Ronald Reagan Appreciation Station
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Former President Ronald Reagan
February 6, 1911– June 5, 2004
Ronald Reagan is a mythological creature. Though the modern popular image of the president is sometimes that of a donkey differing only in the horns on its forehead, the traditional president also has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hooves—these distinguish it from a democrat. Marianna Mayer has observed (The Unicorn and the Lake), "Reagan is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He could be captured only by unfair means, and his policies were said to neutralize poison."
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So, it goes without saying that our current political climate has people yearning for the days of Reagan. Reagan is a figure I've observed that people either love or hate, it's generally hard to find a middleground. The thing is, when Reagan was in office I was but a babe and wasn't really aware of the world around me 'til Bush Sr. took over for a few years. I didn't grow up in the 1980's Cold War mindset. I've taken some time to read about Reagan, aside from learning about him in school, but I don't feel like I have any perspective. I can't necessarily trust the elderly folks (either on TV or coworkers or my folks) because they tend to be delusional and hyperbolic.
Aside from curbing the discussion going on in another thread, I'm curious about what people have to say about Reagan who were actually fairly grown up at the time of his term as president. All we can really do aside from that is talk about his policies and actions in hindsight.
Edit - Here's a list of criticism against Reagan and his terms as president. Big thanks to MGS2 Demo for it.
Metal Gear Solid 2 Demo wrote: »Reagan and The Fairness Doctrine:
In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that the fairness doctrine was not mandated by congress and therefor unenforceable by the FCC. In 1987 both houses of Congress voted to make The Fairness Doctrine law and therefor enforceable. Reagan vetoed it and killed it.
Reagan and the metric system: A time line.
1975: The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-168) passed by Congress and the U.S. Metric Board is created.
1979: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) requires wine producers and importers to switch to metric.
1980: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) requires distilled spirits producers and importers to switch to metric.
1982: Reagan disbands U.S. Metric Board and fires everyone associated with it.
Reagan and Gun Control
*Reagan supported and signed a 15-day waiting period when he was governor of California. He then blamed it on the Democrats.
*Reagan supported and signed a law "prohibiting the carrying of loaded firearms on one's person or in a vehicle, in any public place or on any public street." The law was aimed at stopping the Black Panthers after their march on the California State Capitol, but affected all gun owners. He then blamed it on the Democrats.
*Reagan supported and signed a ban on the transfer of new manufacture fully automatic firearms while president and blamed it on the Democrats.
*Reagan vocally supported the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban after his presidency in the early 90s. Which were then blamed on the Democrats.
Criminal:
Iran-Contra treason.
Lied about it.
Likely encouraged Iran to keep US Embassy hostages until he was into office.
Fiscal:
Supply-side economics.
National debt tripled.
$12 billion trade surplus --> $100+ billion trade deficit.
Deregulated savings and loans, precipitated huge economic crisis.
Tax raiser.
Taxed the poor, cut taxes for the rich.
SDI "Star Wars" boondoggle.
Military spending increased to match imaginary spending in USSR.
Deregulation caused oil bust.
Broke air traffic control union.
Social:
Gutted social welfare.
Release of mental patients without recourse, homeless population up.
Ignored AIDS crisis.
Abstinence-only sex education.
Strengthened ATF, banned automatic weapons, blamed Democrats for it.
Increased spending for War on Drugs.
National drinking age of 21.
Underfunded NEA.
EPA Superfund grants manipulated to help Republicans in local elections.
Deregulated kids' tv, initiated 22 minute toy ads.
Killed energy programs.
Crack in the ghettos. (? Due to support for Contras and Noriega?)
Foreign:
Wars all over Central America, incl Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras.
Promoted Iran-Iraq war.
Sent Marines into Beirut, abandoned mission after terrorist bombing.
Broke detente with USSR until Gorbachev personally made things better.
Backed Contras in drug running schemes.
Supported right-wing dictators and movements everywhere, including:
Apartheid regime in SA.
Marcos regime in Phillipines.
Saddam Hussein and Baathist regime in Iraq, even after Kurds gassed.
Taliban in Afghanistan.
Manuel Noriega in Panama.
Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
Concepts:
Welfare queens.
Trees cause pollution.
Ketchup as a vegetable.
Appointments:
30+ convicted appointees.
Ed Meese at Justice, porn freak.
James Watt at Interior, idiot, corrupt.
William Casey at CIA, religious nut, strikes into Uzbekistan. (? Uzb part of USSR, maybe mean Afghanistan?)
HUD a corrupt mess in general.
Politicised CIA.
Robert Bork to SCOTUS (failed), segregationist and asshole.
Antonin Scalia, same but he got in.
Personal:
Unfit to serve due to Alzheimer's disease by term's end.
Horrible excuse for a human being in general.
McCarthyite.
Neo-Conservative. (? Isn't neo-conservatism post-Cold War?)
Backed Moral Majority.
Pardoned Robert Walker, who went on to kill his wife.
Started presidential campaign at racist murder crime scene in Philadelphia, MS.
Laid wreath and made speech at SS cemetery in Germany.
Vietnam War a "noble cause."
Helped start right-wing noise machine. (? By promoting myth of liberal media?)
Hated sex, made Ron Jr. feel like a sissy and quit ballet.
Dumb as a stump.
Believed in astrology and used it to run government.
Innovated "talking points" cue cards.
"I don't recall" to weasel out of press questions.
Confused movies with reality.
Outlawed Russia forever, started bombing in five minutes.
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all of that aside, if i had to point out reagan's biggest offense retrospectively it'd have to be that, looking back, he was one of, if not the first president that made ignorance a point of pride
that folksy demeanor crushed the democrats so thoroughly that the whole country has been pandering to the lowest common denominator ever since, and when you groom leaders to appeal to the lowest common denominator, you get weak leaders
the man was a plague, pure and simple, and his hobbling legacy poisons this country even today
Um, a foreign government was holding 100+ Americans as hostages. We tend to not like it when people do that.
I did not know about that. People only do that shit when there's something to hide. :?
If the Soviet Leadership had massacred protesters like the Chinese did. Gave Gorbachev a one-way ticket to Siberia. Gave Boris Yeltsin a 9mm permanent hangover cure. Then said "nyerh, nyerh, nyerh".
Do anyone really think that Regan would have Cowboyed up and done anything? Apart from speeches, pouting and boycotting the Olympics? With 3000 nukes pointed at the USA?
Regan got handed the greatest victory in history by accident. Anybody in the White House would have gotten the samme.
The only defense I see for it is Reagan starting the SDI project and how he managed military spending, which supposedly influenced the Soviet Union's decision making throughout the 80's. But how do you prove or disprove something like that?
Yeah, no, he is one of the five worst presidents this country has ever had and is in part responsible for so much of today's problems.
The Pope doesn't get enough credit for ending the Cold War either. If anything I'd say it goes John Paull II > Bush > Thatcher > Reagan, if we're going to ignore the Soviets who were in charge of winding things down responsibly.
And I still say that Bush the Greater should have shared the Nobel with Gorbie.
Buchanon, Grant, Harding, Hoover, and Bush the Lesser would like words with you.
Well considering W was like the Reaganites' wet dream we'll consider them tied for 5th-worst.
The USSR was basically in a bad place already in 1980, though I don't think people realized it at the time. US military spending might have accelerated the demise of the Soviet Union somewhat, but really it was Gorbachev who realized that the way they had been doing things for the last ~70 years wasn't going to work and instituted reforms that eventually led to its demise.
Reagan lovers prefer to believe that bullshit like "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" inspired people to rise up in the name of "freedums!"
a. taken down by scandal(Nixon)
b. forgettable(Bush senior)
c. plagued by corruption and incompetence(GWB)
This isn't directed at anyone specifically, but it's important to distinguish two different things:
The end of the Cold War, and the dissolution of the USSR into the CIS.
They're not mutually inclusive. Besides the general hate-on a portion of the American population had for the USSR (which has transferred, in part, to the Russian Federation, and a few other countries in the CIS), I'd argue that the Cold War, as a state of affairs, was over by the time the Warsaw Pact was dissolved--at least for America (if not the USSR itself). To many people, a Cold War with the Russian Federation is not out of the question. In that case, I'd say it Gorbachev deserved the credit for not changing his positions leading up to the August Coup, and being more willing to eventually fall from his position than compromise with pro-Unionists. The New Union Treaty was really his effort not to "betray his conscious" so to speak, and not a very strong one (even if it was politically popular). The falling standard of living--compared to the "rise" during the late Khrushchev and into the Brezhnev years that many Soviet citizens perceived--is actually pretty hard to quantify and say just how much it contributed exactly. It certainly didn't kill the country by itself--if it did, the USSR wouldn't have been a country for 40 years after the catastrophe of the Second World War. The inability to solve problems "in all due time", and the notion that localities could do it better, was probably a bigger issue than "life is tough in the USSR". Especially given the horrific economic state the "Baltic Tigers" are in now.
(Now, whether the outcome is a good or a bad thing widely varies depending on who you ask, though Gorbachev himself has expressed no shortage of regret over a course of action that, to his credit, he couldn't exactly predict everything to a T.)
Reagan's willingness to keep the US on a risky, even dangerous path of spending more money than the rest of the world combined on military hardware, and just assuming that the military would know what to do with all of it, no doubt "helped", but I'd agree with others in saying it was just one driving factor. I'm tempted to say that it's on parity (perhaps somewhat greater) than the extremely fast falling price of oil (given that the USSR was widely considered by the west to be the most reliable oil exporting nation in the world, and was approaching OPEC's combined level of export in an attempt to make up for declining prices. This, that, and other things all come into play, but the unwillingness to go to war over the right to succeed in the 1977 Constitution was the death of the country in particular. As I've said, the economic situation in the USSR was dire--but not nation killing by itself--and it pales in comparison that the economic disaster that accompanied the transformation into the CIS and the remapping of the economy. A necessary disaster, perhaps, but one anyway.
Of course, we're coming full circle now. Moscow has demonstrated that it's willing to go to war over the issue of autonomous oblasts (particularly if the autonomous oblasts are willing to do it too) with its neighbors. It's also demonstrated that little wars like this are, on the national level, cakewalks compared to the country's other problems and concerns(crime, alcoholism, infrastructure), much to NATO's surprise and horror (in the weeks leading up to the Russian-Georgian War, nobody in the west expected it to be the shooting gallery that it turned out to be--people actually thought Georgia might wrench a victory out of it, amazingly enough). The rising price of oil as afforded the country and its allies a "second wind", or something close to it. It's not entirely relevant, but people speculated China would eventually replace the USSR and the USA--I'm fairly confident that China will eventually take our place, and Russia's newfound willingness to talk to China (particularly through the SCO) suggests that a lot of Russians feel the same. And of course, the United States has its own problems.
tl;dr--Reagan's role in ending the Cold War is widely exaggerated.
Well, yes, but that's not ignoring the Soviets in charge. If anything that's partly focusing on them.
No, I agree. There's just a lot of things to consider. It might be a bitter pill for a lot of Americans that we, the big men on campus, weren't in center stage nonstop.
Similarly, it's a bitter pill for Republicans to think Reagan might have just be one contributing factor, if that makes any sense.
It's gone back and forth. Apperantly, the last time it was set back to 18 was only about a month after my mom turned 21. She was pissed.
Also, it supports terrorists.
Not that I don't appreciate the humor, but don't fuck with my head on this.
How did he make the claim? It sounds so fucking... silly! Like a goose!
I think a random Afghani in a book I read put it best: "the soviets made our women not wear the veil and took our goats. The Taliban made our women wear burkas and took our goats."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/world/officers-say-us-aided-iraq-in-war-despite-use-of-gas.html?scp=4&sq=walter%20p.%20lang&st=nyt&pagewanted=1
Sorry, Kurds! Hope you like Jelly Beans!
Y'know what, I wasn't alive then but I know exactly what he did. He heard about this - briefly - from someone, and was like, "OH SHIT THAT SOUNDS COOL BETTER GO LOOK SMART" and wanted to tell as many people as possible. But he didn't bother with the fine print.
Somewhat seriously it reminded me of a Rush Limbaugh rant about how the first oxygen freeing lifeforms (pre-plants essentially) really fucked up the world because of how horribly reactive their free oxygen waste is. Of course, life adapted and lead to what we think of as normal now. It's a "The Earth is huge, we couldn't possibly fuck it up!" argument and is pretty stupid.
I'm not positive it's level of stupid with regard to Reagan's comments though now that I see their source.
given how horrible his environmental agenda was, it's more likely that this was deliberately spread misinformation than some kind of intellectual pratfall
Well, think about if Reagan wasn't elected?
Would supply-side be as big now? All this stuff deregulated?
I think the alternate universe where Reagan wasn't elected is far different than one where only Bush wasn't. In a good way.
And the more I learn about the Iran situation, the more depressing it gets. His handling of that whole thing was just unconscionable. I think it was Reagan who demonstrated just how thoroughly unethical you can get away with being if you talk a good game.
IIRC,
In Uruguay, during the dictatorship, 20% of the population left the country, and 10% of those still there (that's 8% overall, or roughly 240,000 people) served prison time of more than three years, and a larger number than that were tortured.
They had a caste system wherein the state(the largest employer at the time) wouldn't employ you for the slightest of political reasons. The 11 leaders of the revolutionary movement that the dictatorship formed in opposition to were kept in solitary confinement for 10 straight years.
When Carter came in, he gave pressure to the Southern cone dictatorships to liberalize, and all of them did--they all created constitutions that contained clauses that would lead to democracy within the next decade. It's pretty amazing, because the more you study the area the more you realize that Carter was one of our only presidents who didn't delight in being a silly, silly, goose.
Anyway, in '83, after 11 years of dictatorship, the constitution the military made to provide a path to democracy called for a vote. The liberal candidate who had run in the last election (early 70's) looked like he was going to win, and so the military started blatantly quashing dissent via a new group of arrests, torturing, and basically disallowing people to help him run.
Reagan gave them military aid during this time.