Death before dialup?

I've clawed my way back online here at the homestead, albeit at 42.5 kilobytes per second. MSN was offering a three-month free trial period, so all I had to do was find the extra long phone cable, endure an hour-long signup period with Microsoft's flaky dialup servers, and leave a post-it note to myself to cancel the service as soon as the broadband is back!. Even an all-text blog seems to load in slow motion at this speed - I dare not try any of the busier websites, for fear of waiting until dawn for the various animations to appear...

So Ronald Reagan is dead. Huh. I guess I'd be more distraught with grief if the bastard hadn't transformed my early childhood into a kaleidoscope of fear by unnecessarily escalating our nation's conflict with a Soviet Union already on its last legs into a winner-takes-all showdown between Good and Evil (sound familiar?). I went to bed every night between the ages of eight and fifteen fully expecting the world to end in fiery nuclear death while I slept, and so did many others in my generation. I would salute his truly admirable attempts to end Communism by subterfuge in Eastern Europe if he hadn't in the same Crusade signed off on death squads and murderous dictatorships in South America. Was Soviet-style socialism so awful that it was worth the innocent blood of women and children - even priests and nuns? The Cold Warriors will go to their graves answering that last one with a "Hell, yes!"; not surprisingly, they're the same ones who think that we should be allowed to fight the War On Terror by any means necessary, including torture and whatever violations of international law that we see fit. Why? Because we're Americans, and by definition we can do no wrong.

This is the dark side of Reagan's "Americanism" that euologists have trumpted since his passing. Yes, we should think of ourselves as a champion of freedom and liberty for others, but we must never let those ideas go to our collective head and make us think that we are somehow better than the nations of the world. Too often we equate being number one with being superior - what will happen to the American psyche, I wonder, on that inevitable day that we wake up to find ourselves second or even third? America's gift, if it has one to give, is to share its liberty, its prosperity, its unbelievably naive idea that tomorrow can and will be a better day than yesterday. Reagan and his political progeny claim they want to deliver this gift to the world, but who will accept anything at gunpoint? We learned this lesson the hard way during the Cold War, and now I fear we are learning it again in the Middle East.

I guess I thank Reagan for one thing - by the end of his presidency I had found my political bearings and discovered that I didn't give a flying fuck about ideology, nationality, territorial claims or any of those other things that make people want to go to war with one another. Out of my fear of mutual assured destruction, I came out of the Reagan years as a Pacifist, and still am one today. There's always another way - even when there isn't (go read your New Testament if that's too difficult an idea to wrap your brain around).

So thanks, Ronnie. I guess. Still, I think I would have had a happier childhood without you. I'm betting that there are millions of kids growing up right now who will feel exactly the same way about POTUS #43 when he kicks the bucket someday.

Good night, America.