Reagan supported apartheid era South Africa and the School of the Americas. One of the operations of a US supported gendarmerie, first reported by Reverend Santiago in the Jesuit journal America is described here by Chomsky:
I think in the long run Ronnie’s got to take some or most of the heat for pushing people with mental problems out into the cold by tightening the health care net. This in turn certainly doesn’t help with a lot of the violence wrought on society by people suffering from mental illness.
While that might or might not be true, I can’t think of many sources worse than Chomsky to cite.
ETA: We had a thread about this recently: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=667328&highlight=chomsky
In passing, here’s a more personal perspective on Chomsky: When I Saw Noam Chomsky Cry.
I have read that thread, I have seen in “Manufacturing consent” Chomsky testifying that indeed the holocaust was a crime against humanity and that he acknowledges the crimes in Cambodia, the problem IMHO is that many on the right just want to live in the past and never acknowledge that positions can change or that previous positions had a lot of spin to make it sound as worse as possible, but that is not my main reason to post here.
I can report by personal knowledge that what Chomsky reported from El Salvador was accurate, rightists that are telling you that Chomsky was wrong on that area are just bullshitting you.
Ed, (A Salvadorean-American doper)
Well, mind this forum is a politically slanted microcosm. I lived through the Reagan Presidency (I’m a Republican, voted for him twice, think he was a good President but not in the “Pantheon” of American President-Statesmen that some on the right put him in) and I remember him being widely liked by almost all Republicans and many Democrats. He won in two electoral landslides and was able to work with Tip O’Neill on a lot of issues. I knew many, many people who voted twice for Reagan who never voted for a Republican prior to or since then. Now, a lot of them now say they regret it, but at the time I remember him being very popular for most of his Presidency.
Even during periods where he was unpopular, I don’t remember many people hating him. Instead people looked at him sort of as an elderly bumbler in a comedic sense, if you look at Reagan’s approval numbers they were usually high (he earned the teflon nickname) but even when they dropped below 50% I can’t remember Reagan ever being as disliked as Bush or Obama have been by the people that dislike those Presidents.
Even when Bush had those inflated post-9/11 approval ratings, I remember a lot of people just hated President Bush. Obama has had good but not astronomical approval ratings most of his Presidency, but I have seen a ton of open hatred for him throughout his Presidency. There has just been a huge and unprecedented amount of vitriol in the public sphere about the current and prior President. Even Clinton who was impeached and vilified by elements in the GOP never faced that level of hatred although it’s possible some of the vitriol started to brew up then and has been roiling ever since.
But no, my memory of Reagan is very different than the OPs. He was a popular President liked by most and hated by only a very few.
I liked Reagan quite a bit (I think he was the first president I voted for when I came of age) and still do, but I don’t worship him like some Republicans do.
Hated hated hated him, thought that he was an awful, terrible person; and how he is lionized disgusts me.
Reagan was an empty vessal who was willing to take on any opinion put before him. As a politician he little was different from the salesman who shilled detergent on TV, the only thing that changed was the products he sold and who wrote the copy.
He could certainly sell that air of a wise old uncle or church deacon though, that was his great strength. I hated the guy’s policies and still, it took me a long time to really believe how empty he was personally. I’m sure that if the other side, any other side, had procured his services he would have convinced himself, and us, that he firmly believed in whatever they were selling.
So, I should have answered the OP. He wasn’t mean and didn’t intend to be devisive, IMO. He wanted to be nice and well liked so he did whatever was asked of him by his handlers. That came off as mean, even evil, to those of us who didn’t like the things going on, like Iran-Contra. Too many of the people who had his ear felt the ends justified the means and Ronnie, unlike Nancy, couldn’t say no.
His handlers, I hope you would agree, were mean and evil. Much like W’s.
He was divisive, to partisan Democrats.
He actively hated the country, and worked against education, the good of humanity/America, and was secretly infecting the LGBT community with AIDS, using Oliver North as his CIA liaison…if you are a Democrat.
Otherwise, whatever he said could be nuanced to mean anything, good to his friends, evil to his enemies.
I don’t think that his ‘growing up’ statement had the bile in it that you are looking for, and I think you are picking nits.
States rights speech, just outside Philadelphia MS, August, 1980. He was a race baiting a-hole.
Yes, I agree. They were pretty much the exact same handlers, weren’t they? Ronnie was, by far, the superior puppet.
I was too young at the time (two through ten years old) to have an opinion of him, but watching videos of his “there you go again” stunt a few weeks ago, I had the impression that I would have really disliked the guy.
I don’t know about bile. It’s just a really unpleasant thing to say. There’s nothing constructive in it. I happen to think that typical conservative values are quite immature. But I don’t go around saying it. What could it accomplish?
So when Democrats attack Republicans they’re being partisan and divisive but when Republicans attack Democrats they’re standing up for their principles? The accusations flew in both directions and objectively the Republicans were throwing more.
Fair enough. I hadn’t read anything pro or con about Chomsky regarding El Savador in particular. I was basing my opinion generally on New York Review of Books stuff, and on what I’ve read here. But if you say that he’s changed positions, I’ll take Chomsky with a little less salt in the future.
Well, not Cheney, he spent the Reagan years in the HoR. But he notably had served in a previous presidential administration – Nixon’s.
I saw a documentary once called Berkeley in the Sixties, which was all before my time, but based on the clips showing Reagan back then (when he was Governor of California), I’m sure that I would have really disliked the guy for all of that alone. (All the Boomers in the audience were shouting “Asshole!” whenever Reagan spoke and I saw no reason to differ.)