rant in five...four....three...two....

[somedaybitch]

lift. off.


i truly mean no disrespect to the author of the lj comments quoted herein, and i'm sure none of the people that then commented on that lj entry did either...but a former President of the United States is dead and i can't let disrespect, even unintentional, to that office go unchallenged. disagree with the politics of the person that occupies the office as much as you want, but do *not* disrespect the office, and the sacrifices that are required to occupy that office.


Johnson's death didn't trigger a day of mourning, and hello, Civil Rights legislation? And no matter how I felt/feel about Nixon, same thing? No day off from government.

that is at the discretion of the sitting President.

much to the chagrin of the Democratic party, there is a Republican in office. a Republican who's father was Reagan's vice president. the man was a family friend. it was the least President Bush could do.

from an article at msnbc.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5151474/
Presidents, former presidents and presidents-elect are entitled to state funerals. It is left to the family to decide whether one should be held and how involved it should be.

Reagan and his family and his chief of staff have had Reagan's funeral planned for years. it is a prerogative of a former president, and regardless of party affiliation, a former president fucking well deserves it.

Apparently, the 101 is going to be literally shut down this afternoon so people can watch the hearse drive to the Reagan Library. There are signs, SIGNS, telling people not to park on the freeway!!

yesterday was about the office of President of the United States, and what it stands for, about this nation and what it stands for. that's why people lined up along the road to pay their respects. that's why the Stock Markets all closed of their own volition. that's why the government was shut down for one day, and the 101 was shut down for one day.

one day.

for a man that served his country for two terms, who almost died serving his country while in office, you can't suck it up for one lousy day?


I'm angry, and I know if Reagan had been one of my heroes, I'd be more sympathetic. That's a given. But I still don't understand it....

for fuck's sake...the man was President of the United States. during one of those terms, someone tried to assassinate him. the Secret Service agent that took a round for his President didn't care if Reagan was a Republican or a Democrat. didn't care if he agreed with the decisions of his President or not. the man was the agent's President. that's the bottom line.

Reagan deserves every respect that can be accorded to him whether you agree with his politics or not because he had the courage of his convictions and he tried to do something good for his nation.

whether he succeeded or failed in anyone's estimation is not the point. he put up. he put his
life at risk for the rights and freedoms of total strangers simply because they were his fellow Americans.

you know why politics is messed up and has been since the beginning of time, regardless of nation? because people can't get beyond bullshit partisan bickering and their own self-absorbed viewpoints to stop and think about doing the right thing regardless of political affiliation.

the freeways are messed up and people have been inconvenienced for one day.

isn't life traumatic.

Nancy Reagan just lost her husband, and her children just lost their father. i'd say they're a bit more permanently inconvenienced than the rest of us, wouldn't you?

even if it had been William Jefferson Clinton, I'm still not going to stand my ass on the street and watch a body drive by.

i would bet cold, hard cash that he would be deeply, deeply disturbed to hear that said.

love him or hate him, William Jefferson Clinton is also a former President of the United States and deserves the respect of the office. and when he dies, if i'm still alive, he'll get the same respect from me that Reagan did. and Nixon did. and any other former President of the United States should get from every single American.

people are not watching "a body drive by". they are paying their respects to the office of the President of the United States, the most free nation on God's green Earth.

i'd die defending this country, and were i in the position to, i'd die trying to defend the President of it. i'd also, for the record, die trying to save the life of any fellow American, were the situation present.

remember United Airlines Flight 93? the one where the passengers took over the flight from the terrorists one sunny morning in September? the one where the Americans on the plane sacrificed their lives for other Americans they'd never met by intentionally crashing the plane? remember that?

why'd they do that? because they were taught that we don't leave our people out to dry. because they were taught that our nation, our way of life, our freedom, is worth fighting for, and worth dying for.

by some of the remarks, i think it's a safe guess that the author is a Democrat.
want to be a proud member of the Democratic party? then start by working to make the Democratic party stand for something other than the Automatic, KneeJerk Republican-Hating Party,[tm] because *that*, is not a platform. that's a temper tantrum.

STAND FOR SOMETHING REAL. Reagan did.

oh, and one last thing.

about the death of former President Lyndon Johnson....he was, in 1973, the last ex-president to have had an official Washington ceremony. the stock markets also chose to close as a sign of respect. those inconsiderate bastards.

Comments

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

right there with you... no matter the man's politics (and I am too young to have understood politics when he was in office) he was ELECTED to run our country... the man deserves the respect earned. He led for not one, but TWO terms.

If the nation was so unhappy with his politics, he would not have been elected a second time.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i was a senior in high school when Reagan was shot. i grew up a child of the Cold War. i grew up under a threat of global thermonuclear annihilation and not in a Matthew Broderick kind of way. Reagan worked to end the Cold War. he worked to bring the former Soviet Union into the global community as a partner, not a threat.

here's what Jeff Jarvis wrote at his blog.http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_06_11.html#007281

The right to an obituary

Ronald Reagan is eulogized and memoralized and buried. And some around the world don't understand how we do this here. Some don't understand why we -- his political friends and foes -- can remember only the good at a time like this and nevermind the "buts."

But that is how we do it in America. We believe in a right to an obituary that pays tribute and remembers the good and says a fond farwell. So that is what we gave Ronald Reagan, (almost) all of us.

That is what I want. I always said when I worked on newspapers that the only fringe benefit I will ever get for having worked there is a nice obit. When I go, I expect obits to run wherever I worked: in Chicago and San Francisco and New York and Detroit and even Burlington, Iowa (perhaps that's why I worked so many places, to get so many obits). I hope for the courtesy of an obit in even The Times. And I expect that when they briefly run through my checkered career, they leave out the black squares and omit the customary word "troubled" before the phrase "launch of Entertainment Weekly," for example. I wish for a few nice words from family and friend.

That is how we say good-bye in America. I'm shocked when I read British obits that rehash the nasty bits in a life. I'm surprised when people expect us to dredge a life as we say farewell. That's how others do it. That's not how we do it.

Farewell, Mr. President, and rest in peace. Thank you for your service.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

and here's what Gorbachev had to say...in print...in the New York Times.

A President Who Listened

By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Published: June 7, 2004

Moscow (Russia)


MOSCOW — I have just sent to Nancy Reagan a letter of condolence for the passing of Ronald Reagan. The 40th president of the United States was an extraordinary man who in his long life saw moments of triumph, who had his ups and downs and experienced the happiness of true love.

It so happened that his second term as president coincided with the emergence of a new Soviet leadership — a coincidence that may seem accidental but that was in effect a prologue to momentous events in world history.

Ronald Reagan's first term as president had been dedicated to restoring America's self-confidence. He appealed to the traditions and optimism of the people, to the American dream, and he regarded as his main task strengthening the economy and the military might of the United States. This was accompanied by confrontational rhetoric toward the Soviet Union, and more than rhetoric — by a number of actions that caused concern both in our country and among many people throughout the world. It seemed that the most important thing about Reagan was his anti-Communism and his reputation as a hawk who saw the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."

Yet his second term as president emphasized a different set of goals. I think he understood that it is the peacemakers, above all, who earn a place in history. This was consistent with his convictions based on experience, intuition and love of life. In this he was supported by Nancy — his wife and friend, whose role will, I am sure, be duly appreciated.

At our first meeting in Geneva in 1985 I represented a new, changing Soviet Union. Of course, the new Soviet leadership could have continued in the old ways. But we chose a different path, because we saw the critical problems of our country and the urgent need to step back from the edge of the abyss to which the nuclear arms race was pushing mankind.

The dialogue that President Reagan and I started was difficult. To reach agreement, particularly on arms control and security, we had to overcome mistrust and the barriers of numerous problems and prejudices.

I don't know whether we would have been able to agree and to insist on the implementation of our agreements with a different person at the helm of American government. True, Reagan was a man of the right. But, while adhering to his convictions, with which one could agree or disagree, he was not dogmatic; he was looking for negotiations and cooperation. And this was the most important thing to me: he had the trust of the American people.

In the final outcome, our insistence on dialogue proved fully justified. At a White House ceremony in 1987, we signed the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty, which launched the process of real arms reduction. And, even though we saw the road to a world free of nuclear weapons differently, the very fact of setting this goal in 1986 in Reykjavik helped to break the momentum of the arms race.

to be continued

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

continued...

While addressing these vital tasks, we changed the nature of relations between our two countries, moving step by step to build trust and to test it by concrete deeds. And in the process, we — and our views — were changing too. I believe it was not an accident that during his visit to Moscow in the summer of 1988 President Reagan said, in reply to a reporter's question, that he did not regard the perestroika-era Soviet Union as an evil empire.

I think that the main lesson of those years is the need for dialogue, which must not be broken off whatever the challenges and complications we have to face. Meeting with Ronald Reagan in subsequent years I saw that this was how he understood our legacy to the new generation of political leaders.

The personal rapport that emerged between us over the years helped me to appreciate Ronald Reagan's human qualities. A true leader, a man of his word and an optimist, he traveled the journey of his life with dignity and faced courageously the cruel disease that darkened his final years. He has earned a place in history and in people's hearts.


Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.

[pualaridesagain.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to try and defend any of what I said, because honestly, I do stand by it - my confusion, my frustration and my anger. And I have a right to it. I'll defend that as well.

That being said, I agree with you on many levels. President Reagan was the President of the United States, and he does deserve honor and recognition and reverence for the role he served, and for the life he devoted to public service. And his wife and family also deserve sympathy and support and the empathy of the people around them. In this case, the American people.

All of the Presidents who have devoted themselves to public office deserve our recognition and our tribute, regardless of partisan politics, and I listened all day Sunday to the words of various politicians, reporters, and other people who had worked with Reagan, who respected him and admired him and I did that freely, and as my own tribute.

I don't have issues with national recognition, but I am bothered by a week's worth of media coverage on a man's death - regardless of the status of that man - at the expense of coverage of the rest of the world (and yes, it's entirely possible that my bias is affecting this. I've never pretended otherwise.). I'm bothered by the feeling that the media is rewriting history to honor the former President, and again, yes, I'm sure my bias is showing. Reagan was not a saint, none of our President's have been. When he was governor of California, he closed many of the psychiatric hospitals and vet's homes, and sent all of the people receiving care at those facilities onto the streets. That bothers me deeply, as a person, not simply as a Democrat, and I was offended that his less than stellar actions were being ignored completely.

I understand on many levels the need to pay tribute, especially in California where he was very much a part of the state, the community, the government and Hollywood. There are people who grew up with Reagan, who lived her during his political tenure, who worship and supported him, and I am glad that they had the chance to say goodbye, to pay tribute in a way that they felt was necessary.

Okay - and up to know, I've been reasonable, but this was a little much, even for me:
by some of the remarks, i think it's a safe guess that the author is a Democrat.
want to be a proud member of the Democratic party? then start by working to make the Democratic party stand for something other than the Automatic, KneeJerk Republican-Hating Party,[tm] because *that*, is not a platform. that's a temper tantrum.


Yup. I'm a Democrat. I registered to vote the day I turned 18, and I registered Democrat, and it seems highly unlikely, unless a party that's closer to my affiliation is formed, that i'll change it. And my voting record testifies to that. I've voted in every election that's been held since I turned 18 - state wide, city wide and national, and I've been more than vocal about my displeasure with the Democratic party - with the centrist leanings, with their need to support and electable candidate instead of someone who represents the things that I feel the party stands for. I have volunteered and worked for the social programs I believe in, and I have never, ever followed the party line at the expense of my conscience. My anger is my own, and my reactions are my own, and I don't really recall any sort of Republican bashing in my post on Reagan. I prefer to be angry about the things that offend me on a personal level, leaving out the party politics.

On that note, I am sorry to have offended you, and I'm glad to see someone willing to stand up for their beliefs and their ideals like you've done here, even if I don't agree with you completely.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

That bothers me deeply, as a person, not simply as a Democrat, and I was offended that his less than stellar actions were being ignored completely.

when someone dies, do you make a point of ensuring that all of their faults are publicly pointed out? that's not a tradition i'm aware of. in fact, the opposite occurs. we allow the dead to go in peace and we allow the mourners to mourn without unnecessarily adding to their tremendous grief.

pointing out the things that Reagan handled badly are for history books and studies of his presidency after a decent amount of time has passed. to do in the midst of fresh mourning is disrespectful, no matter who it is.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

pointing out the things that Reagan handled badly are for history books and studies of his presidency after a decent amount of time has passed. to do in the midst of fresh mourning is disrespectful, no matter who it is.

I think this is where we differ in opinion, and I don't think either opinion is less valid. Mourning President Reagan as a man is one thing, honouring his death and his contributions to society is an important way to pay homage to him and to his family. But I think that as citizens we have a responsability to keep in mind the actions of office, seperate from the man. I don't think that's disrespectful, I think it's being honest. I also don't think it's disrespectful to remember the whole person - their flaws and their strengths, to do less than that seems to me to be dishonest.

And again, it's a matter of opinion, and I do very much respect yours, and your viewpoint. And as I said before, I respect your willingness to stand behind your views and your words. I just don't happen to share them.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i don't think it's disrespectful to remember the whole person either. but i don't think that should be something that happens, verbally or in print, in the immediacy of grief.