The Reagan Revolution
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/260/1/The-Reagan-Revolution/Page1.html
Albino Carrillo
Albino Carrillo is an Associate Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing in the English Department of the University of Dayton. His one book is IN THE CITY OF SMOKING MIRRORS, published by the University of Arizona Press. Over the past 21 years, his work has appeared in national literary journals such as The Americas Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, and Columbia. By Albino Carrillo
Published on 07/10/2004
Out here in the midwest, in the Great Lake states, summer is tranquil
and lush: there are so many lightning bugs on the lawn, there are hints
and whispers of night birds chasing one another over thick corn fields
and alfalfa fields. Among this season's certainties, the Gipper is
dead, laid low by Alzheimer's, sent from us in a fitting Presidential
tribute. He was a man who became larger-than-life for the sake of all
of us reading these pages. The death of Ronald Wilson Reagan passed
like a beacon-comet for those of us who grew up in the 80's.
Out here in the midwest, in the Great Lake states, summer is tranquil and lush: there are so many lightning bugs on the lawn, there are hints and whispers of night birds chasing one another over thick corn fields and alfalfa fields. Among this season's certainties, the Gipper is dead, laid low by Alzheimer's, sent from us in a fitting Presidential tribute. He was a man who became larger-than-life for the sake of all of us reading these pages. The death of Ronald Wilson Reagan passed like a beacon-comet for those of us who grew up in the 80's. From the dripping dye-job cartoonists lampooned, to the realities of the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan wars, Reagan always seemed to really be an iconically clean-cut All-American, and in footage from various Republican conventions he is what he is: a true believer, an all-American, determined to defeat cattle rustlers or communism and all its manifestations.
My immediate acknowledgment is that he gave America hope during a time of disillusionment, a time of decay. Remember the late 70's? I do. The crappiest automobiles. Shitty music. But more. A lack of commitment at school from teachers. A lack of solutions from our government. A cultural morass. There were the crumbling freeways and bridges, crumbling inner-cities, inflation, and job-losses, too. And after the failure of the Carter administration to light-up the economy, after so many foreign policy failures, after Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran, after so many failed military ventures, Reagan's "Morning in America" ad rung many bells.
Not many people know this, but it is quite possible to surmise, that, by 1983, the Soviet Union had reached overall superiority in the field of InterContinental Ballistic Missiles. Specifically, the possession of up to 200 or more SS-18 "Satan" missiles, each containing ten one-half Megaton warheads, gave the USSR overwhelming first-strike capability. Knowing this, the Reagan administration early on increased defense spending to an almost limitless horizon of possibilities: the installation of nuclear-tipped Pershing 2 missiles in Western Europe in 1983 and the demand for a "strategic defense initiative," along with intense design and production quotas in the defense industries, made it possible for Reagan and his ministers to bluff Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko into destabilizing their own state through increased production it could not afford. The US barely afforded its own stockpiling, relying on the masters of capitalism to finance an increase in the speed and efficiency of mass-production through the untaxed, unbalanced, and often unethical trading of stocks, bonds, and other forms of capital.
What Reagan basically presided over was the dismantling of the Welfare State as envisioned by Roosevelt and Johnson. It was a backlash, to be sure: the Welfare State which had made things admittedly better for some of the disenfranchised unfairly burdened capitalism, and its systematic bureaucracy of rules and regulations of operation stifled free market competition. As Reagan would say, well, that all had to go if the West was going to win. It's not that he was racist or against the poor. His opposition to welfare and the system of socialized rights his predecessors had gathered together to help the marginal was, by his way of thinking, only natural considering the facts he saw: the Soviet Union on the way up, pushing over little states here and there, shooting down airliners, building its forces for a final, decisive run at the Ruhr valley. A 3000 warhead barrage that would leave most of America's stockpile of death in ruins. Who among us children of the 80's can forget the face of the brutish, Stalin-esque Soviet Air Defense Ministry Chief explaining, coldly and arrogantly, the downing of Korean Flight 007?
The morning in America did not arrive as Reagan had promised. Sure, the sun comes up everyday, and it is especially wonderful to see it clearing the Eastern horizon. Could Mondale or Carter have really handled the USSR? Would their defeatism have become ours? In retrospect, I am glad, in one sense, that Mr. Reagan was president when he was. Reagan lead us through tough times, when it seemed that America could fail. Times of our parents and grandparents making, nuclear times. But in many ways, Reagan was nothing more than an excellent, albeit shallow, symbolic talking head representative of a cultural backlash against the progressiveness of the 60's and the disillusionment of the 70's. All one has to do is look at who voted then, and who votes now, who contributes to American politics then, and now. Finally, what Reagan symbolizes is a reawakening to a kind of comfortable, white, middle-class isolationist patriotism that authors like Vonnegut openly mocked in the 60's. While some find it to be ignorant of history, disingenuous, and lacking in ethics, others in America still find it comforting, for it is based on a false optimism inherently and necessarily blind. It cannot account for things like Wounded Knee, or My Lai, or even Abu-Ghraib, but it can account for large SUV's, Wal-Mart, and even the speed at which you get your burger served to you.
In Solidarity,
Albino Carrillo, Managing Editor
Copyright © Albino Carrillo, 2004. All Rights Reserved.
My immediate acknowledgment is that he gave America hope during a time of disillusionment, a time of decay. Remember the late 70's? I do. The crappiest automobiles. Shitty music. But more. A lack of commitment at school from teachers. A lack of solutions from our government. A cultural morass. There were the crumbling freeways and bridges, crumbling inner-cities, inflation, and job-losses, too. And after the failure of the Carter administration to light-up the economy, after so many foreign policy failures, after Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran, after so many failed military ventures, Reagan's "Morning in America" ad rung many bells.
Not many people know this, but it is quite possible to surmise, that, by 1983, the Soviet Union had reached overall superiority in the field of InterContinental Ballistic Missiles. Specifically, the possession of up to 200 or more SS-18 "Satan" missiles, each containing ten one-half Megaton warheads, gave the USSR overwhelming first-strike capability. Knowing this, the Reagan administration early on increased defense spending to an almost limitless horizon of possibilities: the installation of nuclear-tipped Pershing 2 missiles in Western Europe in 1983 and the demand for a "strategic defense initiative," along with intense design and production quotas in the defense industries, made it possible for Reagan and his ministers to bluff Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko into destabilizing their own state through increased production it could not afford. The US barely afforded its own stockpiling, relying on the masters of capitalism to finance an increase in the speed and efficiency of mass-production through the untaxed, unbalanced, and often unethical trading of stocks, bonds, and other forms of capital.
What Reagan basically presided over was the dismantling of the Welfare State as envisioned by Roosevelt and Johnson. It was a backlash, to be sure: the Welfare State which had made things admittedly better for some of the disenfranchised unfairly burdened capitalism, and its systematic bureaucracy of rules and regulations of operation stifled free market competition. As Reagan would say, well, that all had to go if the West was going to win. It's not that he was racist or against the poor. His opposition to welfare and the system of socialized rights his predecessors had gathered together to help the marginal was, by his way of thinking, only natural considering the facts he saw: the Soviet Union on the way up, pushing over little states here and there, shooting down airliners, building its forces for a final, decisive run at the Ruhr valley. A 3000 warhead barrage that would leave most of America's stockpile of death in ruins. Who among us children of the 80's can forget the face of the brutish, Stalin-esque Soviet Air Defense Ministry Chief explaining, coldly and arrogantly, the downing of Korean Flight 007?
The morning in America did not arrive as Reagan had promised. Sure, the sun comes up everyday, and it is especially wonderful to see it clearing the Eastern horizon. Could Mondale or Carter have really handled the USSR? Would their defeatism have become ours? In retrospect, I am glad, in one sense, that Mr. Reagan was president when he was. Reagan lead us through tough times, when it seemed that America could fail. Times of our parents and grandparents making, nuclear times. But in many ways, Reagan was nothing more than an excellent, albeit shallow, symbolic talking head representative of a cultural backlash against the progressiveness of the 60's and the disillusionment of the 70's. All one has to do is look at who voted then, and who votes now, who contributes to American politics then, and now. Finally, what Reagan symbolizes is a reawakening to a kind of comfortable, white, middle-class isolationist patriotism that authors like Vonnegut openly mocked in the 60's. While some find it to be ignorant of history, disingenuous, and lacking in ethics, others in America still find it comforting, for it is based on a false optimism inherently and necessarily blind. It cannot account for things like Wounded Knee, or My Lai, or even Abu-Ghraib, but it can account for large SUV's, Wal-Mart, and even the speed at which you get your burger served to you.
In Solidarity,
Albino Carrillo, Managing Editor
Copyright © Albino Carrillo, 2004. All Rights Reserved.