Ronald Reagan, revisited

Ronald Reagan is dead. He became President when I was five, and left office when I was thirteen. During his second term, from 1985-1989, I had my first lessons in the politics of ecology, foreign policy, human rights, and economics. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, he utterly transformed American politics and the political language we now speak, for better or for worse.

The media blitz has already begun. Personally, I don't mind the amount of coverage. He was our President, and a historic figure on the world stage. I respect him for reversing course and transcending his conservatism on taxes and the Soviet Union. His eloquence and ability to comfort the American people, as during the Challenger tragedy, was real. But I mind the overwrought and often inaccurate manner with which every media outlet is tripping over themselves to out-eulogize Reagan, concluding that "he tore down the Berlin Wall and ended the Cold War."

Um, excuse me? I think the German people had a hand or two in the former, and Gorbachev and Eastern Europe did much to foment the latter. Those pro-peace and anti-nuke activists whom the Republicans love to hate? The ones who practice mass demonstrations and civil disobedience? They helped end the Cold War.

Last February, I wrote a column on this subject, Cold War and Peace, Revisited. I wanted to affirm the relationship between mass democracy and world-historical change, in light of the vast anti-war protests then sprouting around the world. I wasn't thinking about Reagan per se when I wrote the essay, but it's a healthy antidote to propaganda blitz we'll endure over the next week. I hope that he rests in peace, whomever we credit with restoring it, momentarily, to our troubled world.