For the next few days it will be hard to watch TV news or
read a mainstream
newspaper without massive
coverage of the death of Nancy Reagan, the wife of our former president,
Ronald Reagan, possibly one of the worst presidents of US history. He was definitely
the worst president in my lifetime.
It was President Reagan who pushed this country to the far
right. He viciously attacked leftists of every kind during his reign. On
foreign policy he worked hard to try and destroy both the Soviet Union and the
newly emerging Third world Marxist experiments, such as in Angola, Mozambique,
but mostly in
Nicaragua and their Sandinista Government. The Reagans literally made war
on Nicaragua
and supported right-wing fascist
governments in Central America. This was worse than just a bad foreign
policy, it was a series of war crimes.
Since Reagan Left office, this country has never really
recovered and the far
right has increased its strangle hold on the US. All this began with
President Reagan and his co-conspirator First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Nancy was more than
just arm candy for President Reagan’s many press appearances. She was an advisor
as well. The two were both far-right idealogs. All of their policies showed
that.
The two also raised public relations to an all-time high, with
all their dancing, acting, and nifty clichés. They won over the press. They were
both master manipulators. And unfortunately they won over a lot of the American
public, who liked the way they led the country even though many people did not
like their policies. Together the Reagans made low wages, bad working
conditions and lack
of worker’s rights in general, standard fair here in America.
The two marked the beginning of a trend of Republican actors
turning to politics, only to mess it all up. Most people think that most of
Hollywood and most actors are liberal. But most actors, who went into politics
since the Reagans, were more conservative, such as Fred Grandy, who used to
be a shmuck character on The Love Boat, "Gopher". He became a
Republican member of the US House of Representatives from the state of Iowa. There
was also Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican Governor of California and Clint
Eastwood became mayor of his adopted hometown, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California –
a small, wealthy village and artists' community on the Monterey Peninsula.
Nancy started her “Just say no” campaign mostly as a way to
improve her image, which was pretty bad before she started it. Her aids wanted to improve how she looked to
the American public, so they came up with her anti-drug crusade. It was heavy
on law-enforcement and led to such problematic policies as “mandatory minimums.” Nancy tried to convince people that smoking joints
were somehow connected to the murders of the South American drug lords. The
Reagans had an authoritative style of ruling that some of s called “friendly fascism.”
Suddenly cocaine went from a drug some people wanted to legalize to a fate
worse than heroin addiction. A new version of the drug made smokable, called
crack, was supposed to be the most addictive drug to ever hit the streets. It was all mostly bull-shit.
Today this country is just starting to recover
from the damage of Nancy’s drug war. We have more people incarcerated in
prison than any others in the entire world.
The Reagans inflicted a lot of damage to this country and
the world. Neither of them or heroes, nor do they represent anything of value
to progressive people everywhere.
-សតិវអតុ
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