Ronald Wilson Reagan

[Graeblyn]

Originally posted by Aristotle
Thank you Graeblyn, for being the voice of reason in this thread.

OH! I forgot to mention the additions Reagan made to protections GLBT employees of the federal government get. Those protections were kept by Bush ONE and (of course) Clinton, but Bush TWO has already been working very hard to get those protections repealed.

[Aristotle]

Furthermore, how could anyone who "hated gays" ever get elected President of the Screen Actors Guild- even back in the 60s.

The recent gutter swill movie, "The Reagans", tried to paint Reagan as a hater of gays and the creators were widely ridiculed for such absurdity. They could not provide any basis or evidence for ANY of their defamatory portrayals. It is simply a spurious and hateful claim.

To get back on the topic in general:

A lot of people forget the climate of the world in the 1980s. It was believed that Communism and the Soviet Union were permanent fixtures. The West's political strategy was known as "detente" (a term coined by Nixon and Kissinger) which was basically an effort to do nothing more than work to ease tensions between the superpowers and be on the lookout for opportunities to improve relations.

The fear of nuclear war and/or Soviet invasion was enormous. Most of our parents vividly remember frequent drilling in schools to prepare for a nuclear attack. They remember the mass construction of bomb shelters. They remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. They remember the building of the Berlin Wall.

Even when I was a kid we had periodic "bomb drills" whenever tensions between the USA and the USSR got elevated.

It had become totally accepted the the Soviet/Communistic threat would always exist and that we just had to learn to deal with it.

Ronald Reagan was the first leader of any significance to reject that idea. He rejected the thought that a system of such incredible oppression should be simply tolerated. He believed, deep in his heart, that any system based on such evil principles was rotten at its core- and therefore weak.

His greatest accomplishment is sharing this belief with not just the USA but with the entire free world, and making them believe in it too. He then turned that belief into reality by winning the Cold War, defeating communism, and toppling the Soviet Union.

Every presidential historian I have ever read or seen on television agrees that Presidents generally have 2 or 3 main goals for their presidency and that is truly all they can hope to accomplish. The day to day activities of the government are handled by the enormous bureaucracy. A President has to focus on BIG IDEAS and work to accomplish them.

Ronald Reagan's main goals were:

1) Bring down the Evil Empire (USSR) and crush communism.

2) Repair the USA economy by cutting taxes and letting people keep more of their money (the top marginal rate was 70% when he came into office).

Those are 2 ENORMOUSLY ambitious goals. Miraculously, he accomplished both of them.

I am sure that even Ronald Reagan wished he could have solved every single problem that plagued the USA during his 2 terms. But a President can only do so much, and the things he did accomplish were of enormous import.

Two of the biggest things he is blamed for not "solving" are HIV/AIDS and poverty. I find this to be incredibly absurd since NOBODY has ever solved these problems ANYWHERE.

As a species and a civilization, we score a big fat ZERO for number of virii cured. So why is there such an irrational expectation that we should suddenly be able to cure HIV?

As a species and a civilization, poverty has been a constant affliction.

These two perennial problems have one thing in common: When/if they are ever solved, they will be solved by science.

Some sort of miraculous scientific breakthrough (nanobots perhaps?) will ne needed to defeat virii. Another sort of scientific breakthrough (synthetic foods? teleportation?) will be required to defeat poverty. I do not think anything any politician does will ever be able to significantly impact either of those ills.

[Ismenia]

All I know is it is sad when anyone dies be it from AIDS or Alzheimers, or old age.. what have you. We are all humans, we all make mistakes in our lives. I am not condoning what anyone has done on either side, despite the fact that I am a liberal democrat. Hatred in any form, in my opinion, is wrong. Hating gays for being what they are or hating the President for not doing what he should have done. Perhaps I am idealistic, but hey.. that is just me. I hope that Ronald Reagan rests in peace as do the millions of people that have died from AIDS or any of the other atrocities that our world comes up with.

[kestra]

Two of the biggest things he is blamed for not "solving" are HIV/AIDS and poverty. I find this to be incredibly absurd since NOBODY has ever solved these problems ANYWHERE

I don't blame him for not solving AIDS in his 8 year residency at the White House.
I blame him for his inaction when so many other countries saw how important this disease was to research.

Again, he could've acted sooner, he decided not to.

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by kestra
I don't blame him for not solving AIDS in his 8 year residency at the White House.
I blame him for his inaction when so many other countries saw how important this disease was to research.

Again, he could've acted sooner, he decided not to.

Right because it's mattered at all?

But this is part of being a leader. There are things you can do, that are attainable. There are other things that are simply unattainable. Reagin set out and did what he could, he made choices as a leader.

Why blame him? Why arent you blaming the scientific, religious, or other social organizations?

[Bramond]

If i remember rightly, i was still at school when all this came out about AIDS. Even then its was such an unknown quantity that no one knew what the best course of action was. Jeez we still didnt know the full ramifications, how fast it would spread, and we still didnt know the full SP on how it was spreading.

It seems alot of the arguments are based on Hind Sight, which in itself a wonderful thing, but pointless.

Other than that Ronnie did a fantastic job, and even with our own leader at the time, the Iron Lady, a fatastic amount of good was done!

[Lamorak]

Hmm, I'm really old so I vividly remember Reagan being president.

First of all, I remember growing up in the age of the "Bomb". We were all terrified of WWIII starting with Russia and the world being destroyed a'la "Dr. Strangelove".

Also, we were coming off of Carterism. Ahh, Carter. The gas lines, the Iranian prisoners, Billy Beer. America's self esteem was at a very low ebb. Reagan made us feel GOOD to be American again. I know that might sound trite to some, but it's important to those who include their nationality in their idea of self, which is a common American condition.

AIDS came upon the world stage as some bizarre anomaly that noone had ANY idea about. Like all diseases that are "new" and misunderstood, AIDS stirred up fear. However, to be honest, it was considered a "Gay" disease. We weren't really all that scared of it. I'm not trying to be insensitive, only trying to convey the mood of the masses.

We WERE scared of being destroyed by radiation. Because atom bombs kill people of ANY race, creed or sexual orientation, you see.

Anyway, Reagan WON the cold war. The freaking COLD WAR. The war we fought in Korea, Vietnam and every other shitty CIA- driven bizarre backstabbing bullshit foreign government toppling action America has always been accused of doing.

It's like those who are saying "Reagan didn't fund AIDS enough" are really trying to find some typical liberal spin to pin on Reagan. Reagan no more caused the epidemic of AIDS than he personally shot Freddy Mercury in the back of the head.

So really, excuse me if I find the assertion that Reagan didn't do enough to fund AIDS research; therefore, AIDS spread more rapidly to be ludicrous. Noone even knew what AIDS WAS. AIDS was no more understood than the cavemen grasped the implications of poor prostate health.

I too attended funerals of friends that died from AIDS. All gay men in their mid to late 30's or 40's. It was sad yes. My mother has breast cancer, that too is sad. Reagan died of Alzheimer's. Sad.

In hindsight, it's too bad he didn't fund more research for that. Perhaps he could defend himself now.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Lamorak
Also, we were coming off of Carterism. Ahh, Carter. The gas lines, the Iranian prisoners, Billy Beer. America's self esteem was at a very low ebb. Reagan made us feel GOOD to be American again. I know that might sound trite to some, but it's important to those who include their nationality in their idea of self, which is a common American condition.

It is a shame that foo few people remember and understand this. Historians really need to make the point that America was in a bad spot prior to Reagan taking office- both psychologically and in actuality.

Originally posted by Lamorak
So really, excuse me if I find the assertion that Reagan didn't do enough to fund AIDS research; therefore, AIDS spread more rapidly to be ludicrous. Noone even knew what AIDS WAS. AIDS was no more understood than the cavemen grasped the implications of poor prostate health.

Good analogy.

Originally posted by Lamorak
I too attended funerals of friends that died from AIDS. All gay men in their mid to late 30's or 40's. It was sad yes. My mother has breast cancer, that too is sad. Reagan died of Alzheimer's. Sad.

Yes, very sad. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes."

[Dalaena]

Originally posted by Sioubisae
Nonetheless, I don't think you all understand what it was like in our community during the late 70's to mid-80's, things like our official greeting turning into "Have you gotten tested lately?" or watching 225 pound men turn into 110 lb weaklings or having a cold and being scared to go outside your door cause you don' t know which of your neighbors might have AIDS and die from germs carried by you.

You should keep in mind that the gay community has the highest percentage of AIDs as well as the lowest percentage. Gay men might be extremely susceptible to the virus, but lesbians are the least affected group of people.

One of my professors used that often to counter the people who would claim that this was God's punishment for homosexuals. Homosexual women are the least affected!

Anyway, I remember when the AIDs scare started. People really knew NOTHING about it. There were parents pulling kids out of school because they found out some other kid was HIV+ from a blood transfusion. People didn't know how it killed or if it even existed. (Keep in mind that when you have AIDs, your immune system is horribly depressed. Thus, what you're really dying of is things like the common cold and pneumonia.) Where do you direct your funding when it's something that's brand new?

If any of you have studied any biology, you know that one of the reasons AIDs is such an epidemic is because of the absolutely brilliant design (from a biological standpoint) of this pathogen. It has a long incubation time allow people to infect others before they even know they've been infected. Why aren't people complaining about no Ebola funding? Ebola is actually a much more virulent disease than AIDs. However, it kills so fast that it's not the same threat that AIDs is. I really think that only people who do not fully understand how the virus operates on a biological level could make accusations such as "Reagan didn't put enough funding into AIDs".