Reagan was not the leader of our country, ever. He was a Stepford President with programmers whose programs you liked, and an actor's ability to make people feel all warm inside and bring a lump to their throats with made up bull sh.t.
Reagan was a great leader in the same way Clinton didn't have sex with that woman and feels our pain. Smoke and mirrors.
History will portray Clinton as a cheap, lying, self-indulgent, irresponsible, opportunistic, unprincipled, ignoble and embarrassing figure during whose presidency some good things happened.
Historians will discuss for how much of the good he should get personal credit, and will decide, I think, that the amount is not great.
History will portray Reagan as an oddly detached, lying (or fabulating, if you think he was too simple-minded to be held to account for untruths repeatedly told), confused, dumb, uncompassionate, opportunistic (making use of stolen briefing mat'ls in his presidential debates; trying to join the Communist party in the 30's when that was trendy in Hollywood; becoming an informant for the FBI on his fellow actors...), delusional, sentimental, encyclopedically ignorant, charismatic figure during whose presidency some good things happened.
Historians will discuss for how much of the good he should get personal credit, and will decide, I think, that the amount is not great. They will also pay more attention than is currently being paid to the alarming implications of Reagan's repeatedly-expressed literal belief that we were living in the "end times," and that a world cataclysm would be succeeded, happily enough, by the return of Jesus and the establishment of his eternal kingdom on earth! One can hardly imagine a more dangerous presence in the same room with a nuclear button, and historians will write papers on the implications of this small facet of the Reagan presidency.
It is easy to be called "principled" if whatever you want to believe is true, and want to live by, becomes, in your confused, magical, detached-from-reality, fabulating brain, ~TRUE!~ If principles are never threatened by fact, by truth... well, what a free ride you get; they are never tested in the crucible of reality! It's like saying a stubborn three year old is principled in his ardent defense of his imaginary friend, for heaven's sake.
Please don't mistake me as thinking that Reagan, an actor through and through, did not make a LARGE PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS FEEL VERY GOOD. I have no trouble stipulating that if that is all you ask of greatness, then he had it.
P.S. Does the fact that the President of the United States was delusional not bother any of you guys? That he told the same made-up stories over and over again, even after he'd been told they were untrue? That he didn't recognize his own son at the young man's graduation? That he couldn't distinguish between self-dramatizing and -romanticizing experiences he had had, and those he had merely seen in movies? That he thought that if civilization was destroyed in a nuclear conflagration, not to worry?
He was either a compulsive, psychopathic liar (a stupid one, who got repeatedly caught out) or he was delusional. Isn't that true? Being kind, I think he was delusional.
What do you guys all think? -- Liar, or delusional?
More later. |
