The Real Ronald Reagan

He fought hard to cut spending programs created for the needy.

He reduced insurance for workers who had lost jobs to foreign competition he refused to stand up to.

He reduced student aid and food stamps.

He reduced Social Security benefits and the budget for the Civil Rights Commission.

All for the purpose of increasing the defense budget unnecessarily.

He claimed that homeless people might well be “homeless by choice.”

He likened Nazi Stormtroopers to Holocaust victims.

He knowingly and willingly violated the U.S. Constitution.

He gave guns to the enemy.

“He” was no evil dictator from the distant past. No … “he” was the 40th president of the United States. The man who died three days ago on June 5th. The man who was revered by Americans during his presidency and is still seen today as one of the top-rated presidents of all time in most polls.

“He,” of course, is Ronald Reagan.

It may not be fair to pick on Reagan so soon after his death, but the reality is that his mind probably died many years ago – maybe before he was first elected president. But dead or not, it’s come time to put an end to the false personification of Reagan as some weepy-eyed mope of a president. Ronald Reagan was an inherently wicked human being with a boundless insensitivity whose legacy of hatred is unmatched in the history of the republic.

Just two months into his presidency, an assassination attempt on Reagan left his press secretary James Brady severely debilitated from a gun wound to the head. Yet throughout his two terms, Reagan couldn’t find it in himself to sign the Brady Bill into law, clinging desperately – like so many of the gun nuts in this country – to his own perverted idea of the 2nd amendment, not to mention the millions that the NRA and the gun lobby were feeding him. Truly beyond reprehension.

But Ronald Reagan had only just begun.

In 1983, Reagan was solely responsible for the deaths of 241 marines he’d sent to Beirut (against advisors' recommendations) when they were killed in a terrorist bombing. Ah, the ego.

Then there was the amassing of a previously unimaginable national debt in the name of defense against an enemy who was virtually penniless. The federal deficit tripled during Reagan’s time as he sent the economy into a downward spiral for the simple sake of his own elevated self-image. The truth is that it didn’t take the Star Wars program for the USSR to collapse; what it took was a hero from the inside who saw the future. That hero was Mikhail Gorbachev. However, Reagan didn’t see it that way and was willing to bankrupt the country for his own place in history. Soon, however, he would find a different way to find a place in history – Iran Contra.

Let’s be clear about this: Ronald Reagan gave guns to the enemy. Ronald Reagan gave weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini – the same Ayatollah who held 53 Americans hostage for 444 leading up to Reagan’s presidency. Reagan then funneled the money he made from his gun sales to the Ayatollah to a foreign uprising; an act which had been deemed illegal by the U.S. Congress, putting the President in clear violation of the Constitution.

When it came to misdeeds, Ronald Reagan knew no limits.

He first denied the deal with Iran, then turned around and called Oliver North a hero – before and after North’s conviction.

What an imbecile.

By now, it’s public knowledge that secrets and deceit were nothing new to Reagan in the ’80s. In 1947, he refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee – a most public forum. But, in private, according to Reagan’s F.B.I. file, he did, indeed name names, betraying his fellow cohorts and friends.

They called him the Great Communicator, yet in truth, he struggled to utter a complete sentence that wasn’t displayed before him on a teleprompter. No wonder he appealed to the masses – a dumb president for a dumb country, and the absolute fulfillment of H. L. Mencken’s famous prediction that “on some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

It could be said that we’re witnessing round two of this phenomenon, as the current Bush regime inches towards the end of its first – and hopefully, only – term. Like Reagan, Bush and his band of henchmen possess a touch of evil. So much so that I’ve come to liken them to the Third Reich.

It seems to fit nicely:

George W. Bush as Adolph Hitler
Dick Cheney as Albert Speer
Donald Rumsfeld as Heinrich Himmler
Condoleezza Rice as Martin Bormann
Karl Rove as Joseph Goebbels
John Ashcroft as Adolph Eichmann
Colin Powell as Rudolph Hess

Like George W. Bush, Reagan was, through his own dumb luck, able to get away with just about anything during his time as president – due perhaps, as some foolish instructor at Johns Hopkins named Kenneth Lynn claimed, to his “lack of guilt in his personal life” which Lynn called a “breath of fresh air.”

Fresh air, indeed.

The fact is, it’s difficult to fully comprehend the damage Reagan wrought on America in just eight years, as he, at one point or another, turned against virtually every meaningful person or group he encountered and, ultimately, even against the country he so adamantly claimed to love.

Ronald Reagan deserves only to be remembered as the most diabolically treasonous citizen in the history of the United States. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.