Reaping the Whirlwind
Wikimedia Commons
Ronald Reagan served two terms as president and left office in January 1989, having secured the election of his own vice president as the next president. In 1994, he issued a brief statement to the American people announcing his incipient Alzheimer’s Disease and his retirement from public life. Reagan would live another ten years in wealth and comfort, but with gradually diminishing mental capacity, until his death from pneumonia in 2004, at the age of 93.
Modern American politics can fairly be divided between two eras: pre-Reagan and post-Reagan. Before Reagan, politicians of both parties, thought they had their differences, usually worked together to hammer out compromises in the perceived interests of the country. But after Reagan’s polarizing terms, and the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the empowerment of a radical right wing, members of Congress sometimes refused to speak to each other for months at a time.
Terrorist organizations trained and funded by Reagan’s State Department are still slaughtering infidels from Spain to Singapore. A Wild West atmosphere of deregulation, which Reagan created and cultivated, led to one disaster after another, from the collapse of fishing stocks off of Nantucket Shoals in the 1990s to the end-of-the-world financial crisis of 2008.
Post-Iran-Contra, only perjury charges over fornication have seriously threatened to send a criminal president to prison, while the wildest corruption has gone largely unchecked. Labor unions are effectively dead in America, and to this day millions of people who can’t afford their own mortgages or car payments praise the Dear Leader for his vision and resolve in making sure they never landed a decent job for as long as they lived.
All in all, Reagan’s shadow is long and dark, and it remains to be seen whether it will ever fully recede.
Our Founding Fathers weren’t exactly saints, either — find out why. Then learn about the appalling beliefs of some of American history’s most popular presidents.
