End Game

The American predilection for choosing fuzzy myth over grim reality is one factor that has been driving the US ever closer to the abyss. There is danger in delusion. Americans always seem to suffer fools gladly. Nixon. Twice. Reagan. Twice. George H. W. Bush. George W. Bush. Twice! And their loathsome Vice Presidents—Agnew, Ford, Bush, Quayle, Cheney.

A McCain/Palin administration might supply that final push toward oblivion. More on that below.

Despite a mountain of easily accessible evidence to the contrary, many Americans choose to believe that Ronald Reagan was a kind and gentle grandfatherly person, the Great Communicator (if mostly of clichés from cue-cards, and Nancy whispering in his ear).

Both McCain and Obama sing his mythical praises and make self-serving and ostentatious claims regarding presumed rights of succession. Both debase themselves on the grave of this frightful ghost who was always a frigid and calculating phantasm.

In fact, Mr. Reagan had a lot in common with George W. Bush when it comes to illegal wars, disappearances, torture, death squads, murder, spin and denial. And all for reasons as vacuous as those of the latter. ‘Freedom’. ‘Democracy’. ‘The American Way’.

He found a pretext to invade Grenada, population 90,000. Operation Urgent Fury made the world safe for—nutmeg, the country’s chief export. As Michael Ledeen (Reagan Administration insider and Iran-Contra conspiracist) said: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” If only it were once a decade…

In Nicaragua, ‘contras’ trained at Fort Benning, Georgia’s School of the Americas (since changed to ‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’ but still teaching torture) spread across the countryside to instill maximum terror in the population by torturing and murdering more or less randomly.