Ronald Reagan is dead

I am surprisingly moved by the death of Ronald Reagan. Perhaps this is because I understand all too well what his family has experience during his illness with Alzheimer's disease. My heart goes out to them.

I also know exactly what he went through during his years in office when he was absolutely, most definitely affected by the early stages of the disease. I watched my own mother decline, almost in parallel. She had noticeable memory loss by 1985 and she died just 8 weeks ago. The disease is a 20-year process, and President Reagan had all of the early signs. This is not to say he was not functional at the time he left office. It's just that his many lapses and missteps, especially in those couple years, were clearly part of the disease.

To tell truth, I miss him. He could project a warm and comforting manner as he screwed the little people. Yes, he was powerful. But make no mistake, I vehemently opposed nearly every policy of the Reagan administration—especially its brutal proxy wars in Central America and Afghanistan, its promotion of weapons of planetary destruction, and its general lawlessness and thievery that cost much to humankind in lives and treasure.

Paradoxically, I believe that the last great global peace initiatives were accomplished because Reagan was positively influenced by Gorbachev (and maybe Nancy too), so he ended up having a modicum of concern about his historical legacy. Nothing of the magnitude of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty has been accomplished since its ratification in 1988. (Differences over this Treaty drove neocons Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney out of the Reagan government.)

Clinton instituted a moratorium on the underground testing of nuclear weapons in 1993, but he otherwise dropped some pretty ripe fruit Reagan grew for him on the arms control tree. Of course, Reagan's debatable role in the collapse of the Soviet Union during the intervening years of Bush I factors into the global-strategic evolution of the American empire—changing the world in profound ways between 1988 and 1992—leaving "arms control" rather a quaint concept for a power now facing no significant global counterweight. The Republicans controlling the United States Senate were in no mood to ratify a global nuclear test ban in 1999—Clinton's inability to overcome this opposition was a major failure of his administration, by then black-and-blue from the impeachment fight.

The W. Bush administration promotes horrendous Reaganaut concepts in spades, but the Chimperor has none of the flair of the Great Communicator. He just doesn't have the wits to deliver fun punch lines like, "I paid for that microphone", "I am not going to exploit for political purposes, the youth and inexperience of my opponent", or "There you go again."

To sum up the "Reagan" who still lives, these words from a 1986 Noam Chomsky talk seem still to be useful:

When I am referring to 'Reagan', I want it understood that I do not mean the individual Ronald Reagan, who is in fact largely a creation of the public relations industry, and who literally often does not know and is not expected to know what policies are, or what the words on the cue cards mean. That's an interesting fact about American politics, but when I use the term 'Reagan', I am not referring to that individual. Rather, I am referring to the elite groups for whom he serves as a spokesman, or, more important, as a device to ensure public acquiescence—or at least public passivity—with regard to the policies of the groups who have created him as an image to appear before the public.

Mr. Bush, you are no Ronald Reagan.