Hating Reagan and Revising History

Some unknown at the Huff Po has posted a screed that just begs a response:

God bless wireless Internet connections. Because I need to vent to somebody about my current predicament as I wait for my connecting flight out of George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and -- since all of the somebodies in my immediate vicinity seem to be wearing gator-skin boots and/or “United We Stand” tees -- I’ve decided that the more favorable, less-likely-to-whoop-my-ass candidate is you.

You would be wrong. Although in an odd way, your naivete is endearing.

What I’d like to vent about is this: Several hours ago, I was standing in an enormous security screening line at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, reading a very good book entitled -- rather fortuitously -- Resisting Reagan: the U.S. Central America Peace Movement. Out of the blue, this skinnier-than-asparagus lady waiting behind me in a white golfing outfit gave my shoulder a tap. “I hope you know, girl,” she said, “that Ronald Reagan is the best leader our country’s ever had.”

This girl has a way of describing conservatives by what they wear; gator skin boots, golf outfit, etc. Why? Do liberals not golf?

Hmmm...I paused for a second. I seriously contemplated looking this complete stranger in the eye and reciting the paragraph she had just interrupted, the one in which the author recounts a particularly haunting practice of the Reagan-funded, U.S.-trained military forces in El Salvador during the mid-80s:

“They take an entire family from their home, and the next day the bodies are found strung up in the outskirts of the town with their faces tied together, as if kissing each other... Disfigured bodies began to appear with signs that read, ‘Merry Christmas, people. We are ridding you of terrorists.’ ... By 1985, right-wing death squads alone had murdered more than forty thousand Salvadorans.”

She chooses not to examine what the eventual outcome of Reagan's policies were. Central America is now stable, so much so that a trade agreement was recently passed in congress to increase business with that region.

But I figured this might be inappropriate security line banter. And I was too genuinely tongue-tied to articulate how I feel about a president who funneled $9.5 billion annually into supporting these unthinkable death squads; into training the Nicaraguan Contras to gouge out the eyes and genitals of community leaders who were sympathetic to “the enemy”; and into fortifying a genocidal regime in Guatemala that destroyed over 440 villages and slaughtered more than 100,000 indigenous people.

So I just smiled like my name was Kathy Lee Gifford and said, “No, I wasn’t aware of that.”

It's interesting to point out that when Nicaraguan's were actually given the chance to vote, they chose the horrible Contra's in spite of mass voter fraud by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega's army. A woman name Violeta Chamorro risked death from the dictatorial Ortega and established a true democracy. If you want to read a true account of that election in 1990, read P.J. O'Rourke's excellent Give War a Chance.

And now, I’m eating a Cinnabon here in the airport in Houston, and my loss for words is starting to catch up with me. Of course, I’m already feeling pretty annoyed that the cheapest way I can get to Leon, Mexico for a conference on feminist resistance to U.S. imperialism and corporate globalization is by flying through RONALD REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT AND GEORGE BUSH INTERCONTINENTAL AIRPORT (heh--ed.). But this is further compounded by the realization that my own speechlessness about Reagan’s unforgivable role in Central America reflects a much larger, collective inability of the left to combat national amnesia about the Great Communicator’s true legacy. Even more abstractly, it reminds me of our failure to hold U.S. imperial presidencies accountable for the terror they’ve incited and continue to incite -- from the fincas of El Salvador to the trenches of Iraq to the militarized ghettoes here at home.

Only a hard core lefty can not acknowledge the improvement in living conditions throughout central America. From Costa Rica to Panama, the standards have risen dramatically. What of the imperialist invasion of Bosnia, a region we still occupy. The last sentence is drivel straight out of the leftist handbook and honestly doesn't warrant a reply.

I can think of no other explanation for why a man with such an abominable record could have a national airport named after him, and then go on to win the Discovery Channel’s “Greatest American” contest over candidates like Ben Franklin and Martin Luther King.

Folks, we’re getting our butts whipped in the battle over communal memory, over the definition of historical “facts.”

And so, I’m writing you not only for the sake of catharsis, but also to pledge that I won’t stop searching for the right words to address all future Reagan-lionizing golfer ladies until I can fly from Delores Huerta National Airport to Emma Goldman Internationalism Airport, where passports will be optional and “Ronald Reagan” will be nothing more than a brand of sanitary napkin disposal bins.

It's interesting to note that she used two mens names when she talked about greatest Americans, yet used womens names when talking of the airports. Was no woman "great" enough to rate in the "Greatest Americans" category?

As for the comment "passports will be optional", that's been attempted and seems to have crashed and burned, they called it the EU. Sorry, my happy little feminist, the land of John Lennon's "Imagine" has yet to materialize. Instead we have a world of realities that include "facts" such as Islamic terror, dictatorial regimes in Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela and an ever strengthening China. Notice anything about the nation's I just listed? All of those regimes are Communist or some bastardized off-shoot.

History may be written by the victors, but let’s hope it can also be revised by pissed-off bloggers and others who are willing to almost miss their planes in order to set the record straight.

You should've just gotten on your plane, because you've done nothing to "set the record straight", you've just given people like me the chance to point out the error of your thinking. Thanks.

Update: Hat tip: the Corner.