I think I might be the only person who still has this opinion, but I need to get it out there. I think the inappropriate loving of dead people, commonly known as necrophilia, is just plain wrong and weird. There, I said it.
The thing is, all the Republican presidential candidates, at least one of the Democratic candidates and a good 64 percent of Americans disagree with me. For those of you that think I'm overestimating this problem, I only have to mention one name: Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Ever since the ex-president kicked the bucket in 2004, it seems that every man, woman and child in politics has rushed to make a comparison between themselves and Reagan. Oddly enough, they somehow mean it in a good way. The problem I see with this is that, to put it lightly, Reagan was not a good president. More than any other administration, present included, Reagan's was the most forwardly corrupt. Anything that brought shame to the nation could be brushed away with a sheepish grin and a timely invasion of a third world country.
It's true, as a country we do owe a lot of things to the man. Without his tough stance on crime, we might not have the largest prison population in the world. We owe him a debt for creating a huge military industrial complex that drains away into our literal national debt, another thing that Reagan left us. Above all, we can thank him for starting the trend of presidents not needing to be held accountable for their actions.
Most Republican candidates want to copy Reagan's approach to business, claiming "Reaganomics" would create a better economy. As college students are about to go out into the job market, we need to pray that they are lying. The economy under Reagan went great for some people, as long as they were already loaded. For everybody else, it was a process of waiting for some of that cash to hopefully trickle down. And for the record, even that bubble burst in 1987. Is this the system we want to go back to?
You also hear praise about Reagan when politicians want to talk about national security. However, more than any other president in the past, we can thank Reagan for the mess we are in now. It was under Reagan's administration that Muslim fanatics in Afghanistan were given all sorts of weapons, training and money to help solve the threat of the Soviets. And yes, Osama bin Laden was one of these men. After the Soviets limped back home, more needed aid to Afghanistan was denied, setting the stage for the murderous Taliban.
Unsatisfied with this, Reagan's administration also sold weapons to Iran, a problem that I'm sure will end up haunting us in the near future. This was in order to pay anti-communist rebels in Central America. In addition to overthrowing a democratically elected government, these rebels also contented themselves with looting, killing public servants, and shooting nuns. Reagan managed to avoid any repercussions from this because his underlings all claimed he had no idea what was happening. When somebody talks about bringing around Reaganesque national security measures, don't get too excited.
Others gush about Reagan's integrity and invoke his name whenever they want to seem morally upstanding about something. This is an odd choice to make. Among other unpleasant things, they're talking about a man who ignored the AIDS crisis during its first five years. The first time he ever mentioned it in public was after his acting buddy Rock Hudson succumbed to the disease. By that time, 6,000 others had already died from it. If that's the new definition of moral integrity, we're in a lot of trouble.
I doubt morals would relate to Reagan's ultra tough policies on illegal drugs, either. Instead of finding ways to fight addiction among people and promoting rehabilitation, his policies dictated imprisonment. We have the highest prison population out of any country because of this. The especially cruel sentencing for crack over powder cocaine is another scary part of these policies. Both drugs are equally threatening, but the people who buy cocaine tend to be rich and white. Said to be done because crack is that much more dangerous, the specific policy adds an extra 15 years in jail for being born in a ghetto.
At the end of the day, I think I understand why Reagan gets so much undue praise. He was one of the last presidents before America turned a new corner. And in this new era, we need all the heroes we can get. The question is: do we need heroes like him?
Ted Rogers is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at twrogers@student.umass.edu.
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