Ronald Reagan, 1911–2004
by Tom Carson
(snip)
Ronald Reagan is the man who destroyed America’s sense of reality—a paltry target, all in all, given our predilections. It only took an actor: the real successor to John Wilkes Booth. In our bones, we had always been this sort of bullshit-craving country anyhow, founded on abstractions: not land (somebody else’s), not people (Red Rover, Red Rover, send Emma Lazarus right over), not even shared history (nostalgia isn’t the same thing, and try pulling that Civil War shinola anywhere west of the Rio Grande). Just monumental words and wordy monuments, with two convenient oceans between them and circumstance; from Nat Turner’s status as three-fifths of a man—even though we ended up hanging all of him—to Reagan’s child Lynndie England (born 1983, the year we invaded Grenada and lost 241 Marines in Lebanon), any shortfall could be blamed on something lost in translation. But it was Reagan, whose most profound Freudian slip was the immortal "Facts are stupid things," who beguiled us into living in the theme park full-time, and so much for the Declaration of Independence’s prattle about "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"—actually the only time we ever expressed much concern for those. Since his 1980 opponent, Jimmy Carter, was about the sorriest embodiment of the reality principle imaginable—Three’s Company’s Mr. Roper on the world-historical stage—facts didn’t have a prayer.
(snip)
At the core of the Reagan legend is the mantra that his presidency made America feel good about itself again—an interesting claim for Republicans to make, since it sounds like just the sort of self-esteem therapy they snort at when, say, first-graders are the beneficiaries. Not entirely inappropriately, the picture it conjures up is of a commander in chief playing Julie Andrews as the governess in The Sound of Music: "You’ve brought music back into the house, Ron." In individual cases, bucking up a patient’s spirits when his or her material situation isn’t improving—or is, in fact, deteriorating, as ours was from infrastructure to multitrillion-dollar deficitis to yawning disparities between rich and poor—is usually accomplished with drugs; Reagan was one. In a wonderful Herblock cartoon from 1986, a headline reporting that the U.S. has just become the world’s leading debtor nation is greeted by hordes of celebrating Americans all holding up proud forefingers: "We’re number one!"
(snip)
No doubt, it will work, too. I lived in Hollywood in the ’80s, and back then, the legend was that Reagan’s star needed the most upkeep on the Walk of Fame: it was constantly being defaced by vomit and urine. (Even or especially in Hollywood, it’s possible to feel far from Disneyland.) But it’s hard to pee on Mount Rushmore; you’ll only end up wetting your own face. So watch it, kids. Static crackle, signal fainter: this is WPFL, signing off. If you ask me, the best that can be said for Ronald Reagan is that, if George W. Bush gets re-elected, we may yet end up missing him.
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