Semblance of a Whole

The Beatification of the Gipper

For me, the 1980s will always be a golden age, simply because I will always look back with a certain amount of nostalgia on the years of my childhood and early adulthood. My memories of growing up will always be intertwined with the sounds of Men at Work, Duran Duran, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, and the indelible images of Space Invaders, Pacman, Trivial Pursuit and yes, Ronald Reagan.

As the Reagan era started, I was just reaching an age where I was old enough to have political opinions, and I knew I didn't like him. I remember listening to the news reports of his calls for prayer in the schools and thinking that would be tantamount to the end of the world for me, a Jewish child. Some years later, in high school, I distinctly remember my real fear that Reagan's cowboy politics would get us involved in a nuclear war, and the end of the world for all of us. When the Iran-Contra scandal broke, I was gleeful. I listened raptly to the hearings for hours and prayed for impeachment. I was skeptical that the Soviet Union was the evil empire, but I was convinced that Reagan was an evil emperor.

The perspective of time (and George W. Bush) has taught me that there are worse things than Ronald Reagan -- thankfully it turned out he was all bark without much bite when it came to most of his social agenda. However, I remain no fan of the Gipper, who will always be associated in my mind (ironically, since he was, theoretically, against increased government spending) with a spiraling national debt, the rise of the fundamentalist Christian right, a low point in the history of stewardship of the environment, and a high point in the history of consumerism and capitalistic excess.

Thus, I'm having a really hard time dealing with the sainthood that is currently being bestowed on Reagan now that he is finally departed in body as well as in mind. I am still reeling with the shock (and a certain amount of stubborn denial) that the airport in our nation's capital was renamed for him, and the thought of replacing the image of FDR on the dime with that of Reagan makes me positively apoplectic. Now we are greeted with an unending stream of media coverage that borders on the reverential. Give me a break! Next thing you know, we'll hear more talk of adding him to Mount Rushmore (maybe as a replacement for Teddy, since his supporters seem to have it in for Roosevelts). As far as I'm concerned, the man was far more deserving of impeachment than Clinton ever was.