Ronald Reagan: Say What You Like Thread

[cloudy]

Bitch all you want abou thim, but he had a rapport with the American people that even his years out of the public spotlight haven't dimmed.

He got 9% of the Black vote, second term. So I'd correct your statement to "he had rapport with the white American people, that even his years ...."

I'm not trying to take either side here, please believe that, but I'd like to point out something that jumped out at me when I read this:

He may have only had 9% of the Black vote, however, I can't see where that has anything to do with the poll that Colly mentioned. Correct me if I'm wrong, but she didn't say 70,000 plus white respondents. Surely it can be believed that they are not all white.

Sorry. Carry on.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Bitch all you want abou thim, but he had a rapport with the American people that even his years out of the public spotlight haven't dimmed.

He got 9% of the Black vote, second term. So I'd correct your statement to "he had rapport with the white American people, that even his years ...."

Um. Yeah. Hate to give you a news flash, but blacks vote Democrat, overwhelmingly. The poll isn't broken down by color, sex or orientation. But thank you for trying to get an argument based on race going, I'll be checking out of this thread now.

-Colly

 

[Pure]

no special focus on 'race' here Colly, just one instance of 'neglect' by a fabled leader, tuned to the heart of America. AIDS will do just as well.

Cloudy, internet persons are disproportionately white and middle class. (How many black persons are in Author's Hangout or BDSM forum, for example? Very few. How many non white? Few.) Simple computer ownership is skewed greatly toward white people. Hence the AOL poll, for one of half a dozen reasons, does not reflect what "Americans" think of Reagan.

All AOL polls I've seen carry the warning: This poll is without any scientific validity. (roughly). Because of the 'volunteer' problem.

 

[Clare Quilty]

He got 9% of the Black vote, second term. So I'd correct your statement to "he had rapport with the white American people, that even his years ...."

He got into office in the first place based partially on his racist appeal. The so called Reagan Democrats voted, against their own working class interests, for Reagan. He put a smiling face on George Wallace's politics and the people fell for it. Then Reagan summarily F-ed them up the arse in an all out assault on the working man.

 

[cloudy]

Cloudy, internet persons are disproportionately white and middle class. (How many black persons are in Author's Hangout or BDSM forum, for example? Very few. How many non white? Few.)

I don't know, nor do I claim to. I've never even visited the BDSM forum. Non-white? Well, at least one, that I know of.

Simple computer ownership is skewed greatly toward white people. Hence the AOL poll, for one of half a dozen reasons, does not reflect what "Americans" think of Reagan.

I don't take it as scientifically accurate, I was just pointing out the difference between what Colly said, and how you chose to interpret it, that's all.

 

[Pure]

Cloudy said,

I was just pointing out the difference between what Colly said, and how you chose to interpret it, that's all.

Colly--incidentally, one of our most informed posters around here-- wished to draw attention to Reagan's 'rapport' with the American people, in some broad sense.

There's some element of truth there; which is why her posts are worth reading. OTOH, that 'truth', here, is more so if you ignore the black, the poor, the gay, the Salvadoran refugees, etc.

"Fat" white straight people, and 'lean' white straight 'hardhat' males with jobs they thought might be taken by Blacks, obviously supported Reagan in droves.

In support of her view, she cited an AOL poll. Which is pretty much fluff. As she no doubt knows. I see no "difference" or misunderstanding.

 

[shereads]

Five words:

Traditional family values; Jane Wyman.





Sorry...Restraint on the life-and-death issues is making my teeth hurt.

And the Band Played On. Publishers Weekly: "The book stands as a definitive reminder of the shameful injustice inflicted on this nation by the institutions in which we put our trust . . . a landmark work."

There were lots of funerals. All of them sad, most of them forgotten.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

CNN always points out that their internet polls are not scientific. If AOL failed to include that information, I doubt that it means AOL found a way around that quibble.

Further, running a popularity pole on a dead president during the week of lying in state, while TV stations run 24/7 program in praise of his acumen, gentility, superhuman niceness, and all the other gee-whiz fodder, reeks more of a publicity stunt to advertise AOL, than any scientific inquiry to give AOL subscribers information.

Take a pole on the popularity of the New York Yankees, the week following the World Series. If the Yanks won it, 90 per cent will say they are nearly better than sex. If they lost, 60 percent will claim the bums are overpaid malingerers who are an embarrassment to the city.

All you learn from that is human nature.

 

[rgraham666]

I've not posted here for two reasons.

First, I'm Canadian and I wasn't sure if what I had to say was relevant.

And second, I wanted to be sure of what I wanted to say.

What I've decided to say is Ronald Reagan was exactly the President America needed at the time. America was wondering if 'The American Dream' had failed. After Wategate and Vietnam, America felt very unsure of itself and it's future.

Along came Ronnie, the grandfatherly figure who picked them up, gave them a hug and told them everything was going to be fine. He also seemed to be 'The American Dream' made flesh. Yes, anybody can become President.

He made America feel great once again.

His policies, in my opinion, accomplished the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do. And actually pushed 'The American Dream' farther away from many people.

But as long as Ronnie appeared on their TV screens and told everyone that they were indeed loved, very few people noticed, and fewer cared.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

There's something else about Reagan that appealed to the masses, I think, and that was the fact that he was a "do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do" kind of conservative. This seems to be de rigeur for conservative leaders, and I've come to believe that this is part of being conservative. Newt Gingrish had a mistress, Reagan was divorced, Strom Thurmond had an affair with a black woman (or was it more than one?), Rush Limbaugh's high on painkillers, etc. etc.

To some of us, including most liberals, this kind of thing is hypocrisy pure and simple. But I think conservatives look at it a different way. They look at it and see that the man's heart was in the right place but the flesh was weak. Conservatives look at values as goals to be strived for, and if they feel your heart is in the right place, they'll forgive all sorts of wild and outrageous behavior.

That's why they don't care about GWB's cocaine use and desultory military service. George W's got those good old Christian values now, and so he should be forgiven his youthful lapses. And that's why Reagan could stand up there with his broken mariage and his gay son and dysfucntional daughter and sing the praises of family values and get away with it.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

dr mab.,

i'm biased of course, but i think you're onto something. Reagan in particular reeked of hypocrisy in a number of areas.

one GOOD way though, was that he *talked tougher at the world's evil than he ever DID anything. remember he hadn't exactly manned the machine guns at the advancing Hun. rather the movie camera.

GWB somehow took the metaphor of 'onward Christian soldiers' and 'smite the evildoer' literally. Reagan was content with Granada, probably slightly harder to conquer than Columbia university. Definitely harder than Watts.

Even Thatcher was content with the Faulklands. There's a battle for the 'iron lady.'!

My theory is that at some point, the neocon dreamers began to feel their oats, and to get some real prodding from the likes of Sharon, and decided to send in the troops and knock off Saddam.
They taught Georgie boy 'dead or alive' and 'bring 'em on' and he was off to the races.

PS,

As to 'heart' and 'deeds', remember that's an old chestnut of protestantism. Luther said, 'Sin lustily so as to enjoy the pleasure of repentence.' Calvin said (roughly), "God's already decided each souls fate (from birth or before), so if you're 'saved' nothing you do will make a fuckload of difference."

Both proposed the half truth that no one should expect to 'convince' God (to save them) or prove their goodness, by doing lots of nice things for people.

 

[oggbashan]

The Guardian article quoted above is biased which is not a unique event. It is the most 'liberal' (in US terms) paper in the UK and allows columnists to put forward views that even it would shrink at expressing in editorial pages.

Yes, some of Reagan's administration were not 'on Britain's side' over The Falkland Islands crisis. That was not a surprise. Both the UK and Argentina were supposed to be friends of the US (and each other). It was a difficult balancing act and Reagan's administration thought (as did the UK's) that diplomacy would solve the crisis without bloodshed.

President Reagan tried to be fair to both but when the chips were down he helped the UK. So did France whatever their government's public stance might have been. Saying one thing for public consumption and doing something completely different is not confined to governments and helping your friends is not unusual.

The UK owed President Reagan a debt for his assistance in the Falklands War. That assistance was overt and covert. Other countries helped the UK as well. Some of that assistance was overt. Most wasn't because of internal political concerns but the principle that effectively occupied territory could not be taken by force needed to be reinforced. If not, most of the countries in the UN could have their boundaries redrawn and chaos would rule.

He was there for us. We need to say 'Thank you'.

Og

 

[Pure]

It would be nice to see any evidence whatever for the claim that RR was a _supporter of Britain's military efforts to reclaim the Falklands_.

Or a critique of existing evidence, other than the old Amicus line, "That's a liberal source."

----
a few more bits of evidence

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5145739/


Reagan and Thatcher,
political soul mates

Leaders of conviction with congruent views

The Associated Press

Jun 5 2004


The relationship flourished despite the leaders’ differences. She was a workaholic who immersed herself in the details of policy and slept less than six hours a night; he was laid-back, concerned with the big picture but happy to delegate responsibility for the details.

They had disagreements, notably over her refusal to negotiate with Argentina during the 1982 Falkland Islands war and over the U.S. invasion of Grenada a year later.

During the Falkland war, Reagan called to ask for a cease-fire. Thatcher refused.

“This conversation was a little painful at the time but it had a worthwhile effect,” she wrote.

Thatcher also said she felt “dismayed and let down” by the 1983 U.S. invasion of Granada, which ended a left-wing coup in the former British colony.

But their deep friendship endured,

----
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/2/172616.shtml

posted also at RonaldReagan.com

Reagan Feared Falklands War Might Go Nuclear

Stewart Stogel, NewsMax.com

Friday, April 2, 2004


On board his air force plane over the Atlantic, Haig briefed the president on his meetings in London.Tapes of the air-ro-ground conversation reveal that Haig was not optimistic about avoiding a conflict between the U.K. and Argentina.

Then, came a simple, but chilling question from the president:"Al, do you think the British nuclear sub down there might let the Argies have a big one?"The sub in question was believed to be carrying enough fire power to level a significant portion of Argentina.

Haig downplayed the nuclear threat, but cautioned Reagan that anything was possible.Publicly, Thatcher denied any British forces were in the region.She also denied rumors of a U.K. sub loaded with nuclear missiles was already on station off the Argentine coast, just days after the invasion of the Falklands.

President Reagan's concerns show that the rumors of a U.K. nuclear sub in the south Atlantic were indeed well founded.While the U.S. was not able to prevent a war, it seems that Reagan and Haig were indeed successful in preventing the conflict from going nuclear and igniting a possible world war.

 

[Pure]

Tough Choices. And the men who make them.

Reagan had to choose between a Latin American dictator and British neocon pal. Tough choice. Much of the Reagan 'company' leaned toward the dictator, of course.

http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id319.htm

33. The Falklands War

Copyright 2000 Jason Manning All Rights Reserved

In 1982 two nations went to war over the ownership of an archipelago 300 miles from the southernmost tip of South America -- and the United States was caught in the middle. The Falklands -- two main islands and 200 islets with a total land area the size of Connecticut -- had been claimed for Britain in 1594 by Sir Richard Hawkins, and named in 1690 for the First Lord of the Admiralty. But the Spanish insisted that the 1492 Papal Line of Demarcation gave the islands to them, and when Argentina declared its independence from Spain in 1816 it claimed sovereignty over the islands, which Argentines called Las Malvinas. In 1833 the British colonized the uninhabited islands; the Royal Falklands Island Company transplanted Cheviot and Southdown sheep as well as Irish, Scottish and Welsh descendants of the 1,800 Falklanders who lived on the islands in 1982.

For a century and a half Argentina protested. When the three-man military junta led by Leopoldo Galtieri launched a surprise attack on the islands, overpowering a small garrison of Royal Marines, the British public clamored for action, with a clear majority favoring the recapture of the Falklands by force.

The U.S. government disappointed the British by initially attempting to remain neutral. Though aware of Argentina's poor human rights record, there were some in the Reagan administration, most prominently UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who viewed the anticommunist Argentine government as a potential ally in the struggle to resist the spread of Marxism in Latin America. London did not fail to note that Kirkpatrick was guest of honor at a dinner held by Argentine's ambassador to Washington on the very day that 2,500 Argentine troops stormed Port Stanley on East Falkland Island. While the European Common Market's ten nations banned Argentine imports in a show of support for Britain, the tepid U.S. response threatened the stability of the NATO alliance.

Secretary of State Alexander Haig embarked on twelve days of shuttle diplomacy between London and Buenos Aires in search of a negotiated settlement based on a joint Argentine-British-American administration of the islands. But Britain refused to discuss the future of the Falklands until the Argentine forces were removed, and Galtieri would not budge from his position that Argentina's sovereignty over the Falklands be accepted before negotiations took place. Many observers believed that the invasion was designed to defuse growing unrest among the Argentine people,[...] Argentines rallied behind the junta. Resurgent national pride tinged with war fever led thousands to enlist in the military.

The full-scale Argentine invasion occurred on April 2; on that same day the UN Security Council's Resolution 502, condemning the act and calling for an immediate withdrawal of Argentine troops from the Falklands, was introduced. On April 7 a British armada of 45 ships including the carriers Invincible and Hermes began a 7,800 mile journey to the Falklands, carrying a 2,000-man Royal Marine assault force, Harrier attack planes, and Sea King helicopters. (The British task force would eventually include 28,000 men and over 100 ships.)

Aboard HMS Invincible was 22-year-old Prince Andrew, second in line to the British throne and serving as a helicopter pilot. Meanwhile, British nuclear-powered submarines patrolled a 200-mile "exclusion zone" around the Falklands, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned that any Argentine ship that tried to run the blockade would be sunk. [...]on April 30, after the Haig diplomatic mission had failed, President Reagan allied the U.S. with Britain, leveling economic sanctions against Argentina and offering military supplies to the British.

At first it seemed the British intended to use an air and naval blockade to starve the 9,000 Argentine troops on the islands into surrender, in the belief that an amphibious assault would be too costly. On May 1, a British Vulcan bomber followed by Sea Harrier jets braved intense anti-aircraft fire to strike the Port Stanley airfield in an attempt to curtail Argentine air supply operations. (The British even considered air strikes against mainland bases to further offset Argentine air superiority.)

Several Argentine fighter jets were shot down in an attack on the Royal Navy task force. Meanwhile, the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano set sail to engage the British ships. The Belgrano, formerly the USS Phoenix, was sunk by a pair of Tigerfish torpedoes fired by the British submarine Conquerer. Two days later an Argentine fighter-bomber fired an Exocet missile at HMS Sheffield, sinking the British destroyer.

This, the first full-scale naval engagement since World War II, coupled with the damage its support of Britain had done to U.S. relations with Latin American countries (which had rallied to Argentina's cause in the spirit of "Hispanidad," or Latin American solidarity), prompted the Reagan administration to broker a ceasefire through Peruvian President Fernando Belaunde Terry. [...]

[But]The war went on. While 3,500 Welsh and Scots Guards, accompanied by a Gurkha regiment, sailed for the South Atlantic aboard the requisitioned Queen Elizabeth 2, British SAS commandos conducted a night raid to blow up an Argentine ammunition dump and destroy 11 enemy planes; 18 of the commandos drowned when an albatross flew into the engine of the helicopter carrying them back to HMS Hermes, causing the aircraft to crash into the sea.

On May 21 the British invasion began. Casualties were high on both sides as a beachhead was established near Port San Carlos on East Falkland, 50 miles from Port Stanley. The Argentines launched a fierce air attack on the invasion fleet, sinking the British frigate Ardent and damaging four other ships, losing 16 warplanes in the process.

The British plan was to isolate the Argentine main force at Port Stanley from garrisons at Goose Green and Fox Bay. In the first major land battle of the war, the British 2nd Parachute Battalion seized Goose Green, defeating a large but discouraged Argentine force. "Their weakness," said Major Chris Keeble, 2nd Para's second-in-command, "was that they did not really want to fight." [...]

Argentine commander General Mario Menendez surrendered after his men suddenly broke and ran. Over 250 British men and three times as many Argentine troops were killed during the course of the war.

In Buenos Aires, news of the defeat enraged the public; 5,000 angry and humiliated Argentines demonstrated at the presidential palace, prompting Galtieri to resign. In London, Margaret Thatcher saw her public approval rating soar. "We have ceased to be a nation in retreat," she announced, articulating a renewed national pride. The "Iron Lady" promised self-government for the Falklanders and favored making the islands a British protectorate. The "Falklands factor" contributed significantly to Thatcher's Tory government victory in the 1983 general elections.

The United States was confronted with the task of repairing its relations with Latin America. Argentina blamed its defeat on American military assistance to Britain. In fact, such assistance was minimal; the Reagan administration even refused to loan the British an AWACS aircraft that could have alerted the Royal Navy task force to surprise air attacks.

According to Secretary of State Haig, the lesson of the conflict was obvious in a decade riven by war. "The mixture of history, passion, miscalculation, national pride, and personal egotism that produced a 'little' war that everyone knew was senseless and avoidable also contains the ingredients for a much larger conflict." Caught in the middle, the United States found the Falklands War to be a no-win diplomatic situation.

REFERENCES

The Economist, 22 May 1982, 12 November 1983, 3 March 1984

Newsweek, 7 June, 1982

Time, 2 April 1982, 19 April 1982, 26 April 1982, 10 May 1982, 17 May 1982, 24 May 1982, 31 May 1982, 7 June 1982, 21 June 1982, 28 June 1982

U.S. News & World Report, 26 April 1982, 3 May 1982

Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy
Alexander M. Haig, Jr. (New York: MacMillan, 1984)

War in the Falklands: The Full Story
The Sunday Times of London Insight Team (London: Times Newspapers, Ltd., 1982)

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Personal Voices: At Reagan's Side
By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet
June 11, 2004

*** As I enter the snaking line of thousands squeezed into the parking lot and pass the smiling, blonde, California-dreamy young Christians in shorts handing out water and pamphlets – "Are You Good Enough to go to Heaven?" – from the Cornerstone Church van parked next to a row of Port-a-pottys in the lot, I think how, despite the best intentions of pundits and politicians, paupers and the powerful, the Reagan legacy will undergo the dialectical twists and turns of interpretation. History has not ended. How we interpret and define the Reagan legacy in our lifetimes will be a measure of how clean or excrement-filled the values and institutions atop our shining city are. With a smile, I accept the water and pamphlet before braving the perfumed Port-a-potty. ***

Roberto Lovato is a Los Angeles-based writer with Pacific News Service.


Full text at AlterNet

 

[shereads]

This time, conservatives openly embraced the “starve the beast strategy.” In an interview with U.S. News and World Report, Norquist explained: “The goal is reducing the size and scope of government by draining its lifeblood.” During an August 2001 press conference, Bush himself declared that the disappearing surplus was “incredibly positive news” because it would put Congress in a “fiscal straitjacket.” By Nov. 5, 2003, with the federal budget showing a deficit of at least $374 billion, Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins was saluting the Republicans as “the party that restrains the growth of government by keeping it on the only fiscal leash that works—a.k.a. the deficit.” ...

I missed this post the first time around. It's scary.

10 years ago, I wouldn't have believed it.

Post-Enron, I'm ready to believe anything of the super-rich. NPR played a tape last week that's being presented as evidence in one of the Enron criminal trials. It was a tape that somebody made during a meeting at Enron, back during the California energy crisis that they had helped engineer. They were laughing about the rolling blackouts, like a bunch of fraternity boys who had played a prank.

That kind of greed is incomprehensible to the average person. But the proof is there, on the tape. It's as if the rich really do think that having to play fair is unfair. At what point does someone have so much money, that he can't see the need to acquire more by cheating people? Most of us can imagine a lifestyle we'd like to enjoy if we were wealthier. But once you've reached the multimillionaire level, and own your homes on both coasts and can travel first-class wherever you go, and have secured enough to make your heirs comfortably rich, what else is there to gain by continued greed - except for the fun of laughing with your peers about the gullibility of the middle class?

 

[oggbashan]

I am not going to search for evidence to 'prove' what Reagan did for the UK before and during the Falklands War. Some of what was done is still covered by our Official Secrets Act so the evidence is more likely to be available in US sources.

I, some of my family, friends and colleagues were involved at the time in back up roles to the task force that was sent. Much of the materiel could not have been taken without access to NATO stores - that needed US agreement and President Reagan's personal word. We knew we had US tacit support once the diplomacy failed. How far Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet were prepared to go to avoid conflict would have astonished public opinion at the time. The President pushed her to the edge of what a politician could deliver given the public mood at the time.

He went further to avoid war and then to assist the UK once conflict was inevitable than some of his administration wanted him to.

All I can do is quote what I said above:

He was there for us. We need to say 'Thank you'.

Og

 

[smutpen]

Well.

I already said in the other thread what I thought was good about Reagan.

But also think he did this country great harm.


I've never been registered with either party; "A plague on both your houses!" has been my motto.

I'm also neither liberal nor conservative; it depends on the issue.
I'm a humanist, and a rationalist.

I revere the U.S. Constitution and the principles it embodies.


Since Reagan, I have been pretty much forced to vote Democratic and Liberal, primarily for two reasons:

On his watch, and with his support, the GOP was infiltrated by the religious right.

This movement has no respect for the Constitution, and no understanding of the principles behind it. They seek nothing less than a Christian theocracy, and the founding fathers would be spinning in their graves if they could hear the revisionist history that claims this is a "Christian nation," and if they could see the influence of these ignorant, small-minded, moralistic hypocrites in Washington today.

According to ChristianityToday.com, W told a Houston congregation, (while the election was still in dispute) that he had been "chosen by God." I saw him make a speech to a group of gleeful fundies in which he declared that America was chosen by God to lead the world to freedom. He has described the war on terror as a war against Satan, and boasted of how he told a Somali warlord, that, 'My God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.'

If you don't understand why this is terrifying, if you don't understand why it makes a mockery of the Constitution that Dubya swore to support and defend, (and which he immediately began working to subvert with preferential government funding for "faith-based charities" within days of his inauguration) you need to read some history.

Such is the fruit of Reagan's acceptance or collusion in allowing the Christian right to unduly influence, and sometimes dictate to, the Republican party.

The second reason is that with Reagan, the Republican-Conservative establishment became committed to the notion that the most important function of the economy is to further enrich the ultra-rich (it will trickle down, dontcha know), and that the government should allow the noble corporate philanthropists to "self-regulate."

We can see a fine example of how well this worked when Sen. Gramm's bill (for which Enron was the primary lobbyist) to deregulate energy commodities trading, over the direct and emphatic objections of the SEC, resulted in a power crisis for the state of California (1 stage 3 emergency in the 6 months prior, 38 in the 6 months after), while Enron looted the state treasury.

But of course, that was all the fault of the Democratic governor, right? (He was no hero in that mess, but...please.)

Democrats and liberals also are cozy with corporate crooks, but the notion that the government has no right and no responsibility to protect the citizens and the infrastructure of the nation from profiteering and corruption seems to be a Republican fantasy, and again, one that became dominant during Reagan's tenure.

But the editorial in the Army Times, which I've posted the link for twice now, brought my disgust with the party to new heights, and in this insatnce, I think Reagan would have agreed with me.

Bush has had no shame about looting the combat pay and other military budget line items to fund the precious tax breaks for the richest one percent of Americans.

Democrat David Obey proposed that the tax cut for those with incomes exceeding $1 millon per year should be cut from 88K to 83K to fund a shortfall in the military construction budget. The Republican majority quickly killed this idea. If the families of soldiers under fire in Iraq have to live in crumbling, dilapidated housing, well hey, that's too bad. These multi-millionaires really need that 5K a year...

 

[Pure]

The more I review Reagan and his legacy, the more I think it can be summed up in these terms not exactly new to US foreign policy of liberals and conservatives:

While I stringently oppose communist tyrrany, I never met a fascist dictator friendly to US business, that I didn't like, and whose secret police and army I wasn't eager to arm and train.

The Falklands case shows some of the occasional difficulties of this rule.

The difficulty can be softened through following another Reagan maxim: When there are two parties in armed conflict, each, to a degree, in harmony with US interests, remember that both have the potential to harm with US interests. HENCE the wisest path is often to aid *both* sides.

 

[BlackSnake]

God bless America. God bless Ronald Reagan.

 

[Pornofan420]

God Bless America. But I stomped on the ground once, extra hard, when I heard he died, hoping he would hear the reverberation down in Hell.

I don't even believe in Hell. But for Ronnie Raygun, I'm willing to make the effort just in case.

 

[Pure]

Was that trademark smile the first sign of Alzheimer's?

{A physician speculates about roots of RR's Alzheimers; familial predisposing factors.}


By GABOR MATÉ
Saturday, June 12, 2004 - Page F7

[start]
Until his death this week, former U.S. president Ronald Reagan was the world's most famous Alzheimer's sufferer. "I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life," he wrote in his poignant farewell message to Americans when he was first diagnosed at 83.

The acknowledgment marked the formal onset of his long, sad decline, but it may be that Mr. Reagan's entire life history and long-established emotional patterns had prepared the ground for the illness that eventually robbed him of thought, speech and movement.

For all his charm, Mr. Reagan lacked the capacity for genuine emotional expression. His stereotypical response when emotions were called for was, "Really, there are no words." He described himself once as "the calm vacant centre of the hurricane." His only reply to the physician who informed him of his wife Nancy's breast cancer was a brusque, "Well, you're the doctors, and I'm confident you'll be able to take care of it."

According to his official biographer, Mr. Reagan was characterized by an "immense insularity, a paralysis of sensibility." From childhood onward, he was "sheathed in a strange calm." Could these traits have been harbingers of the dreadful insularity that would ultimately envelop him?

Evidence strongly suggests that a lack of full emotional capacity is a risk factor for the later development of Alzheimer's disease. In the famous "nun study" published in 2000 by the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky, researchers gained access to autobiographies that had been written by young novitiates as they entered religious orders many decades earlier. By the time of the study, the subjects were elderly nuns, and beginning in 1986, the researchers observed them closely, watching for signs of normal aging but also for signs of dementia. After the nuns died, the researchers performed autopsies on their brain tissue. Three findings from this study have startling implications for our understanding of Alzheimer's.

Nuns who had greater linguistic facility in youth, who were able to express more ideas in grammatically more complex language, were less likely to succumb to Alzheimer's as they grew older. Nuns in this group were more able to retain their intellectual and interactive capacities into advanced old age, even if it turned out on autopsy that their brains were rife with the pathological markers typical of Alzheimer's. And nuns whose autobiographical recollections as young people were happier and more filled with positive emotions such as joy and gratitude were likely to live longer and were, again, at a lower risk for dementia.

From other studies, it is well known that a person's ability to give an articulate and coherent autobiographical narrative reflects healthy attachments with family. A paucity of emotional expression in adulthood tells of emotional deprivation early in life. Mr. Reagan's emotional poverty and his need to cocoon himself against reality can be understood as the responses of a sensitive child to the trauma of living with an alcoholic, unreliable father and an emotionally absent mother. At an early age, he distanced himself from the vulnerability of genuine emotion by hiding behind sentiment and learned to maintain a surface tranquillity by failing to recognize his own emotional pain or that of others. His apparently nonchalant response to news of his wife's potentially fatal malignancy did not denote a lack of caring -- on the contrary, it betrayed more caring and more anxiety than he could ever allow himself to experience.

In an atmosphere of severe psychological stress, a young child's brain may perform an evasive manoeuvre: It shuts down awareness of painful feelings. The brain can never defend us against being wounded, but it can suppress our sense of hurt, forcing it into the unconscious. In the absence of authentic feeling, we then act the role of a feeling person; in place of genuine intimacy, we learn how to "communicate." [...]

Neurologist Oliver Sacks was intrigued once to witness a group of his patients respond with helpless mirth to a televised speech by Mr. Reagan, then the president. These people suffered from aphasia, an inability to process spoken language, usually because of a stroke. "There he was," Dr. Sacks wrote, "the old charmer, the actor, with his practised rhetoric, his histrionisms, his emotional appeal -- and all the patients were convulsed with laughter. Well, not all: Some looked bewildered, some looked outraged, one or two looked apprehensive, but most looked amused."

To this group at least, the Great Communicator was communicating something he had not intended. "What could they be thinking?" Dr. Sacks wondered. "Were they failing to understand him? Or did they, perhaps, understand him all too well?"

Aphasiacs, it turns out, have a finely honed capacity to distinguish emotional truth from fiction. Just as the blind learn to pay close and nuanced attention to sound, so aphasiacs compensate for their impairment by reading astutely a speaker's body language, facial expression and tone of voice. [...]

"Either he is brain-damaged, or he has something to conceal," one patient told the neurologist. Yet Mr. Reagan was, quite probably, not lying. He didn't have to -- all his life he had a renowned aptitude for confounding story with fact, movie reality with history. It was self-delusion and lack of emotional truth that, underneath the president's charm and sincerity, these patients could discern. Long before his death, Alzheimer's disease deprived the ex-president of his ability to play his greatest part: the role of Ronald Reagan himself.

Alzheimer's is a complex disorder to which many factors contribute, including genetics, diet and cardiovascular health. Inflammatory processes and the immune system, both heavily affected by chronic emotional stress, are also implicated. Many scientists now consider Alzheimer's to be an autoimmune disease, one in which the body's own immune apparatus attacks the very host it is meant to protect. The regulation of stress hormones such as cortisol, closely linked with emotions, have been shown to be abnormal in patients with the disorder.

As the nun study showed, and as Mr. Reagan's case illustrates, people's earliest experiences and the emotional patterns they develop in response can be a significant influence. We need to pay just as much diligent attention to emotional clarity and emotional health as we devote to our physical bodies.

The good news is that emotional transformation and brain development can occur even in adults, and even in relatively old age. Emotional aliveness and intellectual stimulation are both worthwhile goals in themselves and, at the same time, valuable tools in the prevention of Alzheimer's disease. [end]
------
Vancouver physician Gabor Maté is the author of When The Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

Five words:

Traditional family values; Jane Wyman.

Okay, I'm still trying to figure that one out. I've heard several different people say that he left Jane Wyman for Nancy, but can't find anything to validate that.

What I did find says just the opposite. It says that Reagan and Wyman divorced in 1948. Then Reagan met Nancy in 1949, and they were married in 1952.

Can anyone clarify that?

 

[shereads]

Democrat David Obey proposed that the tax cut for those with incomes exceeding $1 millon per year should be cut from 88K to 83K to fund a shortfall in the military construction budget. The Republican majority quickly killed this idea. If the families of soldiers under fire in Iraq have to live in crumbling, dilapidated housing, well hey, that's too bad. These multi-millionaires really need that 5K a year...

Yep. That has me stymied too. "Support our troops" as a mantra of the right has been used to serve two purposes: to stifle criticism of the war and the president, and accuse anyone who questions the military budget of being unpatriotic. But when the super-rich are asked by a Democrat to give up a tiny fraction of their tax cut for the sake of soldiers, veterans and military families, Republicans circle the wagons and guard that 5-grand-per-million as if they're guarding the last of their dwindling food ration.

Your major beefs with Reagan are trickle-down economics and that he opened the door of mainstream politics to religious fundamentalists. Those are big ones, with far-reaching implications, but the Reagan products that I loathed most were Iran-Contra and James Watt.

Watt as Secretary of the Interior was a precursor of what Dubya would do to Nixon's one most postiive legacy, the EPA. Of course, James Watt also represented the religious right. He's famous for having said that the inevitability of the Second Coming makes it pointless to protect the environment for future generations.

As for Iran-Contra, it's hard for me to understand why more people haven't understood the implications of that, since 9/11 brought terrorism into the national consciousness in a major way. The Reagan/Bush administration supported terrorism, pure and simple. That's what Iran-Contra was about. Reagan's crusade against Communism took a sick twist whose implications we have only begun to fully experience. In his determination to fund Contra death squads (or freedom fighters, depending on whether or not you are on the receiving end of the rape, execution or bombing in question) he not only lied to Congress and subverted the constitutional separation of powers; he rewarded Iranian kidnappers and turned hostage-taking into a profit center. He also eliminated whatever credibility we had built up in refusiing to negotiate with terrorists.

Imagine the Republican outcry if Jimmy Carter had announced that he was going to negotiate for the release of the hostages who were taken under his watch, by selling missiles to Iran.

And that he was going to use the money to fund a project of his choosing, one that Congress had already disapproved.

Reagan's charisma, combined with the charming habit of simply saying, "gosh, I don't remember" when confronted with evidence of criminal wrongdoing, saved him from impeachment. That, and the fact that Oliver North enjoyed the role of martyr.

As for Bush I, when people in the forum compare him favorably to his son, I'm reminded of his assertion during Iran Contra that he was "never in the loop." A proven lie. He was at the table in meetings with North and Reagan and a few other key people when the arms-for-hostages trade was discussed. He was a former head of the CIA, for god's sake, but all he had to do was follow Reagan's lead and pretend that he was simply too naive and too nice a guy to have been involved in such a thing.

 

[Guest]

just for fun

Hammers, Sickles, and Turnbuckles - Soviet wrestlers mourn Ronald Reagan - By Dave McKenna, June 11, 2004 - Slate.com

"Business was good with Reagan," recalls a wistful Nikolai Volkoff. "I voted for him twice."

Nikita Koloff is a fan of the dead president, too. "I wasn't a political guy," says Koloff, "but Ronald Reagan's policies were good for wrestling."

Yes, Reagan's policies were good for wrestling—and even better for Volkoff, Koloff, and the gaggle of faux-Soviet wrestlers who worked the ring during the last years of the Cold War.

Pro wrestling has always been pro-xenophobia, with cartoonish foreigner types employed to goose the crowd into a patriotic frenzy. But during Reagan's reign, evil German and Japanese characters—everybody but the Iron Sheik, really—got bumped down or off the card to make way for the Red Menace.

Had Reagan not dogged the Evil Empire so intensely, Volkoff (real name: Joe Peruzovic) surely wouldn't have fired up the crowd by singing the Russian national anthem at Vince McMahon's first WWF Wrestlemania in 1985. And Koloff would have gone through life as plain ol' Scott Simpson, a wannabe pro football player from Minneapolis.

Koloff says he owes his career to a 1984 brainstorming session. Animal (real name Joe Laurinaitis*) of the tag team the Road Warriors, Sgt. Slaughter (a GI Joe-type superpatriot played by Robert Remus), and Don Kernodle (real name Don Kernodle) all toiled in the Charlotte-based NWA, then the premiere rassling federation in the Southern states. When they mulled over how to take artistic advantage of real world events, they seized upon the threatened Soviet boycott of the L.A. Olympics. We need more Commie ass to kick, the wrestlers concluded. NWA boss Jim Crockett agreed.

"Do you know any big guys who would shave their head?" Crockett asked. Simpson, an occasional workout partner of Animal's, was mentioned. His lack of wrestling experience—"I'd never even been in a ring before," he says—was trumped by the need for Russians. Plus, he had huge pecs and a willingness to go bald. Crockett hired Simpson over the phone. Nikita Koloff was born.

Nikita Koloff was introduced to fans as the nephew of Ivan Koloff, the elder statesman of ring Russkies and, at the time, the only Soviet character in the NWA stable. Now 61, Ivan grew up in Canada as Jim Parras.

"I know 'nyet' and 'da'—and I'm not sure what 'da' means," says Ivan when asked how much of the Russian language he picked up in three decades of playing the "Russian Bear."

Peruzovic, the Yugoslavian émigré who played Nikolai Volkoff, is the only alleged Russian of ring renown who actually spoke the language. But wrestling audiences don't speak Pinko, either. The anti-Soviet atmosphere in the NWA's Southern territory meant that a mute in a CCCP singlet could get the crowds jeering.

Almost overnight, Nikita became the NWA's most hated performer. Death threats and bigger paychecks kept on comin'. By the end of his first year as a wrestler, Simpson legally changed his name to that of his character. He remains Nikita Koloff to this day.

When Reagan took office, Nikita's high-school classmate Barry Darsow was wrestling in Florida as fan favorite Crusher Darsow. In 1982, his promoter decided that the Cold War would be good for both of them. Darsow announced to fans that America was the real Evil Empire. He would henceforth wrestle as Krusher Khrushchev.

"I changed my name to honor Nikita Khrushchev, the greatest leader of all time," Darsow remembers. "This was a time when the fans believed everything. They wanted to kill me."

Darsow took his CCCP sweatband to the NWA in 1984, joining the Koloffs. The heat just got hotter. At a show in Washington, D.C., Darsow's head got split open by a hot dog with a bolt in it that was thrown from the cheap seats. He spent much of the next decade running from the ring to the dressing room, and from the arena exits to his car, to avoid getting pummeled by fans caught up in the president's "Better Dead Than Red!" mind-set.

But that only makes the Krusher's heart grow fonder for the dearly departed. "I loved Ronald Reagan," he says. "I believe Ronald Reagan was the greatest leader of my lifetime." Better than Nikita Khrushchev? "Oh, yeah. Even better than Nikita Khrushchev!" Darsow says. "That was a gimmick, remember?"

Like every pundit this week, the faux Russian wrestlers who thrived under Reagan now give him all the credit for getting a three-count on Communism. "I never believed the wall would come down in my lifetime," says Volkoff. "Ronald Reagan was the best president we ever had, for the U.S."

"I've seen a lot of old clips of President Reagan this week," adds Nikita. "And I see why he got over: When he was in front of a microphone, he made his point. He really was the Great Communicator. He would have been a great wrestler."

Alas, the fall of the Berlin Wall brought big changes to pro wrestling. Darsow dropped the Krusher Khrushchev gimmick and went to work for the WWF as Repo Man. Volkoff, now 57, works as a code-enforcement inspector for Baltimore County, Md., but still wrestles, mostly in small towns for independent promoters and more often as a good guy than a heel. He's replaced the Russian national anthem in his pre-match routine with a version of the "Star Spangled Banner," sung in a deep baritone with an authentic Slavic accent.

Ivan Koloff, who, like Nikita, retired from wrestling in the early 1990s, says that the end of the Cold War "took the edge off" his character. "Democracy is good for the world," he says. "But it was bad for business."

Dave McKenna is the sports columnist for the Washington City Paper.