My sincere sympathies

go to those who mourn Ronald Reagan. Grief, sorrow, and misery are emotions each of us must feel more than once in life. I wish them

peace.

I, for one, however, do not mourn Reagan. He did much to shift this country further to the Right. His staunchest supporters

demonize and dismiss the Left. Yes, he was personable. His followers are much less so.

It was Reagan who popularized the notion that

the government is the enemy, a beast which must be starved. His genuine philosophy has simply become slogans for a White House as Chamber

of Commerce. The libertarian facade might be easier to take if the ”new conservatives” weren’t stuffing their pockets and sticking

their noses in our bedrooms.

While I absolutely appreciate the humor behind ”we begin bombing in five minutes,” that joke is the

lighter side of American absolutism and unilateralism. Less funny, but more lasting, was the casting of our enemies as simply

”evil.” We nearly bankrupted ourselves to bankrupt the soviets. How much must we spend to defeat a tiny enemy who uses box cutters

and donkey carts?

It is easy to see the breakdown in ”intelligence” even 20 years ago, when the former head of the CIA, Daddy

Bush, was ”out of the loop” on the Iran-Contra Scandal (ignorance is an excuse, it seems). Henchmen like Ollie North connect the

dots from Watergate to today’s dirty tricks. Yes, these are noble and honorable men who have serviced our nation.

Reagan lives

on as the model for the current administration (which borrows equally from another great Republican, Dick Nixon). In unilateralism, in

casting others as ”evil,” in bankrupting the nation, Bush honors Reagan, who, as Cheney said, ”showed us what we can get away

with. It is our due.” Inspiring leadership.

Still, even with huge mandates from the voters, Reagan didn’t seek to change

everything as completely as Bush has, without any mandate at all. And yet, Reagan did change everything forever, opening the door wide

for the truly Radical Right and American Fundamentalists.

It’s mourning in America for all of us. mjh

Several conservative columnists and cartoonists have made a point of attacking

”The Day After Tomorrow” as representing the liberal and unscientific view of Global Warming. Funny, I don’t recall

conservative outrage over Armagedon (asteroid threatens Earth) or Independence Day (aliens attack) or Jurasic Park

(cloned dinosaurs) or myriad movies centering on volcanoes, tornados, giant insects, etc. Why does global warming in particular set off

conservatives? Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that people get rich through fossil fuels, but not through asteroids, aliens or

clones (yet)? It can’t simply be personal profit that motivates conservatives. Heaven forfend.

What the conservative view

about global warming reminds me of, first, is the rejection of evolution through natural selection (aka Darwinism). Not only do

conservatives deny the science behind evolution, they make up their own fake-science and demand equal time. In turn, I’m reminded of the

trial of Galileo, sentenced for challenging the false view held by those with power. In this, I can’t quite see how conservatives

”profit” from a flat-earth view, but then, what is conservatism (or what used to be called ”reactionary” before that became

mainstream) than a resistance to change (aka progress)?

What we desperately need is for the majority to be capable of reasoning

beyond one movie or one book. mjh