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Nov. 4th, 2004 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rain_gryphonI suppose one of the reasons I have trouble taking the currently fashionable hysterics over Bush seriously is that I'm old enough to have lived through (and been aware of) the Reagan administration. Then, as now, the Republican party needed the support of the Billy-Bobs to carry the Electoral College. Then, as now, they were willing to pander to them with 'moral values'.
The differences are striking, though. Reagan had been a halfwit to begin with, and his advancing senility didn't improve things. This is a man who said (and apparently believed) that trees cause air pollution, that ketchup is a vegetable, that homeless people live that way so their lives won't be as 'complicated', and who was willing to make jokes in public about starting a nuclear war with the Soviets. You never knew in those days if the world would be there tomorrow. Serious, non-token efforts were made then to outlaw abortion, to outlaw homosexuality, to force schoolchildren to pray and to make the 10 commandments law.
Some of the same people that are fretting over Bush today were mourning Reagan when he died a few months back (I drank beer, ate pizza, and threw paper wads at the TV screen during the old scoundrel's funeral, but I digress) and reminiscing about how good things were back then.
We lived through that nightmare. The economy recovered, and four years afterward was booming again. The Constitution survived. Compared to Reagan, Bush is a veritable Solomon. He's going to make the correct noises to appease the hillbilly lobby, and make some cosmetic changes, but he's not going to do any serious harm, except (I hope) to Iran and other enemies of the Republic.
The differences are striking, though. Reagan had been a halfwit to begin with, and his advancing senility didn't improve things. This is a man who said (and apparently believed) that trees cause air pollution, that ketchup is a vegetable, that homeless people live that way so their lives won't be as 'complicated', and who was willing to make jokes in public about starting a nuclear war with the Soviets. You never knew in those days if the world would be there tomorrow. Serious, non-token efforts were made then to outlaw abortion, to outlaw homosexuality, to force schoolchildren to pray and to make the 10 commandments law.
Some of the same people that are fretting over Bush today were mourning Reagan when he died a few months back (I drank beer, ate pizza, and threw paper wads at the TV screen during the old scoundrel's funeral, but I digress) and reminiscing about how good things were back then.
We lived through that nightmare. The economy recovered, and four years afterward was booming again. The Constitution survived. Compared to Reagan, Bush is a veritable Solomon. He's going to make the correct noises to appease the hillbilly lobby, and make some cosmetic changes, but he's not going to do any serious harm, except (I hope) to Iran and other enemies of the Republic.
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I quite agree!
Date: 2004-11-05 02:13 pm (UTC)But, Nixon DID go to China.
So, even bad presidents can have their shining moments. Lets just hope GWB finds his in the next 4 years.
Whiff