MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive REAGAN WITHOUT TEARS, PART 3:

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REAGAN WITHOUT TEARS, PART 3:

June 7th, 2004 by Clark Humphrey

Christopher Hitchens, making a sudden return to “contrarian” status after his prowar rallying last year, writes at Slate that “Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn’t like him all that much. He met his second wifeâ€”the one that you rememberâ€”because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see.”
Kevin Brennan reminds us that Reagan didn’t defeat the USSR; it failed on its own accord, and in spite of the neocons’ faulty “intelligence” that exaggerated the Russkies’ economic/military strength for political reasons.
UK historian Archie Brown teaches that the Soviet dissilusion was one of the most peaceful transitions of power ever seen in a major country, and was caused almost entirely by the central government’s calcification under power-politics gamery.
MIchael Bronski claims Reagan was just as insensitive about AIDS as the James Brolin TV movie claimed he’d been.
Bill Mon claims, “He was, for all his cornball folksiness, the ultimate class warrior, or class front man, anyway.”
Juan Cole asserts that “Reagan’s policies thus bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan’s blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan’s gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed.”
And Phil Gasper calls Reagan a “venal and vicious man, who was happy to slash workers’ wages, see families thrown onto the street, support sadistic death squads and bomb other countries, if this was in the interests of the American ruling class.”