Today was proclaimed as a national day of mourning for the passing of Ronald Reagan. With any president there is good and bad and hopefully his suffering from Alzheimer’s will influence increased research into this disease, though he himself likely would have favored cutting federal funding to such research. I don’t like to be very political here, but, how can we so positively remember things like Reagonomics and the extreme militarization that were ushered in under his command? He racked up a deficit that we’re still paying for and an economic legacy that favored the rich and greatly increased the distance between rich and poor. While his efforts may be attributed to the end of the cold war, the legacy of militarization is still with us today. Let’s remember the Iran-Contra affair that sold weapons to the Iranians to fund revolution in Nicaragua against the wishes of Congress and the American people or the funding of the School of the Americas that trained Latin American guerillas and revolutionaries, teaching them tactics to enable them in their struggles that left hundreds of innocent people dead. Let us mourn the passing of an affable and popular movie star and public figure and pay all the proper respect, but I will not be mourning the passing of a great president.
:::scott:::