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Nabil's avatar

Well done! I lived through the Reagan years, and followed events closely as the world teetered, as it still does, on the edge of nuclear annihilation.

Your essay brought back many memories as well as filled in many gaps, especially on how Reagan deployed racism to mobilize white voters.

Historical illiteracy is the bedrock of American adulation of individual Presidents. Certainly all the Presidents since the Gipper have left the world a bloody place. The Gipper had the gift of performance, he was a B-level actor after all. The media helped galvanize around him right-wing dreamers, Christians fundamentalists, racists, economic hopefuls into what media sycophants termed "the Reagan Revolution." I suppose the movie "Reagan" is a calculated attempt to continue to build on historical illiteracy and thereby rivet it deeper into the American consciousness.

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