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Jun. 10th, 2004 03:51 am
Touching a nerve
So, my post about Reagan's abysmal record on AIDS apparently pissed a lot of people off. Unfortunately, a lot of the people it pissed off are people who were either too young to know what things were really like then, or weren't paying attention at the time. So all they know of Reagan's record is either what they've seen in revisionist history textbooks, or filtered through overly-nostalgic hindsight and highly-edited retrospectives.
I was fortunate to be a very politically active kid, thanks to my parents. Even though the politics they were active in weren't the same as the ones I was developing, it was good that they made it clear how important voting and being aware of the issues is, and, most importantly, that it's essential to be able to criticize one's leaders. Though they did sort of push the message, I never got the attitude that all government was a bad thing and was to be despised. In fact, I ended up being quite a bit of a socialist. My view has always been that government is there to serve the people. It's supposed to be the best kind of parent: neither overly authoritarian, nor overly-lax. There to protect, provide, nurture, educate and care for. To help "the kids" learn and grow and become self-sufficient. To teach them to respect themselves and others and keep them from hurting other people. Basic human services-- protection from crime, disaster, illness-- are essential components of goverment. Providing for the populace to become productive, healthy members of society is also an essential component. It seems simple, doesn't it? Yet those basic principles are consistently ignored not only by politicians but by voters. We seem to have two kinds of voters in this country: those who believe "questioning authority" means not merely questioning, but trying to gut it entirely (anarchists) and those who believe that a safe and orderly nation requires restricting everyone's lives, and prescribing specific lifestyles and religious beliefs for them to follow. (fascists) What ever happened to us being a Republic? What happened to the notion of freedom, so long as the rights of the minority are protected? What the hell happened to following the Constitution?
It absolutely chills me to the bone that there is this post-9/11 culture developing in the US which is fervently nationalist and authoritarian. People are being arrested, fired, censured for criticizing their leaders. People on my other journal are yelling at me for complaining about the record of a former president, saying that people shouldn't criticize our leaders!! O_O Are we teaching history so poorly in public schools that people don't see the parallels between this culture and 1930's Germany? Do we not see the parallels between demonizing gays and Muslims and demonizing, well, gays and Jews? Do we not see that even as we complain about Islamic Fundamentalism, we have a growing militant Christian Fundamentalist movement in our own back yard?
If we're going to honor a dead president who was horrendously lousy at his job *just because he was the President* then everything that makes this country great is lost. Pubes and his toadies keep going on about freedom, but it's something they know nothing about. The "freedom" they're pushing isn't for the people-- it's for rich white het men to be able to make money off the labor of everyone else. The only "freedom" they believe in is unfettered capitalism. Reagan started us on this path. He started with the economic policies that eliminated the middle class, and created massive conglomerate corporations, and an economy where 1% of the population holds the majority of the wealth. He created an economic culture where a person can no longer start at the bottom of a company and spend the next forty years working their way up, but where MBAs are considered proper qualifications for management in any company/industry, and you can't get a managerial job without already having had one. The American dream no longer exists. The most people can hope for is that they don't lose their job to having it shipped overseas for cheaper labor, or getting laid off, while the work you once did now goes to your buddy who has to work 10 hour days to complete it, and never sees his family.
And don't get me started on the "freedom" that doesn't exist if you're not straight, male and Christian.
Reagan's legacy is that a small group of people now control virtually all of the economy and political power in the US, and they are doing everything they possibly can to ensure that they retain that power, no matter how many lives are ruined or even ended in the process.
I don't give a single shit about what a nice smile or handshake the man had. He fucked up the country that I dearly wish I could love, and put me and many people I care very much for in desperate circumstances, both economic and personal. He legitimized open homophobia, just when we were making progress. He quashed the gains of the feminist movement. He created a permanent servant class, while CEOs get multi-million dollar bonuses for firing low-level workers. He supplied Afghanistan with weapons and military training that was later used to overrun their country and attack ours, all in the name of subverting godless communism.
No, I'm not going to be "respectful" now that he's dead. I'm not going to stand idly by while they canonize this man and ignore the complete wasteland his horrible presidency made of the US.
I reserve my right to criticize my government, and I will continue to do so, whether these leaders are dead or alive.
I was fortunate to be a very politically active kid, thanks to my parents. Even though the politics they were active in weren't the same as the ones I was developing, it was good that they made it clear how important voting and being aware of the issues is, and, most importantly, that it's essential to be able to criticize one's leaders. Though they did sort of push the message, I never got the attitude that all government was a bad thing and was to be despised. In fact, I ended up being quite a bit of a socialist. My view has always been that government is there to serve the people. It's supposed to be the best kind of parent: neither overly authoritarian, nor overly-lax. There to protect, provide, nurture, educate and care for. To help "the kids" learn and grow and become self-sufficient. To teach them to respect themselves and others and keep them from hurting other people. Basic human services-- protection from crime, disaster, illness-- are essential components of goverment. Providing for the populace to become productive, healthy members of society is also an essential component. It seems simple, doesn't it? Yet those basic principles are consistently ignored not only by politicians but by voters. We seem to have two kinds of voters in this country: those who believe "questioning authority" means not merely questioning, but trying to gut it entirely (anarchists) and those who believe that a safe and orderly nation requires restricting everyone's lives, and prescribing specific lifestyles and religious beliefs for them to follow. (fascists) What ever happened to us being a Republic? What happened to the notion of freedom, so long as the rights of the minority are protected? What the hell happened to following the Constitution?
It absolutely chills me to the bone that there is this post-9/11 culture developing in the US which is fervently nationalist and authoritarian. People are being arrested, fired, censured for criticizing their leaders. People on my other journal are yelling at me for complaining about the record of a former president, saying that people shouldn't criticize our leaders!! O_O Are we teaching history so poorly in public schools that people don't see the parallels between this culture and 1930's Germany? Do we not see the parallels between demonizing gays and Muslims and demonizing, well, gays and Jews? Do we not see that even as we complain about Islamic Fundamentalism, we have a growing militant Christian Fundamentalist movement in our own back yard?
If we're going to honor a dead president who was horrendously lousy at his job *just because he was the President* then everything that makes this country great is lost. Pubes and his toadies keep going on about freedom, but it's something they know nothing about. The "freedom" they're pushing isn't for the people-- it's for rich white het men to be able to make money off the labor of everyone else. The only "freedom" they believe in is unfettered capitalism. Reagan started us on this path. He started with the economic policies that eliminated the middle class, and created massive conglomerate corporations, and an economy where 1% of the population holds the majority of the wealth. He created an economic culture where a person can no longer start at the bottom of a company and spend the next forty years working their way up, but where MBAs are considered proper qualifications for management in any company/industry, and you can't get a managerial job without already having had one. The American dream no longer exists. The most people can hope for is that they don't lose their job to having it shipped overseas for cheaper labor, or getting laid off, while the work you once did now goes to your buddy who has to work 10 hour days to complete it, and never sees his family.
And don't get me started on the "freedom" that doesn't exist if you're not straight, male and Christian.
Reagan's legacy is that a small group of people now control virtually all of the economy and political power in the US, and they are doing everything they possibly can to ensure that they retain that power, no matter how many lives are ruined or even ended in the process.
I don't give a single shit about what a nice smile or handshake the man had. He fucked up the country that I dearly wish I could love, and put me and many people I care very much for in desperate circumstances, both economic and personal. He legitimized open homophobia, just when we were making progress. He quashed the gains of the feminist movement. He created a permanent servant class, while CEOs get multi-million dollar bonuses for firing low-level workers. He supplied Afghanistan with weapons and military training that was later used to overrun their country and attack ours, all in the name of subverting godless communism.
No, I'm not going to be "respectful" now that he's dead. I'm not going to stand idly by while they canonize this man and ignore the complete wasteland his horrible presidency made of the US.
I reserve my right to criticize my government, and I will continue to do so, whether these leaders are dead or alive.
