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CounterPunch
February
11, 2003
An 80s Flashback
Of Shuttles and Air Raids
by JOHN TROYER
After waking up last Saturday morning, I turned
on the radio and heard a news report on National Public Radio
about the apparent breakup of the space shuttle. In my precoffee
haze of the morning, I wondered out loud to no one in particular
why NPR was running old news stories from 1986. After a few moments
of focused concentration I realized I was not listening to rebroadcasts
of the Challenger accident but reports of the Space Shuttle Columbia
breaking apart in flight.
For a brief and uncanny moment of confusion
I re-experienced the 1980s of my youth in roughly 10 seconds
of radio news. More to the point, I am increasingly beginning
to witness the United States of 2003 riding a Delorian loaded
with plutonium stolen from Libyan terrorists and wired with a
flux capacitor back to the 1980s of Ronald Reagan. While I wince
at hearing concepts like "Reagan's America," it is
clear to me how determined people in the current George W. Bush
administration are reinvigorating the Reagan myth of days past.
The current Bush economic plan, defense
plan, foreign policy plan, pick a plan any plan, consists of
barely-veiled Reagan mantras about life, the universe and everything.
When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talks about the New Europe
it makes complete sense because it is largely the Europe of the
"Cold War-o-riffic" 1980s (minus Soviet Union domination,
now replaced by U.S. domination) and a time the Reagan system
worked best by saying we're right and they're wrong. I dread
thinking the war on (insert word here) is the new Cold War for
the next number of years, but it is a dogma well practiced by
Reaganite bureaucrats and a way of life for people like Donald
Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Beyond policy, many of the people working
in the current Bush administration are straight out of 1984 (in
many, many ways) and my favorite son of Reagan is former National
Security Adviser John Poindexter. Poindexter is a rare gem from
the Reagan era, the person who orchestrated the illegal selling
of military arms to Iran to illegally fund antigovernmental forces--called
the Contras--in Nicaragua. The whole thing became known as the
Iran-Contra affair and was quickly forgotten; as coconspirator
Oliver North made clear, these things had to be done for the
safety of the United States. Especially the part of the story
where everybody lies to Congress, no one is accountable for what
happens, and Reagan cannot remember or does not know anything
about the situation.
John Poindexter is now back in action
working for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency in the Information Awareness Office trying to create databases
capable of tracking anybody anywhere who uses an electronic device
wired to a network. The Total Information Awareness program,
as the awareness office calls it, was recently denied funding
by Congress. But I have faith it will return, not unlike the
specter of Ronald Reagan carried on the shoulders of his progeny.
I was talking about the Sons of Reagan,
and the apparent re-emergence of Ronny's 1980s Dance Party in
U.S. politics, with a friend and colleague after the Columbia
broke apart last Saturday. The irony is, as she rightly pointed
out, Reagan does not remember the period in which he was president--by
far one of the least impressive and problematic periods in contemporary
U.S. history. He is effectively outside of all history and literally
has no memory of the past.
In no way am I making light of Reagan's
Alzheimer's disease; rather, I find it sad that a former president
cannot even remember the stories he created to embellish his
own legend. In a nutshell, Reagan cannot recall not recalling.
Herein lays the most troubling aspect
of any return to Reaganesque policies in U.S. politics: People
have forgotten or willfully do not realize how the problems faced
domestically and internationally right now are largely the products
of Reagan era policy making. I know, I know--the United States
won the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but it also meant
doing some really stupid things along the way like arming Saddam
Hussein. The entire redevelopment of a missile defense system
for the United States--lovingly called the "peace shield"
in my youth--is the biggest boondoggle ever created by the Reagan
administration. The system will not work, never worked and comes
at the expense of other programs needing a great deal more funding.
I support how President Bush wants to leave no child behind,
but it would be nice to see funding match the rhetoric.
It appears the eternal return to Reagan's
America is an unstoppable political force in the White House
these days. While I shake my head when I think about the yet-unknown
problems created by these policies, I take some relief in the
following thought. It was those mighty Reagan years and their
poorly thought out long-term effects that helped defeat the previous
President Bush in the 1992 election.
Maybe, just maybe, all those memories
the Republicans are currently shelving about the 1980s while
simultaneously worshipping at the Reagan altar will become exactly
what the U.S. electorate needs to dredge up--a constant reminder
of the dangers posed by mediocrity in the White House.
John Troyer
is a columnist for the Daily Minnesotan. He welcomes comments
at troy0005@tc.umn.edu.
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