Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Truth that needs to be told about Reagan -- and it's about time!

The author of the following article does a good job in delineating some of the humongous lies the right wingers swallow with their daily FOX "news" brought to them by Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity. The author includes the truth about the Reagan years and its failed philosophy that has brought us to where we are today:

A RICH FANTASY LIFE (being lived by the Far Right)
By William Rogers Pitt
http://www.truth-out.org/a-rich-fantasy-life67572

EXCERPT:

I know I should be immune to this by now, but I still find myself awestruck by the incredibly detailed, insulated fantasy world that the American conservative "movement" has created for themselves. No lie is too big to be told, no fact is too firm to be bent around ideology, no myth is too absurd to defend to the knife. The ability to spew deliberate nonsense into the credulous ears of Fox-watching right-bent voters - and to be utterly without shame while doing it - is the core of this "movement's" political muscle, and has been for a number of decades now.

Take, for example, this past weekend's festival of Reagan. The late president's 100th birthday opened the floodgates for an ocean of nonsense to be dumped on the American people. He was a great leader, the conservative's conservative, a small-government hero who deserves a place on Mt. Rushmore.

Rilly?

Ronald Reagan's "supply side" economic model was the gateway drug that led inexorably to the collapse of the American economy two years ago, and yet his conservative acolytes - as well as far too many Democrats who should know better - still cling to that economic model as if it were holy writ.

Ronald Reagan raised taxes massively, and grew the federal government enormously, while sending the country spiraling into a morass of debt we are nowhere near recovering from, and yet his worshippers continue to tout him as the perfect "small government" man.

Ronald Reagan and his people sold shiploads of weapons to Iran even as they supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his war against the Islamic Republic. Ronald Reagan and his people basically created the Taliban, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan as a means of carrying on the Cold War fight against the Soviet Union, and yet today his conservative followers cling to a "War on Terror" as their sword and shield.

Didn't hear any of this during the weekend's Reaganapallooza, did you? No surprise. Why let facts - Reagan was a terrible president who bears a great deal of responsibility for today's national problems, a president who exploded the debt and the size of government, a president who supported known terrorists and rogue nations with money and materiel even as they were killing Americans - get in the way of a perfectly good story line.

That's the kind of comfort bubble these people live in, and it must be a nice place to be, because they refuse to be budged out of it one centimeter. The Reagan worship we just witnessed is merely this week's iteration of an ongoing phenomenon: the creation of a parallel story line - nay, a parallel universe - to satisfy the already-calcified opinions of the far-right GOP base.

To continue reading the article, go to: http://www.truth-out.org/a-rich-fantasy-life67572

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