Burying the Reagan Legacy

Former President Ronald Ray-Gun was buried in the last decade.

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan was buried over the weekend.

Now we have to do the work to bury the Reagan legacy – A legacy that sees it's fulfillment in the current nut house that is the GOP and it Presidential pretenders – Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich.

We need to bury the war on drugs that has ruined thousands of lives and destroyed countless families by sending users to jails and prisons instead of to social workers and drug counselors, Talk about family values? I'd like to see some.

We need to bury the war on the poor that

1. . Sends people off into the streets, living in parks, under bridges, and into poorly funded homeless shelters – Where they can't find jobs and attending school on a stable schedule becomes impossible.

2. Cuts off access to healthy food by limiting and eliminating food stamps, WIC, and other sources of providing food for one's family. When the only food some children see is what they get at school (which means nothing on weekends for some children) – there is a problem.

3. Cuts of Medicare and Medicaid for the poor and elderly. Both of those cost less than the emergency room treatment the poor and elderly wind up pursuing. Or the bill from a funeral service.

So much for “compassionate conservatism.”

We need to bury the military industrial complex that has consumed all of our tax dollars and forces us to borrow to pay for day to day needs for America. We have the most expensive military in the world and yet have nothing to show for it except basket cases (or failed states) like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria is now degenerating into a hell hole that I would not send a Trump supporter to. (Let me think about that some more.)

We need to bury the lie of “trickle down economics” - the lie that if we make the rich richer, then money will (eventually, somehow) get to the 99% and we will all be better off. Dr Paul Craig Roberts – the “Father of Reagnomics” now speaks about hows that was a lie and designed to transfer wealth form the 99% to the 1%.

Rather than mansplaining women's issues, search the Socialist Action web-site for articles written by women on women's issues – abortion, fair pay, health care, and many more issues that men just don't get.

We need to bury a failed foreign policy that has the US covertly supporting terrorists that support our economic agenda against the democratic will of the citizens of other countries. Look at Honduras, Venezuela, Burundi, and many others that are fighting pro-US insurgencies.

We need to bury the legacy that called AIDS a “gay disease” and portrayed the LGBTQ community as sick perverts. (Catholic church scandal anyone?) The same diseases that afflict the LGBTQ communities affect heterosexual communities too. You can not be concerned about one without looking at the other.

There is so much work to do.

Work on racism.

Work on women's rights.

Work on family rights and needs.

Work on peace.

Grab your shovels.

Just say "No." To what?

I was young when Ronald Reagan and his astrology consulting wife were in the White House. ( I only say that because I know of too many “holy roller” so-called Christians that idolize Reagan for his stance on abortion even though astrology is against their personal beliefs. They are clueless about any of his other policies.)

I was even a “Reagan Republican.” I'm glad I was able to extract my head from the other extremity of my body and begin to discern the truth about what really happened during his reign.

I remember the war on drugs and the infamous “Just say 'NO'” campaign.

Nancy should have told Ronnie all the places he needed to say “No” to.

He needed to say “No” to cutting taxes on the 1% and raising them on everyone else. This was the beginning of the end of the middle class. Ronnie started the all out war on the 99% and he used everything he could to carry it out.

When I tell people that Reaganomics could have never worked according to Dr Paul Craig Robert – I always get attacked by the neo-liberal economic freaks and the so called fiscal conservatives. Then I tell them that the good Dr was the “Father of Reaganomics” and that the whole thing (trickle down economics) was a scam to make the rich richer at every one else's expense. Some people still lack the mental facilities to understand what I said. Sad.

Ronnie should have said “No” to the war on unions. The union movement was necessary for the success of the middle class and helped to build this country. His war on the air traffic controllers, which resulted in the wholesale firing of every controller, was the beginning of the end of the union movement and a major assault on the middle class. It, the unions and the middle class, still have not recovered from those wounds.

Ronnie should have said “No” to the proxy war in Iran. The US should have pulled its nose out of the war between Iraq and Iran and provided no support to trite side. Because of the US support for Iraq with arms, biological / chemical weapons, and intelligence, Iraq violated the international convention on the use of biological and chemical weapons and committed a crime against humanity. Thousands of Iranian men suffered needlessly in the use of those weapons. And let us also remember the use of the weapons on the Kurds. And we turned a blind eye in both instances and (most likely) kept Saddam Hussein (our boy toy in power) out of the International Criminal Court.

BTW – for anyone in the know, the war between Iraq and Iran led to the financial crisis that Iraq went into and was a part of the reason they invaded Kuwait. (I say part because I have been told but have not been able to corroborate a statement that I was told about Kuwait stealing Iraqi oil and selling it on the open market. Anyone have any research proving this?) This lead to the sanctions in the 1990's that led to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children and women, and eventually the disastrous 2003 invasion that we are still picking up the pieces after.

Ronnie should have said “No' to the CIA smuggling in pot and cocaine into the US. Iran-Contra came into existence when a CIA plane was shot down, the pilot captured and the cargo of the plane was found to be contraband drugs. BTW – I remember the drug problem in the 1980's being pot and cocaine. I wonder how much the CIA smuggled in.

BTW: There were all sorts of Constitutional problems with the Iran-Contra affair and only the suspicious death of CIA Director William Casey kept Reagan from being impeached and his Vice President out of prison. (Shades of Nixon anyone?)

There are so many more things that Reagan should have said “No” to.

“No” to the war on a woman's Constitutional right to choose. (See Roe v Wade.)

“No” to supporting the Afghan rebels and Osama bin Laden against the Soviet Union. (9/11 anyone?) Afghanistan was a successful democracy and improving in many areas. And then we stuck our noses into it. It's been how many years? And things are how much worse than in the 70's?

“No” to the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. (How does a so called Christian President arm rebels that murder the Archbishop of a country during a mass? And support the rape and murder of Catholic nuns and the murder of Catholic priests?)

I'm sure these is so much more that could be said.

What else should Nancy have told Ronnie to say “No” to?

And how much better off as a nation would we be if he had?

Update: March 8, 2016

I was advised not to speak ill of the dead so soon.

What of the living dead that President Reagan created?

His full frontal whole scale war on the poor created legions of the living dead.

His policies began the scaling back of anti-poverty legislation that kept people in housing, put food on their tables, and provided medical care when ill.

Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II took Reagan's policies full bore and created an entire underclass of people that it is OK for everyone to dump on, without any regard for how they got there.

This includes the unemployed former union and blue collar workers. I know of a few white collar workers that are in this class now as well. And, somehow, their situation is all their fault.

Could Reagan have said “No” to that?

Then there was the closing of the mental health hospitals that took care of those whose mental faculties are, to be kind, not all there. They became the modern homeless people that we see on the streets. They wind up in jails and prisons for petty crimes and cost us much more than any “insane asylum” ever did.

Could Reagan have said “No” to that policy?

And then there is our infamous budget deficit. In eight years of fiscal irresponsibility Reagan tripled it. Bush II did the same exact thing with similar policies. (Fool me once, twice, better not get to three.)

And now we face crippling cuts to our schools, hospitals, libraries, roads, bridges, and other public fixtures because, somehow cutting taxes on the 1% was going to create a budget surplus.

Some lies I can live without.

The sooner we expose these and help people to see the truth, the faster we will be able to turn this ship around and away from the coming storm that will destroy us all.

Then again, maybe it is the storm that will reveal everything.