🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 01 Aug 2001 01:27:39 -0400, Stupendous Man <root@127.0.0.1>
wrote like a right wing nut; 
>On 2001-08-01 12:46 AM, in article 3b6789a2.48903858@news.enetis.net,
>"rightwingers@stupid.com" <rightwingers@stupid.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 01 Aug 2001 00:19:13 -0400, Walt Horning
>> <whorning@pipeline.com> wrote like a right wing nut;
>> 
>>> You murdering pieces of shit! You worthless fucking "whores" of fish
>>> and lower forms of life. You are a lower form yourself. Its called a
>>> "murderer".
>> 
>> Well, NOW you've done it WHORENINGLOON
>
>Ah, your logic and facts have me convinced of the superiority of your
>position!
>
> 
>Stupendous Man�Annoying liberals on Usenet since 1987.
>The Reagan expansion saw an across the board increase in wealth--
>after a period under Carter during which only the wealthy made gains.
>http://reagan.webteamone.com/ --for Fans of Ronald Reagan!

To which I gladly reply:

The Truth About Ronald Reagan: A Shallow, Shameless President

Halton Adler Mann in the Houston Chronicle, July 27, 1998

Nonrevisionist analysis is demanded before too much 
hagiographic history of Ronald Reagan is engraved in 
granite and the 40th president is canonized beyond 
truth and endurance in airports, public buildings 
and Mount Rushmore.

Now that he is 87 and mentally enfeebled, the 
encomiums are coming faster from editorialist 
who once excoriated him, their prose revised 
to reflect an insufferably sanitized version 
of his presidency. Against his relentless tide 
of tribute, truth must stand firm.

The truth includes Reagan's anti-communist 
zealotry that compelled him to lie in writing 
every six months that he certified "progress" in 
human rights in El Salvador. That was the absurd, 
unilateral "condition" Congress required for 
continued US support of fascist terrorism by 
the death squads of that tormented country.

Reagan's monomaniacal determination to overthrow 
Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua led to subsidizing of 
proxy mass murder of thousands of innocents there 
by Contra terrorists. Later came the Iran-Contra 
scandal, the usurpations of presidential powers 

by Oliver North and the selling of armaments for American hostages in Lebanon, impeachable offenses in a non-teflon presidency.

A similar moral famine affected Reagan when he declared that the only alternative in the Philippines to Ferdinand Marcos' reign of terror and murder (he did not characterize it as such) was a communist dictatorship. The peaceful revolution led by the admirable Benigno Aquino's widow Corazon - whose husband was murdered in a public spectacle by Marcos's henchmen - belied Reagan's denial of a democratic movement. Reagan was perfectly willing to keep anti-communist murderers like Marcos in Power.

Although Elie Wiesel importuned him to shun a Nazi cemetery at Bitburg at the request of Michael Deaver and Helmut Kohl, President Reagan went and gave a ludicrous speech. He exculpated the entire German nation for its barbarity, persecution, genocide and war save "one man" he held responsible. Certainly there was a better way to honor Germany's decades of dedication to Democracy in the wake of World War II.

The Reagan Administration supported Saddam Hussein when Iraq invaded America's nemesis Iran, in his eight year war. It led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Persian Gulf War and the present threat of chemical and biological warfare.

Also deleted from Reagan's revisionism is his sending of 230 Marines to their easily avoidable death in what then Senator Sam Nunn, D-Ga. called "Mission Impossible" in Lebanon. The same security measures employed by embassies and banks throughout the world would have prevented the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

Reagan's me culpa after the bombing was bought by an American electorate that could never impute anything but the noblest motives to the "Gipper" and could forgive him almost everything.

As George Clemenceau might conclude, history is too serious a matter to be left to editorial writers and columnists. Give Ronald Reagan his due, his leadership of the "revolution" that bears his name. It culminated in Republican control of Congress for the first time in 40 years in 1994. And give him credit for the energy that contributed to - but was far from solely responsible fro - the dissolution of the Soviet Union's hegemony.

Extol his B-movie actor's ability to memorize his lines and deliver them with presidential credibility.

Like him for his affability and personal charm.

But remember and recognize that he was a shallow and shameless president who exploited a nation's need for shallow answers to profound and protracted problems.

History must not permit him to "go gently into that good night" unscathed by scandal, impervious to imperfections, oblivious to the tragedies he wrought, "blind to criticism and deaf to dissent.