'Ronald Reagan: Madison Avenue - Perception vs. Reality?'
By Richard J. Garfunkel (05/01/07)
Regarding Malcolm Hedges characterizations of the Democrats and how he believes that all of us are in “bed with Uncle Joe” and sing the “International” at bedtime to our progeny. (PS: I note that David Stockman, Reagan’s supply-side guru of no taxes on the rich, that raised deficits into the multi-trillions is now facing some harsh music. It looks like he’ll be whistling a different tune for the next number of years)
Subject: RE: Ronald Reagan's Secret Life
Here's a letter I wrote about the "real" Ronald Reagan, who is loved by the idiotic right wing of this country. He has the most fraudulent reputation of any that has ever served in public office. He was certainly genial, a decent guy, a 3rd rate actor that had his career revived by the advice by his new father-in-law, Dr, Davis (a supporter the John Birch Society) "Go where the money is!" In other words flack for 20 Mule Team Borax and GE. This confused guy even voted for FDR four times by his own admission. He learned that it was "good business" to give up a lifetime of supposed ideals. He was a quick study, but basically a "dope" who was lost without a script. One day Jack Benny went into a theater where his "rival" Fred Allen was doing a remote for his radio program. Allen was giving out cheap Depression glass plates to the audience. All of a sudden Benny stood up and demanded a plate. Allen seeing the opportunity to score on his rival, said, "There is Jack Benny, one of the richest men in America trying to huckster a plate from you people." Allen kept up the barraging harangue and finally the frustrated Benny yelled out, "You wouldn't say that if my writers were here!" Well that fits Reagan to a tee. He even thought that the co2 from a tree was equivalent to a car's emissions. He was a "stiff" built up by his handlers. His last term was a disaster, and to cap it off during the Poindexter and McFarlane Trials he said under oath over 400 times that he did not remember! With a history of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Nixon I can understand easily that the "flat-earth" luddites of the new GOP love to worship the memory of the “Gipper” whose understanding of the problems of this country matched his inability to answer a question “off the cuff.” Maybe that's why he ran out after every press conference yelling over his shoulder. They couldn't wait to get him away.
RJG
June 14, 2004
Reagan and the real fall of the Soviet Union
In the wake of the public mourning of Ronald Reagan, our 40th President of the United States, his supporters made certain claims. One of these claims was that he was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. As an avid student of history and a witness to those events I must beg to disagree. The process that led to its welcomed collapse was in the works long before he was elected. In a sense it was a result of the confluence of disparate events and circumstances. In 1982 after 13 years of litigation against ATT by the Justice Department, the case was settled, and ATT agreed to give up their 22 Bell Systems and their subsequent monopoly over technology. This “breakup” began a “golden age” of communication that eventually resulted in fax machines, cable television, cell phones and the Internet. Meanwhile in Poland, after 2 months of labor turmoil at the Lenin Shipyards, Gdansk, in 1980 that had paralyzed the country, the Polish government gave into the demands of the workers. This of course was before Ronald Reagan was elected. Over the next few years, Poland, in need for “hard” foreign currency was starting to invite Polish-American retirees from the steel industry to come back and live in Poland. With their large union pensions they were able to buy “dachas”, or country houses and live like princes. This reality was not lost on Walesa, who saw his workers starving, as opposed to American steel workers who were “rich” and now “landed gentry.”
Others soon became aware of this reality and eventually through the lowering of phone rates, and the development of the fax machines, etc, communication between citizens of the Eastern Bloc and the West opened up. Hungary started to liberalize in 1989 and a flow of East German citizens started to circumvent the Berlin Wall as they traveled through Hungary to West Germany. So the proverbial “flood-gate” was opened, and it could not be shut. By 1991 the old Warsaw Pact countries had removed their Communist bosses and Soviet troops finally went home. Without their client states, the Soviet system was finally exposed as the economic “basket case” it was, and they shut down the whole bankrupt operation. All in all, his real credit should be for the following; the useless and expensive 600 ship navy, the invasion of tiny Grenada, SDI, the Strategic Defense Imitative (Star Wars), Iran-Contra scandal, the death of 240+ Marines in Beirut, the stock market collapse of 1987, and the tripling of the National Debt, vetoing sanctions against South Africa, the speech at the SS cemetery in Bitburg, backing military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and the Philippines, arming Sadaam Hussein, voodoo economics (George Bush’s phrase), inaction against the AIDS epidemic, the nearly 200 members of his administration that faced indictment and prosecution, his appointment of Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, the S & L scandal that stuck the taxpayers with a bill approaching a trillion dollars, his relentless attacks on affirmative action, his deregulation of broadcasting gave rise to today’s monopolistic media industry, and a host of other wonderful accomplishments. Ronald Reagan got the last laugh in the end. He is still fooling the impotent media with his “teflon” image that was carefully crafted by his handlers, apologists and sycophants.
Richard J. Garfunkel
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