From Consortium News: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/012811.html
The time element of “30 years” keeps slipping into American official reports and news stories about the origins of crises – the latest in “The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report” – but rarely is the relevance of the three-decade span explained, and there is a reason.
By Robert Parry
January 28, 2011
The failure to close the circle in saying who started the nation off on the path toward these disasters is because nearly everyone shies away from blaming Ronald Reagan for almost anything.
The overpowering consensus in Washington is that it’s political suicide to criticize the 40th president of the United States, whose centennial birthday on Feb. 6 will be celebrated elaborately.
It’s much safer to behave like MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews and simply accept that Reagan was “one of the all-time greats.”
But the truth is that Reagan’s current historical reputation rests more on the effectiveness of the Republican propaganda machine – and the timidity of many Democrats and media personalities – than on his actual record of accomplishments.
Indeed, many of today’s worst national and international problems can be traced to misjudgments and malfeasance from the Reagan years – from the swelling national debt to out-of-control banks, from the decline of the U.S. middle class to the inaction on energy independence, from the rise of Islamic fundamentalism to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
All of these disasters are part of the Reagan Legacy. Yet, possibly the most insidious residue from the Reagan Years was the concept of manipulating information – what some Reagan officials liked to call “perception management” – as a means of societal control.
In that endeavor, Reagan’s team took aim at two key entities – the CIA’s analytical division and the Washington press corps – with the realization that if the information produced and disseminated by those two groups could be controlled then the insider community of Washington and the broader American public could be managed.
Continue reading at: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/012811.html
01/29/2011 at 8:13 am
Reagan was a terrible President – on par with Bush, and in fact most of the denizens of the Bush administrations that did most of the harm to this nation were brought to power by Reagan (or Nixon) and merely came into full unfettered flower under Bush II. Reagan should have been impeached and removed from office and put in jail.
I used to think he was a terrible man in every way, but he did manage to raise good children, so he cannot have been all bad. Despite this, I cannot forgive him for the harm he and his minions did to the people of this country.
01/29/2011 at 12:21 pm
Of course he also raised a turd, Michael who is a neo-Nazi POS
01/29/2011 at 12:30 pm
I have to thank you for all the links you provide to the more obscure new sources that you do. There is a treasure trove of information Parry provides at his Consortiumnews.com, going back to Nixon’s involvement of meddling in the peace negotiations before the ’68 elections to secure an advantage, his “secret plan to end the war” and all the things that lead up to the Reagan/Casey October Surprise, Iran-Contra, etc. This stuff has been buried way down deep by the mainstream media.
01/29/2011 at 2:54 pm
@Edith – I second the thanks.
@Suzan – It’s funny how we credit people with the success of their children and then say it’s not the parents’ fault when their children fail. I think we recognize that a parent can get in the way of making a good person, but they can’t make a good person happen.