SmithAntics

I have tuned out from weekend-long, vomit-inducing televised lovefest. Predictably, it seems that every living Republican politician and pundit has come out to share thoughts and memories of the Great Man.

Shit, can you blame them for wanting to talk about something besides U.S. troops sodomizing Iraq detainees with broom handles--with White House approval?

Or Halliburton’s non-competitive Iraq contracts that were coordinated out of former Halliburton CEO and current stock holder Dick Cheney’s office?

Or BushCo’s friendship with Iranian spy Ahmed Chalabi?

Or the fact that the unelected fraud will likely be called to testify before a grand jury about his administration’s Soprano-like exposure of an undercover CIA officer?

Hell, I guess I’d welcome the distraction as well.

But lost in this heartfelt reminiscence (complete with soft-focus images and heart-tugging musical strains) is the true story of the monster that was Ronald Reagan.

This was the man who inaugurated the extremist right wing movement that has come into full and horrifying bloom under the current ultra-Reaganite regime.

This was the cold-hearted bastard who took a hatchet to countless hard-won progressive social programs in the United States, and advanced the idea of poverty as personal failure.

Reagan's cultural agenda was dictated by the religious right, a virtual American Taliban, whose racist, homophobic, misogynistic vision aims to take social relations in this country back to the stone age.

It was Reagan who formed an unprecedented alliance between government and big business, an association that dramatically enriched the ultra-rich and further impoverished the swelling ranks of the Reagan-era poor.

And it was Reagan’s massive increases in defense spending (including the failed but now BushCo-resurrected Star Wars program) that created enormous deficits that resulted in further slashing of critical social programs.

Yes, I’m sure the single mothers who were denied funding for college education and the literally starving children who were taken off the welfare roles have dear memories of “Ol'Dutch.”

In deference to his reactionary, homophobic base, Reagan turned a blind eye to AIDS. Thousands died as a result.

Public funding for the care of the mentally ill was slashed to the bone under Reagan, sending scores of patients into the poverty of the streets--without medication, of course.

Think I exaggerate?

And what about the “Great Communicator’s” foreign policy?

Reagan was a great friend and patron to genocidal right-wing thugs, particularly in Central America, where his administration illegally funded the torture, disappearance, and murder of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

Ask the child whose mother was raped and dismembered by Reagan-funded death squads what she thinks about the “Gipper.”

And how about Iran Contra? This was the Reagan administration’s illegal sales of arms to Iranian terrorists to fund the illegal Contra war against a democratically elected government in Nicaragua? (Wait, scratch that. Reagan didn’t know about this, and Poppy Bush was “out of the loop”)

Or perhaps we should recall the funding of the Mujahadeen “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, who are better know today as the Taliban.

Reagan armed Osama bin Laden. Anyone remember him?

Oh yes, and let’s not forget that it was under Reagan’s approval and financial support (including shipments of chemicals and equipment from American companies) that U.S. friend and ally Saddam Hussein gassed thousands to death.

Reagan bankrolled Saddam Hussein.

But the liberal media does not want you to know about this stuff.

The real Reagan has been erased from official history.

God bless America.