Remembering Ronald Reagan

The U.S. flags are all at half-mast this week. {shrug} Fair enough; he was president of the nation, after all.

Me? I'm not in mourning. When I heard that Reagan was finally dead, I did a little jig. It's tempting to say that I never liked or respected the man, but that's not entirely true. I used to think he was OK. In fact, that - ironically - is the thing I have to thank Reagan for: he taught me to dislike Republicans.

I grew up in a very Republican household in a very Republican community. Like most kids I was raised to respect the president, and since the president at the time was a Republican, I figured they were the right guys. Nixon's disgraced resignation could have blown a hole in that, but hometown boy Jerry Ford took his place, and reassured me that the GOP weren't a bunch of amoral crooks.

Of course when a Carter beat Ford, denying our man the electoral legitimacy he deserved, I held it against him and his party. Every mistake Carter made was just more evidence that the Democrats were wrong. I did feel - even at the time - that Carter got a raw deal with the resolution of the Iranian hostage crisis (with the Ayatollah releasing them only after Reagan took office), but I was still happy that Ronnie won.

But by then I was old enough to understand more of what the president really said and did. I hung out with kids at school who came from Democratic homes and some of whom were actual radicals (at least according to their t-shirts and favorite rock bands), which also helped. And gradually I began to see that Reagan was just a charming, charismatic airhead. His take on Communism was simple-minded. In an embarassing moment in a school debate, someone finally explained to me why his "star wars" missile defense program was not only scientifically ridiculous, but politically dangerous. I realised that his approach to economics was as cold-hearted as it was illogical.

And then there was his response to the AIDS epidemic: ignore it. By this time I knew that I was gay, and I'd been just sexually active enough to be fucking scared as hell that I had AIDS. Or was going to get it if I ever did anything sexual ever again. (Remember that it was years before anyone had even identified HIV, let alone determined how it was/wasn't transmitted.) And President Ronald Reagan didn't give a damn. He let right-wing Christians set his public health agenda... and it included letting me die.

In the 1984 election, I actually sat on the fence. I still couldn't bring myself to vote for Mondale, but I couldn't vote for Reagan. So I drove 30 miles to my polling place (I was in college, but still registered at my parents' address)... and voted for every office except president. But by 1988, I'd had enough. George H.W. Bush was better than Reagan (I thought at the time), but Dukakis got my vote. So did several other Democrats on the ballot.

Bush the Elder turned out to be just as bad with his continuation of Reagan's anti-gay policies. He taught me to dislike the American flag through his red-white-and-blue-draped adventure in Iraq. And by 1992 I was protesting outside the Republican White House. But it was Reagan who first put me on the fence, and then pushed me to the other side. I'm not entirely comfortable with the Democrats, or with any other political party, but at least I'm no longer one of the unthinking and soulless dolts who give their allegiance to the party of indifference, hate, conflict, self-righteousness, arrogance, and aggression. For that I have Ron to be eternally grateful.

Reagan was a tireless teller of jokes, so in memory of his passing:

John David Hinckley dies, and finds himself being ushered to his new home by the archangel Gabriel. He starts to panic as he sees the fire-scorched landscape, and the names on the mailboxes of his new neighbors: John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and James Earl Ray.

"Exactly," says Gabriel.