The Reagan Legacy

Hell, Yes, It’s Class Warfare!

“The ten most dangerous words in the English language are ‘Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.’” –Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004.

The centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth was celebrated recently. It gave those who revere his memory yet another opportunity to extol his virtues and his triumphs. Over the years I have been amazed at the reverence in which he is held. Someone even suggested adding his mug to the ones already on Mount Rushmore.

I remember the Reagan Administration with less affection.

My first memory of Ronald Reagan was back in the early days of television, when he hosted a show called, as I remember, General Electric Theater.

“At General Electric, progress is our most important product,” he would say at the end of each show. I was in the third grade or thereabouts, and I found him unctuous and insincere. I don’t know why, but I never really changed my mind about him.

When he was elected governor of California, I thought to myself, “Well, what do you expect from California?” (Later I had the same thought about Arnold Schwarzenegger.) When he ran for president, I thought that surely the citizens of the United States wouldn’t elect “that B-actor.”

Well, they did. Somebody called him “The Great Communicator,” but I never thought he was all that eloquent. I simply did not get it.

His eight years in office were almost as painful to me as the eight years of Bush, Jr. I disagreed with most everything he said and did, and towards the end I thought he was simply getting senile.

His stature in the Republican Party was, and is, just the opposite. He gave his supporters great hope and encouragement, and among them he is still their shining city on the hill. I take a more cynical view: his message, as I perceived it, was, “It’s O.K. to be selfish.” Oh, I know, I’m misreading his call for self-reliance and personal responsibility, but I still see it as, “I’ve got mine and you’re not going to take it away from me.”

It was during his time in office, and in large part through his efforts, that the “Christian Right” became a major force in the GOP, and the traditional fiscal conservatism of the party got all mixed up with “social conservatism” – which I perceived as bigotry and xenophobia. The Republican Party does not have a very big natural constituency because its primary concern is protecting the wealthy, so assimilating what was then called the “moral majority” (which, someone noted, was neither) made good political sense. That alliance has continued for the thirty-some years since.

Reagan increased defense spending significantly, which his supporters still maintain forced the Soviet Union to do the same, resulting in its collapse. I have never understood that logic.

Reagan preached limited government, and his party members drank deep of that Kool-Aid.

But his greatest legacy is what one of his primary opponents (George Bush, Sr., who later became his vice president and then succeeded him in office) called “voodoo economics,” and what the media nicknamed “trickle-down economics.” Its basic tenet is to leave the rich alone so that they will create jobs that will benefit those in less rarefied financial strata. It was nothing new – in the previous century this was referred to as “laissez-faire,” or “let them (the wealthy) alone” economics.

And how is that working out for us? You’ve probably heard a number of statistics that demonstrate how the poor and middle class in this country have been going downhill since Reagan was elected, but now Mother Jones magazine has collected eleven graphs that show that progression, well, graphically (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph). Citations are provided for each graph so you can check their veracity. Here’s the first one; the others are just as dismal:

Some of these graphs show changes over time, and if you didn’t live through all this, as I did, remember that Reagan (R) was elected in 1980 and 1984; Bush, Sr. (R) in 1988; Clinton (D) in 1992 and 1996; Bush, Jr. (R) in 2000 and 2004; and Obama (D) in 2008.

I think we all recognize and accept that in a capitalist system there will be poor people, rich people, and very rich people, but when the inequality between them continues to widen, there’s truly a problem. The Middle Class has been the bulwark of our country, and it is shrinking dramatically. It’s an old cliché that the rich get richer and the poor poorer, but when it actually happens, it creates havoc, and when it happens at this lightning speed, it spells imminent disaster.

How do we stop this, or at least start “bending the curve?”

I would suggest revising the tax code and reforming campaign financing. I can’t think of anything more important, or more difficult, but if we cannot make significant changes in both of these areas, we face a future of economic decline or political revolt, or both.

The very wealthy spend immense amounts of money to persuade people that it’s really their fault that they aren’t wealthy, too, that if they just had enough “personal responsibility” and weren’t such crybabies, they wouldn’t have fallen in a hole. In Wisconsin, the governor and his cronies are blaming teachers (who, they say, get far too much full-time pay for part-time work and have bloated retirement plans) and other working people for the current recession. Unfortunately, we never have a shortage of gullible people who will accept just about anything that they see on television.

I hope the Mother Jones link gives you some of the ammunition you need to counter these pernicious assertions. We have to fix this before our republic devolves into despotic plutocracy. It’s not far down the road.

You bet it’s class warfare. And Uncle Sam needs you!