In article <40cbf07a$1$1008$44c9b20d@news3.asahi-net.or.jp>, Shannon
Jacobs <shanen@my-deja.com> wrote:

> > I think it's commonly viewed that while he had a lingering disease,
> > these past 14 years, was also a period during which a realistic
> > assessment of his career was in poor taste.  I assume it will
> > always be common decency to morph his career to suit Republican
> > political purpose, and any facts will be considered reprehensible
> > politics.
> >
> > Nevertheless my criticisms above and before were about Bush. How
> > long after Reagan's season of honorment can we begin discussing
> > Bush again?

[snip]
 
> On the first part above, I'll say that the "true" historical
> perspective is very difficult to achieve, and that's one of the few
> things that Dubya actually managed to say almost correctly, though he
> cast it from his typically selfish perspective about why he shouldn't
> care.

This, despite his executive order to void legislation that requires
documents of a presidency be released 12 years after a president leaves
office. His order keeps these papers private as long as there is any
living family member or progeny.  In theory--till the bloodline runs
out!

Releasing such papers at the beginning of the Bush term would have, of
course, exposed myriad details of the activities of operatives from
Reagan's time that now run the Bush operation.  So Bush's INTENT was to
ensure a "true" historical perspective is not achieved.  I can only
assume he considers these potentially politically damaging, since I
can't find any other reason not to make public the records of the
greatest president in the history of humanity.

> Historical judgment does have to wait until the actors are all dead,
> and it takes a long time. (The last wife of a Civil War veteran just
> died recently.)

I don't thing all the principals need to be dead to assess their work.
Certainly all the political utility of fabricating history has to be
dead, though, and that might take another hundred years or more. I've
long assume the intent is to create an anti-Roosevelt.  Loved,
accomplished, heroic. Roosevelt seemed to be these things without 30
think tanks working a million hours to accomplish.

> What you [I didn't watch it] saw in the Reagan funeral...

Me, watch the funeral.  No way.  I spent all week avoiding the endless
iterations of cut-and-paste homolies and still managed to see more than
I wanted.  I know Reagan fans that burned out on it before the actual
DC parade, and they only buried him yesterday.

> ...is actually worship of the dead emperor. Emperors are routinely
> projected as ideal "superheros" and deified. That extends to the
> current believers in Bushal infallibility.

Bush is not dead.  I'm not sure that he's "alive" in the traditional
sense, but they do parade him about at his ranch from time to time.

> (For a sharply conflicting perspective on Reagan, I recommend
> Slansky's _The_Clothes_Have_No_Emperor_, which seems to be back in
> print again.)
> 
> Now the real reason I was hooked into commenting: Y'all can blame
> Reagan for my presence here. If that doesn't destroy the Reagan
> worship, I can't imagine what would.
> 
> The short history according to Garp:
> 
> From youth I'd always dreamed of living abroad for a while, but when
> I "grew up" I dropped the idea and just did my programming. When
> Reagan was elected, I regarded it as a momentary sickness of the
> always peculiar American political system, soon to be cured. When
> Reagan was re-elected, it was difficult to regard the sickness as
> momentary, and I got my very first passport, though I didn't actually
> use it until later. When Dan Quayle was elected V-P on Reagan's coat
> tails, it contributed significantly to my decision to come to Japan.
> After Dubya was selected, I applied for and received my 永住ビザ. If
> Dubya is finally elected this year, even if by hook and crook, it is
> actually conceivable I would start reconsidering my citizenship.
> Unlike Colin Powell, I believe there are probably limits to how much
> humiliation and embarrassment I will endure.

When/if we can wrest control of the government from the corporate
bag-men and lackeys that now control it, by all means come on back and
enjoy yourself.

-- 
First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only
care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy.
 -- Gail Collins