Ronald Reagan

My mother told me years ago about how when John Kennedy died one of her few Republican friends was not at all sad, possibly a little happy. She said everyone wanted to kill her. Now I'm the one in that position. Gloria is barely speaking to me. I still remember when I first learned that she had voted for Reagan -- I was appalled! Our politics are fairly similar in general moderate to liberal. I'm a little to the left of her, but not by much. The major difference, I think, was our age. She's only two years younger than me, but in this instance I think those years made all the difference. I voted against Reagan the first time in the Fall of my Sophmore year in college. She was still in Highschool then, a senior I think. I spent very little time watching or reading the news when I was in college. All I knew of Reagan before I voted was that he was VERY conservative, and that he was so stupid he confused carbon monoxide with carbon dioxide and said that trees create more pollution than cars! That was enough for me. I honestly can't remember anymore whether I voted for Carter or Anderson I was still debating on the bus on the way to the polls. When Reagan won Yale College mourned. People like the Bushies notwithstanding, Yale College was VERY liberal when I was there. It had been the Berkeley of the East during the Viet Nam war protests and the student body was overwhelmingly liberal. One guy I knew was for Reagan and we banned him from our room the day after election day because his glee was too annoying.
The next time I gave much thought to Reagan was when he was shot. I was walking past the common TV room that day and saw an inordinately large crowd, I stopped to ask what had happened, they told me Reagan was shot! Wow, I said, "Is he dead?" No, they replied, indicating that he was supposed to be OK. My response was "bummer" which got a huge laugh, not because I was so funny, but because I was about the 10th person to react in just that way. I came into the room and watched the coverage for a while and another 5-10 people after me had the same conversation with the crowd, until we started pre-empting them by answering "What happened" with "Reagan was shot, no he's not dead, and yes it is a bummer."
We didn't really wish him dead, don't come after me secret service, it's just that there was a little part of us that knew that life for the minority populations in the country would be a lot better if he were.
I am neith black nor gay, but many of my best friends are and so I relate to these two groups who will NEVER forgive RR for the suffering they endured as a direct result of his policies. There is little question that he was both mildly racist and rabidly homophobic. No doubt he comforted himself that the latter would suffer during the apocolypse that he truly believed would come to Earth some day. He steadfast refusal to do ANYTHING about AIDS, not even mentioning the word until 1985 cost millions their lives. With sufficient funding and proliferation of information, the US deaths from AIDS could have been GREATLY reduced. I will always hate him for that.
I personally felt the pinch of Reaganomics a few months after his inauguration. In my first two years of College, when you took out a student loan for $2500 you received, oddly enough, $2500. Not after Reagan. Then you recieved $2350 approximately. You were pre-paying interest, we were told. We were having to pay points like we were buying a home, we knew. It was a gyp, one of thousands that he inflicted on the people who need government the most.