What Reagan Did

That's Avedon's title to a piece I should have linked to yesterday. Which was Reagan Bashing Day. I like to think it fits in well today too.

So there you have it: A Democratic president offered up the potential for the development of an entire new industry open to all takers; a Republican president quashed the program in its crib and shored-up big corporates instead, and also failed to sign on to internet development; another Democratic president allows his Vice President to continue to promote a program he'd been pushing for years when he was still in the Senate, and all sorts of entrepreneurship exploded. Then we get the Bush2 years where even going to work in the morning is so risky that anyone who isn't already a multibillionaire is afraid to move, let alone take the risks of starting up a new business.

The Republicans really have never had anything to offer us. They come to us with sunny faces and promise to be great, it's morning in America and all that, but what they actually do is offer us Can't-Do America, the world where we can't have universal healthcare, can't keep funding Social Security, can't educate our children, can't have clean air and water, can't hope for a more tolerant and peaceful future.

Jimmy Carter offered us a future that would free us from the wars for oil and pollution that have wracked us ever since. He was offering us even more than most people knew, because that would also free us from the control of the people who are now running the whole world - some very nasty people, many of whom currently occupy our White House. And how did the media (even then, pretty conservative) respond? They labelled it his "malaise" speech, although he did not use the word. He actually was giving us a (literally) sunnier future than any conservative ever has, and he was derided for it.