even more of a pretty vacant than Reagan himself was, but the Dead Kennedys are on tour with a singer other than Jello Biafra. Clearly, there is no god.