| Newsgroups |
gmane.politics.marxism.analysis |
| Message-ID |
<[email protected]> |
I spent 6 years on the faculty of UCLA while Reagan was governor. At that time, he was a vicious opponent of the movements on campuses and also against the Black, Latino and Native American movements in California. He was an effective enemy in the worst sort of way--he was able to get more support for his policies than other vicious governors.
In my opinion, at least until his later years, the image of him that some have spread as being semi-competent is misguided. He was extremely competent, and used his abilities in behalf of capital, state repression, and white power.
-----Original Message-----
From: Hunter Gray <[email protected]>
To: Bear Without Borders <[email protected]>
Cc: SycamoreCanyon <[email protected]>; marxist <[email protected]>; Redbadbear <[email protected]>
Sent: Wed, Apr 10, 2013 9:45 am
Subject: [BearwWthoutBorders] Fw: EdgeLeft: Ronald Reagan for Beginners (David McReynolds)
----- Original Message -----
From: David McReynolds
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 12:03 AM
Subject: EdgeLeft: Ronald Reagan for Beginners
EdgeLeft is an occasional column by David McReynolds. It can be reprinted and distributed without further permission.
As I watched the commentators compared Maggie Thatcher to Ronald Reagan it occurred to me that a serious mistake the old can make is assuming that "everyone knows the story about Reagan", when in fact for those of you who younger, it is easy to assume Thatcher and Reagan were, as we have been told, giants of the last century.
Thatcher was, in fact, talented, competent, and fierce - though the media has not noted that for at least several of her years in office she was a "minority" Prime Minister. (Under the parliamentary system, Thatcher's Tory party won a commanding majority in Parliament, but the majority of the popular vote went to two other parties - the Labour Party and the Liberals. Maggie did not
command the support of the majority of British voters).
Reagan, unlike Thatcher, won a clear, decisive majority of the popular vote in both the Presidential elections. But unlike Thatcher, Reagan was never the decisive leader. His political life began in Hollywood when he was involved with Hollywood's left wing, a position he left behind fairly early. In 1964 during the Goldwater campaign, Reagan made a stunning campaign speech for Goldwater. I watched that TV speech and was impressed thatt Reagan put the conservative case so persuasively. I wasn't the only one watching - big money was also watching, and saw in Reagan a man who could be useful. They ran him for governor of California, a post he won. He had earlier been hired by General Electric for a weekly TV series, which gained Reagan a wide audience, as he gave a fairly traditional conservative line.
What is not widely known is that most of the time Reagan relied on cue cards which contained the "facts" he wanted to stress (such as his famous remark about "welfare queens".- a racist comment, which overlooked the fact that the majority of those on welfare were white, not black). During his time as President he relied on competent conservatives to guide his policy, which was hard line anti-Communist, including his designation of several other regimes as "the Axis of Evil". There was a time in the 1980's when some of us in the peace movement - as well as some of those in the Soviet Union - really feared that Reagan was heading toward nuclear war.
At that time US nuclear policy was called "MAD" - Mutual Assured Destruction, the assumption being that both the Soviet Union and the US knew that if either one of them started a war, both sides would be totally destroyed. This was, in my view, almost clinically insane - a willingness by the two powers to risk the end of the human race.
It was this which persuaded Reagan to adopt the Star Wars Program, the theory being that if the US had a shield of
anti-missiles it would be safe from Soviet attack. The catch, of course, was that if you were looking at this from the
Soviet side, it meant that if the US had an effective Star Wars Program, it could then engage in a "first strike" at the
Soviet Union, certain that the Soviet response would be greatly weakened. This program was also crackpot, because it
virtually impossible to devise an anti-missile program which could stop all Soviet missiles.
But the US start of the Star Wars program meant a huge economic burden on the Soviet Union, which could not afford to match the program. Reagan did deserve credit to seeing the insanity of the "MAD:" position, which was supported by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. He did not understand how the Soviets would possibly be driven to a first strike if they felt the Star Wars program would give the US a totally one-sided advantage. (At this point, I suggest that for those who have never seen it, they rent a DVD of the classic "Dr. Strangelove").
At this time, Reagan, who sometimes slept through cabinet meetings, went to Iceland for a summit with Gorbachev.
Gorbachev, (who in fact deserves the credit for breaking the insanity of the nuclear arms race), talked frankly with Reagan about a world without any nuclear weapons. Whatever Reagan's other faults, he liked the idea, and embraced it. On his return to
Washington his close advisers insisted Reagan didn't mean it when he announced that he and Gorbachev had agreed a plan to end the nuclear arms race. It was an interesting few days before his advisers would be able to convince Reagan that
he had not, in fact, agreed with Gorbachev.
Reagan, himself, remained an elusive figure. The authorized biography of Reagan by Edmund Morris turned out to be a great
disappointment since the author, even given all the facts and papers, could not "find" the real Reagan. We do know, for
what it is worth, that he and Nancy Reagan were in love, that Reagan dealt with the onset of Alzheimer's with frankness,
but many of us felt he was suffering from the beginnings of the disease much earlier in his time in office.
The best demonstration of this would be Reagan's sad role in the Iran/Contra headings - something that can be checked
easily on the Internet. Reagan was probably guilty of impeachable offenses, and by that stage in his Presidency he
was clearly losing his grasp of reality.
So when we are asked to compare Thatcher and Reagan, aside from the fact that both were felled in the end by
dementia, one was a forceful leader fully in command of a reactionary agenda, the other, Reagan, was almost literally
a hired gun for those who had the money to back him for office - and these were the most reactionary elements
in the Republican Party.
Life has many mysteries, and one of them is the myth that Reagan was in any sense a "great President". He was
not. As recent Presidents go, he hardly is in the same league as Carter, Clinton, or the first Bush.
David McReynolds was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000, and on the staff of the War Resisters League for nearly forty years. Retired, he lives on the Lower East Side with his
two cats. He can be reached at: [email protected]
_______________________________________________
BearWithoutBorders mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/bearwithoutborders