Monday, June 07, 2004

Posted here Monday, June 07, 2004 at 7:21:26 AM     My own vie of Reagan is that he and thatcher took advantage of the coming economic boom in hyper capitalism, and was continued right through Clinton. But the deficits piled up on Carter, and swamped him, just as whoever wins in November will face a debt load that will probably be destructive. He also was a no detail president and that let the neocons and other creeps in at lower levels to do policy by thuggery. The whole Reagan Latin American policy was terrible, working with economic elites to dominate local economies and support multinationals, when ordinary people -mostly peasant farmers, were suffering economically, and in terms of local justice,  quite terribly. Reagan was also the first idiot president. Not much reading, few friends - or none - and no conversation. Just an ideology of anti-communism and a reality of supporting money. No social thought. The use of the Funeral to avoid serious issues is mostly the responsibility of the press to prevent. The Gorbachev era was driven much more by internal society dynamics (complexification of the Soviet economy being unmanageable by state planning with greedy elites in control) than by any US policy, despite US perceptions. The sentimentality around Reagan does not fit the reality I was witness to during those years. ********