The Great Prevaricator: The Reaction from Those of Us Who Came of Age During the Reagan Presidency -- and Found It Inexplicably Horrific

"Excuse me while I barf.
I'm in no mood to join the joyful eulogies upon the passing of Ronald Reagan -- remembrances that prove, once again, the staggering size of our country's memory hole.
I missed the '60s. I grew up in Middle America, with Watergate, barely, and the benign buffoonery of Ford and Carter. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, it was an inexplicable, savage turn for a country that I'd never realized was capable of such things.
It's not just that George W. Bush would have been impossible without Reagan. The presidency of Ronald Reagan himself was so bad, on so many levels, that as young adults a sizeable number of us could only sputter in impotent rage, a rage summed up nicely by the Crucif***s song "Hinckley Had A Vision." It simply made no sense that an entire country could be run by sinister thugs, all because its spokesperson was a washed up actor with the professional training to deliver the most ridiculous, venal lies with a calming, "Great Communicator" demeanor.
Great Communicator, my ass. Tens of thousands of us died of AIDS on his watch, and he never even once mentioned the word. He also refused to adequately fund AIDS research -- a critical delay that, we now know, could have saved countless lives. We seem to have forgotten that. . . .
Last week in this space, I mourned the passing of David Dellinger, a contemporary of Reagan's who exemplified, far better than Ronnie ever could, courage and integrity and compassion. Dellinger spent his adult life speaking truth to power; Reagan spent it making things up for an audience. One was an apostle of selfless love; the other presided over the Me Decade.
Not all of us spent that decade obsessing over our investments and stepping over the homeless. For much of my twenties, I helped organize protests of hundreds of thousands of people on the Mall and at the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington. Most of us are still around. Most of us still remember the profound sense of shock as we watched our country become a place we didn't recognize, led by a genial, seemingly clueless man with an agenda that was on many levels simply evil.
Sound familiar? Forget the obituaries; I can hardly wait to unseat Ronald Reagan's heir in November."