On Ronald Reagan Day, I’ll Be Wearing A Red Ribbon

[Kadie]

This is from http://prop8trialtracker.com/. As you probably read here last week, California is planning to establishing an annual day honoring Ronald Reagan and commemorating his accomplishments.

On Ronald Reagan Day, I’ll Be Wearing A Red Ribbon

snip...
Reagan, despite my political differences with him, is a major historical figure. And, on occasion, such as when he signed a letter opposing the Briggs initiative, he went out of his way to do the right thing. But if we are going to teach about Reagan’s legacy, Allen White’s words must be heeded:

Reagan could have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed from so many in his administration. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan’s surgeon general, has said that because of “intradepartmental politics” he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” The president’s advisers, Koop said, “took the stand, ‘They are only getting what they justly deserve.’ “

How profoundly different might have been the outcome if his leadership had generated compassion rather than hostility. “In the history of the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan’s legacy is one of silence,” Michael Cover, former associate executive director for public affairs at Whitman-Walker Clinic, the groundbreaking AIDS health-care organization in Washington. in 2003. “It is the silence of tens of thousands who died alone and unacknowledged, stigmatized by our government under his administration.”

Revisionist history about Reagan must be rejected. Researchers, historians and AIDS experts who know the truth must not remain silent. Too many have died for that. (SF Chronicle Op-Ed)

So, sure, let’s teach Reagan’s legacy. But front and center of that legacy is the AIDS crisis. He stood by as millions died, including some of his supposed friends from his movie days. Reagan’s inaction directly led to many needless deaths. Teach about Ronald Reagan, if for no other reason that our students will never forget an American tragedy. A tragedy whose scope could have been dramatically changed by a rapid response, but was instead ignored because the victims weren’t favored classes.

And when our students ask about Reagan, sure, by all means, you can talk about how he spent the Russians into bankruptcy, or how he blatantly and illegally defied Congress, but what I’ll remember most about Ronald Reagan will be the action that he didn’t take. And his inaction speaks as much about the man Ronald Reagan as any action, or any myth the Right is trying to build up about him.

more...
http://prop8trialtracker.com/2010/04/10/on-ronald-reagan-day-ill-be-wearing-a-red-ribbon/

[NJmaverick]

1. K&R

[Warpy]

2. Another K&R

I worked in Boston at the height of the AIDS crisis in the early and mid 80s, when we'd see young men who should have been at the peak of their health come in and we knew they'd be dead in two weeks, tops, and there was nothing we could do about it. Nothing.

NIH grants for AIDS research were few and far between during the early years.

I often think that viciously stupid man was secretly delighted there was a disease out there that would kill so many of the more talented actors who kept him as a B actor who did his best work with a chimpanzee.

By 1987, we were bypassing a lot of standard testing protocols and using gawd knows what beyond a collection of letters or numbers on our dying patients. Sometimes those letters and numbers worked and we were able to prolong their lives enough for them to settle everything.

It would take another 10 years after that evil man for the drug cocktails we have now to become standard treatment and AIDS become another deadly chronic illness whose progression could finally be slowed.

[Oceansaway]

3. and another !!

[Ardent15]

4. K and R

[YOY]

5. He DIDN'T spend the Russians into Bankruptcy.

They did that all on their own.

[Hippo_Tron]

9. It was inevitable anyway

The USSR didn't have the GDP to beat the US in the arms race and eventually their attempts to were going to bankrupt them. I'd be impressed by Reagan if he had managed to convince Gorbechav that this was inevitable BEFORE it actually happened and ended the Cold War without spending so much money on weapons that we will never use.

[YOY]

10. They knew it was coming.

All but the most oblivious of people.

I've argued that it has little to do with ideology so much as it had to do with a single party system that did not allow for evolution and adjustment to change.

[izquierdista]

6. another edit

how he spent the Russians Americans into bankruptcy

Remember, it took Clinton a full 8 years to balance the budget again.

[laughingliberal]

7. K & R

Reagan never met a problem he couldn't make worse.

[truebrit71]

8. He spent the US into bankruptcy, broke the law, violated the constitution on numerous occasions..

..and, most of the time, was completely out of his tiny, tiny mind...

The revisionism of this despicable and awful man must NOT go unanswered...

He was a fucking joke.