Editorial note:

The myth of Ronald Reagan's vast popularity during his actual terms as president is now all but written in stone, largely thanks to a lying corporate media. Barack Obama is a disciple, embracing Reagan's doctrines of domestic savagery and global American Manifest Destiny. The real, historical Reagan was an overtly racist politician whose “audience heard him loud and clear and knew that he meant to put and keep white people on top in America.”

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Ronald Reagan’s Demons

by Margaret Kimberley, 8 February 2011


“President Obama is a fan of Ronald Reagan.”

February 6th was the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. That date is being celebrated with great fanfare by conservatives, who have turned Reagan idol worship into a political cult, an example of their use of political theater and propaganda. When Reagan died in 2004, we were told constantly, ad nauseam, that he was beloved, popular and the subject of unending adulation from every corner of the country. We now have a Reagan International Airport in Washington, and efforts to put his face on Mount Rushmore and the dollar bill.

President Obama is a fan of Ronald Reagan. He said so during his 2008 presidential campaign, proclaiming that his foreign policy would be “somewhat like Ronald Reagan’s.” He called Reagan “transformational” and established the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission so that we might all spend the next year waxing euphoric over the memory of the fortieth president of the United States.

Reagan did win the presidency in 1980 and 1984 overwhelmingly, but the constant tale of unanimous idol worship is a lie. Reagan triumphed when the Democratic Party reached its electoral nadir, but there is no reason to forget the horrors he brought to the United States and to the world.

Ronald Reagan made it clear that the Republican Party was the white people’s party. He campaigned in favor of “states rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the place where three voting rights activists were kidnapped and murdered. The message and the location of its delivery were not accidental. His audience heard him loud and clear and knew that he meant to put and keep white people on top in America. Reagan ultimately signed the bill making Martin Luther King’s birthday a federal holiday, but only grudgingly, saying he did so because “they” wanted it.

“Conservatives have turned Reagan idol worship into a political cult, an example of their use of political theater and propaganda.”

Conservatives do have good reason to idolize Reagan. The future successes of the Bush family, the Tea Party, and the Gingrich Contract with America were all born in the Reagan revolution which began a dismantling of government services to the public and an unambiguously hegemonic foreign policy. The expanding income inequality, low tax rates for the wealthy and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan all owe their legacy to the Reagan years.

Reagan began the onslaught against union workers when he fired the striking air traffic controllers early in his presidency. It was the beginning of an effort to destroy unions and make them unpopular with easily fooled Americans. Instead of fighting for the rights of those few who have any protections, non-class conscious Americans jumped on the bandwagon of union bashing.

Reagan’s assaults on humanity were not reserved for the people of the United States. His foreign policy was an unmitigated disaster for the world. He was unrelenting in his support of right wing death squads in Central American nations El Salvador and Nicaragua. Miguel D’Escoto was Nicaragua’s foreign minister when the Reagan administration did everything possible to destabilize that government. At the time of Reagan’s death in 2004, D’Escoto did not mince words when talking about Reagan’s awful legacy:

More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but in fact the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, was known as the great communicator, and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.

“Expanding income inequality, low tax rates for the wealthy and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan all owe their legacy to the Reagan years.”

Reagan was indeed unapologetic in his adherence to manifest destiny, the belief that white America’s rule and expansion is inevitable and beneficent. D’Escoto is correct. Manifest destiny is a demonic idea which has caused the deaths of many people, first the American Indians, then the enslaved whose misery was spread across the North American continent, then to the peoples of the rest of the Americas who, in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Nicaragua and other nations, which have all at one time or another lived under United States occupation.

When Americans engage in thoughtless cheerleading, the result is usually very, very bad. As D’Escoto said, communicating in this country means telling very big lies, and the endless Reagan love marathon is based on the biggest lies of all.

* Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at  http://freedomrider.blogspot.com.