A few thoughts on Ronald Reagan now that the sun has set over the Simi Valley and he is finally, hopefully, thankfully, at rest, having collected his last batch of frequent flyer miles...
My clock radio is usually set to NPR every morning; except when we have a particularly bad stretch of news, like the April body counts in Iraq: then I set it to the local FM classical music station. This morning I awoke to NPR's report on Reagan's funeral service set to take place at the National Cathedral in Washington DC. As I listened to the reporters description of the preparations- the gathering crowd, the visiting dignitaries, the rooftop snipers scanning the crowd, I remarked to my wife that I felt like I was listening to a report from another country. Some foreign leader had died and all this was remotely, passingly interesting but distant, remote, and impersonal.
I realized that after a solid week of 21 gun salutes, the ubiquitous flag draped coffin, and martial renditions of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" I was remarkably unmoved, disinterested, and only marginally attentive to the nearly twenty-four hour a day bombardment of national grief- if you can call it that.
Ronald Reagan was the first ideologue elected President in my lifetime. I have already posted enough about my feelings about him to get my FBI file reopened so I won't repeat all of that again. I will say though that I embarked upon what would prove to be my career and life's work- social work- at the beginning of his Presidency- 1982.
Nice timing you have to admit. Program funding slashed across the board. Tales of welfare mothers buying vodka with food stamps. It was the beginning of the homeless epidemic as we've come to know it- and now accept it- with a permanent underclass living in shelters or in the bushes under the freeway overpasses. Reagan preached (I don't know if he ever really believed it) that tax cuts for the wealthy would somehow "trickle down" (remember that phrase) to float all boats.
Under Reagan's superficially genial exterior lay the heart of a selfish, mean, disinterested, and thoroughly mediocre man. His gift was his ability to appeal to those qualities in others- convincing them they were losing out to "special interests" and "big government spenders". The American capacity for indignation is boundless and Reagan milked it for all it was worth; a true demogogue. It is those Americans- overfed, over-saturated with consumer messaging and overstimulated with non-stop right wing media- still riled into thinking they're being swindled by the poor and their advocates, who turned out to view the President's casket this week along with the merely curious.
The rest of us, many who have devoted themselves to picking up the pieces of the so-called "Reagan Revolution" kept our distance and our mouths mostly shut. I mean, you can't really show up to protest at the funeral of a 93 year old man can you?
I just wanted to- needed to- go on record somewhere (and here is a good place) to say that our "National Grief" is not universal. The mood of many of us is not sadness. It is not elation or celebration either. That would be ridiculous. It is for me a kind of weary numbness after all these years. Reagan is gone but not really; his ideology continues to appeal to the narrow, the vindictive, and the xenophobic. There is nothing to mourn or celebrate in his passing.
By the way, he may not have believed in Big Government Spending but he sure believed in Big Government Funeral Spending.
