Reply #43: I don't apologize for how I feel

[WilliamPitt]

A lot of people got into politics because of John Kennedy, or because they wanted to fight for justice in the civil rights cause. That entrance to politics was a positive one.

A lot of people got into politics because of Vietnam, or because Bobby got killed, or because MLK got killed, or because of Watergate. These were negative entrances into politics, borne of a need to stop outrages before they swamped the body politic.

Ronald Reagan was my entrance into politics, and it was a negative entrance. I remember very vividly this President telling me that my generation would be the one to face the apocalypse, a statement that was one of the most defining moments in my life. I lived under a cloud of fear after that.

My work in politics, for my whole life, has been in the majority an effort to undo the massive damage from the disaster that was the Reagan administration.

Our mainstream media journalism is a joke because of Reagan dereguation.

Our social programs were savaged because of Reagan.

Our environmental regulations, once something to be proud of, were eviscerated by Reagan.

The manifest power of corporations over virtually every facet of our lives came because of the massive deregulations put forth by Reagan.

The AIDS virus found a long, comfortable home in America because Reagan couldn't be bothered with funding research into 'gay cancer.'

Crack owned the urban world, wracked by the aforementioned social evisceration, for years because Reagan couldn't be bothered. Whole generations of Americans died in misery because he couldn't have gven a damn about their problems.

Saddam Hussein was a creation, in huge part, of Reagan.

Same goes for Osama bin Laden, who along with al Qaeda and the Taliban went from being a side project under Carter to a front-and-center priority that led directly to the attacks of September 11, not to mention the African embassy bombings. Those two embassies were destroyed with Semtex sold to Afghan mujeheddin (nee Taliban and al Qaeda) by the Reagan administration.

Dick Cheney was a Reagan creature.

Don Rumsfeld was a Reagan creature.

Paul Wolfowitz was a Reagan creature.

Richard Perle was a Reagan creature.

John Negroponte was a Reagan creature.

Elliot Abrams was a Reagan creature.

Dick Armitage was a Reagan creature.

There was some other guy named George, who spawned an idiot named George, who also came out of the Reagan administration.

If you cannot make the direct 2+2=4 connection between the legacy of the Reagan administration and the goddam intractible swamp we slog through every day today, then I despair of your ability to follow coherent logic.

Am I happy Reagan is dead? No.

Do I have a moment of doubt as to whether or not I should speak the truth of him to as many people as I can reach with my arm? I have not one single moment of doubt.

I'm sorry you feel bad because I don't feel bad enough about this, that I am perhaps being 'disrespectful.' Ronald Reagan was my entrance into politics, and it was an ugly, frightening entrance. The Reagan legacy has been a stain across our national landscape, and my life's work to date has been the process of trying to staunch the bleeding.