I don't mean this to be a hit diary, or a pile on. But in reading the discussions around the blogs today on Obama's growingly-infamous comment about Reagan's legacy, I feel like some folks just don't get it, they truly do not empathize with those of us on the left who hear the word "Reagan" and see red. I think a lot of this is due to not sharing a common history.
So, briefly, these are some recollections that jump into my brain when I hear "Reagan"...
It was 1980. There was no internet. There was no cable (or at least none in my neck of the woods in small town Nebraska). We got our news from the local paper, the Lincoln paper and four broadcast network stations. I was a bored thirteen-year-old, walking the school hallways with her head stuck in a book and glasses perched on my nose, trying to grow through these years as quickly as possible so I could Get Out. Escape To The Great World Beyond.
In 1980 a lot of stores in our small town still closed on Sunday...and they were still huddled around the town square, encasing the county courthouse. If you wanted something you had to either get it Saturday or drive into Lincoln. We had a local movie theatre that was still open (although the local businesses stopped giving out "movie money" coupons a few years back).
The big news of the day was the Iranian hostage crisis. On the radio in the car, on the TV news at night, in the schools during our discussions of current events, everyone would get updated on "Day Number ____ ", a macabre notation of how many days the hostages had been held. This would be followed up with blurry film footage and photographs of men and women, blindfolded, surrounded by young men with guns. We were treated to reports of what happens when one is being taken hostage. What that feels like. Whether they let you go to the bathroom.
Analysts would discuss the Carter administration's action - or lack thereof. Carter refused to negotiate with terrorists. Eventually we heard news of a downed plane and a failed rescue attempt. People were frustrated and scared. It felt like the one battle in the Cold War that we were losing (regardless of the reality of things - trust me, this *is* what it felt like)...and we all collectively understood the threat that loomed if we let that happen.
It is this environment that elected tough-talking Ronald Reagan. The Man of Action. The choice of "Other" on your ballot. It was hardly the masses yearning for "...a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." After Reagan was elected and the hostages were freed the country breathed a sigh of relief, patting itself on the back for making the right choice. It was only later on that we would learn it was secret negotiations with these terrorists before we even cast our votes - and not all that tough talk - that freed these hostages.
But with the hostages freed we were still under a threat even more dire, that of total nuclear holocaust. Mutually Assured Destruction had been our policy since Kennedy, and - because we couldn't figure out any other way of going about things - it remained our policy since that time. We watched The Day After on the TV, and talked about that woman's hair falling out after being poisoned by radiation. In Nebraska we had a special network news treat: seeing a model of downtown Omaha being blown to bits in a nuclear blast. Unlike the rest of the country, Omaha would be ground zero in a nuclear war as it was the home of the Strategic Air Command.
We drove down gravel roads that suddenly became paved - roads with no names, only the ones that the locals gave them: "missle base roads". Because, well, they were built to lead to a missle base.
And in the middle of all of this the economy boomed, I went to high school and then college and I have to say, even for the eighties I had *really big hair*. And skin tight jeans. (Ah, to have my pre-mommy body back again).
But I digress.
I went to an Ivy League school "back east", where the campus was buzzing about who got the latest job on Wall Street, where the best place to go shopping was and where everyone wore the standard uniform of leather bomber jackets. And in the middle of all of this we learned, and studied, and discussed the Russian threat, the Eastern Block Countries, the history of La Belle Epoch, and, yes, Mutually Assured Deterence. Professors openly questioned the government's assessments of the Soviet threat, the number of missles they had and the numbers we needed to defend ourselves (as opposed to launching a first strike).
I was fortunate enough to go to Russia.
I hung out with engineering students there who openly questioned *their* government's allocation of resources to build these nuclear warheads. Their lack of testing them, and their dictates to just swap components when there were shortage issues. I saw people carrying briefcases and bookbags, to stock up on certain items that hit the store shelves and then disappeared just as quickly. I saw the cheaply made shoes, smoked the cheaply made local cigarettes and walked the streets where small three cylander vehicles - "put put cars" my friend called them - cruised the streets looking for the impossible to find parking spot.
And after all of this I thought to myself: *this* is the Evil Empire? It seemed like a surreal joke, knowing the trillions we had spent in "defending" ourselves against these folks.
It was then I understood I had been lied to. By Reagan. And that the trillions of dollars of debt we incurred at the expense of mentally retarded people being forced into the streets and government programs being stripped to the bone wasn't about protecting us. It was about something else, a more sinister remake of society that was being enabled by a combination of fear and consumption, forcing us to become a more "me" oriented society and less of a "thou" oriented society.
This is why, today, I was deeply saddened listening to Senator Obama's remarks on Reagan. It just took me right back there to that moment in time when, for me, the lie began.
Again, this isn't a hit diary. Just an explanation of where I'm coming from.
Peace.
UPDATE: I was originally just trying to keep this as an expression of what Reagan was really like and what that election was like, but maybe that was a little too subtle. Sorry about that.
To answer everyone, here is Obama's quote, with the part that I take umbrage at highlighted:
I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
If you notice, people actually *weren't* feeling that they wanted clarity, optimism and a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
People were *in fear*. The 1980 election was about *fear*. It was not about *hope*. The GOP has been attempting to spread the message of Reagan the Great Optimist/Hopemonger/etc. in an effort to cannonize him. This spin is far from reality.
I hope this explains my feelings on the subject a little more directly.
This is a crosspost of a blog entry originally posted on Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/16/202428/519/291/438030
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