Reagan is Dead

I recall the Rea­gan years through a fil­ter, since I was only 14 when they start­ed. I actu­al­ly got to ask him a ques­tion dur­ing a press con­fer­ence once—televised on C‑Span, even. (He did­n’t answer the ques­tion I asked, but he did talk a lot.)

Despite the fact that I was a fundagel­i­cal back then, I was­n’t utter­ly obliv­i­ous to the dan­gers pre­sent­ed by the increas­ing­ly close rela­tion­ship between the fundagel­i­cals and the Repub­li­cans. I remem­ber read­ing A Hand­maid­’s Tale for the first time and think­ing “This is our gen­er­a­tion’s 1984.”

Richard Evans Lee has said this bet­ter than I have, but I am not mourn­ing Rea­gan. I’m cer­tain­ly not cel­e­brat­ing his death, either. He was far more styl­ish and well-spo­ken than either of the Bush pres­i­dents, but that does­n’t change the under­ly­ing ideology.