I think Ronald Reagan was an enigma

[glarius]

I'm about to go to the hospital to visist a loved one but before I go I have to say something that is puzzling me....Ronald Reagan seems to have been a genuinely nice, kind and caring person....acccording to everyone we have heard speak about him in the last several days....My sincere question is this......Then why was he a right winger, who tried to break unions and cut back benefits for the underprivileged?....Everything we have heard about him as a person, would suggest that he would be the most liberal and all-encompassing of leaders, and yet he was seemingly unmoved by the plight of the poor.....His ability to call on humour on any occasion, even his own wounding by the attempted assassin, does not make up for this lack of empathy for the poor.....Am I the only one who finds him to be an enigma?......
I will look in on this after I return from the hospitsl....

[DrWeird]

1. I think he was a puppet.

Just like Bush II.

He was an incompetent old fart who slept through all his meetings, and could tell one liners to the press. He got political blacklisting his fellow actors back in the fifties, probably for the sake of career advancement. So a bunch of seedy assholes decided they could use his face for their own personal goals.

Why do I think this? He had the same puppet masters. Rumsfeld, Bakker, Cheney, etc.

[11 Bravo]

2. Enigma or enema?

n/t

[rumguy]

3. Anyone will sound good at a memorial service

[lectrobyte]

4. an enigma? No, he was an *actor*. I can't remember the exact quote,

but it goes something like "Once you can fake sincerity, the rest is easy!"

[stellanoir]

6. Yeah. . .

as I posted earlier, that quotation I too was floored by.

It was. . .

"Once your have mastered sincerity,. . .you've got it made."

unbelievable. . .an he was only a B grade actor. And now we're stuck with an intolerable "gentelman's C."

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

7. Heres da quote

Senator Everett Dirkson: "The one essential thing in politics is sincerety. Once you've learned to fake that, you've got it made."

[Wapsie B]

5. I remember reading

something about Nancy's father getting Reagan to convert to the dark side. It's my belief that Ronnie was more an opportunist than anything else. Maybe when he had his wits about him he could see the pendulum swinging to the right and that somehow he could be a factor.

[BurtWorm]

8. A lot of what we "know" about Reagan is pure spin

otherwise known as myth. Take what you "learn" about Reagan with a healthy dose of skepticism. (The joking in the operating room stories, for instance.)

[Spazito]

9. The "real" Ronald Reagan was the one who testified against...

his fellow Hollywood compatriots in the McCarthy hearings. He would stab anyone and everyone in the back at any time. He was not at all enigmatic, imo.

[Dhalgren]

10. I think Ronald Reagan was an enima.

[molly]

11. He was a DEM until he became host for GE

because he wasn't making films. He got "bought".

[spinbaby]

12. What I think was going on

I think he had some brain damage long before he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. The thing about this sort of brain damage--and if you've ever had a relative with this sort of thing, you know this--is that a person can seem to act perfectly normally while actually grasping and remembering very little of what's going on. For instance, you can have a nice conversation with your grandfather and he won't remember it ten minutes later.

My father (who had a different kind of brain disease) once sat down in his favorite chair to read a book like he did every evening but held the book upside down. By the time he was actually diagnosed and stopped driving, he was no longer seeing anything to his left, could no longer read, and could no longer recognize faces. But he acted perfectly normally and you would have had to spend some time with him to realize he was brain damaged.

I think Reagan was a genuinely nice and caring man and continued to act like a genuine nice and caring man while not really grasping what was going on around him. Just my take on the matter.

[BiggJawn]

13. No this is an Enigma...

Ray-Gun was a ham actor who's crowning roll was an 8-year run as President of the Unied States. unfortunately, the Neo-Cons tried it again and failed. Shrubby is no actor...

[maggrwaggr]

14. "even his own wounding by the attempted assassin"

that has been debunked recently. Turns out it was a story that somebody manufactured.

In other words, a lie. Not by Ronnie, who was terrified and in pain, but by somebody else.

[Yupster]

15. Very unusual childhood

I think it answers most of the questions about Reagan. Read up on his upbringing and I think it would explain much.

A very interesting man.

[glarius]

16. I've just read all your postings and I think most of you don't

believe him to be such a "genuinely nice, kind and caring person" as I stated....Perhaps you are right....His own children, Patti and Ron found him to be otherwise....That says a lot....

[Skittles]

17. a genuinely nice, caring person?

lord I cannot believe how many people this man fooled

[JohnKleeb]

18. a genuinely nice man doesnt union bust

those poor ATCers.

[mitchum]

19. HE WAS A REACTIONARY DIRTBAG...

intent upon undoing the New Deal and the Great Society.

He is now a dead reactionary dirtbag.