Time to get out the hip waders, Ronnie's gone

I'm not sure what to think about Reagan's passing. The sea of nostalgia in which we will doubtless find ourselves drowning is sure to trigger my urge to withdraw from the real world. I am steeling myself for Reagan this and Reagan that, Reagan on the dime, Reagan on Rushmore, Reagan on the half shell, the baby Reagan in a manger. Republicans and conservatives from around the world, like Margaret Thatcher, love Reagan, I guess. Do they love him past the point of reason? I don't think I am altogether objective about whatever his legacy is. So I can't really say.

The first vote I cast in a national election was cast against Ronald Reagan, as was the second. In 1980 he just didn't connect with me, though at the time I could hardly articulate why. By 1984, I had traveled to Mexico and Nicaragua to study American Foreign Policy in Central America. In 1983, when I spent time there, the Sandinistas had fought a hard revolution against a horrible dictator, Somoza, and were proudly leading their country out of the dark ages with massive popular support. I thought then and think now that the US missed a golden opportunity to open markets, hurt Castro and spread democracy in an unprecedented way by simply becoming an ally of the Sandinistas. They were poor and starving and asked the US to help them remake their country. We could have sent spare parts and teachers and food. Instead Reagan armed the Contras, cut off the supply of spare parts and mined their harbors.

I am not an apologist for some of the later behavior of the Sandinistas. But whenever I think of Reagan, I think of how he basically exported death to that region when he could have chosen to export life. In a weird way, he actually advanced communism by refusing to help the Sandinistas, because Castro sent 10,000 teachers to indoctrinate an entirely new generation of Nicaraguans.

Then there was Iran-Contra and massive deficits and Reagan announcing to the world that "we start bombing in five minutes," and on the good side, arms control and the "Mr. Gorbachov, Tear down this wall" speech. I remember being consistently amazed that this affable, somewhat forgetful, ex-actor was president. And did Nancy really go gaga over astrology? Whatever your personal views of him are, there are a variety of obituaries out there.

No doubt, the Reagan SWAT team will try to sell us the idea that Ronnie single handedly brought down the House of Russia and saved us all from reading and writing Cyrillic. He might have given the final push, but doesn't it seem like Russia’s collapse was due less to the eight years of Ronald Reagan than to a deeply flawed system of government and to the 40-year pressure of the rest of the world? This Guardian obituary thinks so.

You can also bet your 401k that Bush will try to spin himself as the heir to Reagan's legacy. He will compare the War on Terror with the Cold War. Bush will cite Reagan's penchant for cutting taxes, his optimism and old-timey vision of America, wrap it up with 9.11 and serve it to us with a nice flakey crust. The RNC will ceaselessly shovel this crap into the US media machine which will puke it out in stories like this one until our eyes are spinning whirly discs and the Bush-Reagan-Bush brand is burned into our consciousness.

Keep your propaganda filters set on high for the forseeable future, ladies and gents. It's about to get thick out there.