ronald reagan just died

[basschick]

http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTB1c2...0YQ--/s/196325

i'm not sure why, but i feel sort of sad.

[Huskyhunks]

Uggg, just so not in the mood to hear about this man. I buried him a long time ago. Basschick, that doesn't mean this is not a worthy topic, but the media is going to make him out as some kind of saint and I think he was an evil person.

[Jasun]

I've kinda gotta agree with that. Reagan fought tooth and nail against any research into HIV for years, he refused to say "gay" or "AIDS" in public. He decided that it would be better to cowtow to Christian groups than to try to keep gay people alive. The only good thing that really came out of all of that was the the gay community had to come together and come out in huge numbers so we could take our battle to the streets.

I don't know I'd go as fat as to say he was "Evil" but I was certainly not a fan in any way.

What kinda pisses me off is that you know that Dubya and his gang (I have no problem calling the Bush family evil at all) are gonna try to use this to their advantage.

[Xstr8guy]

It's a toss-up in my mind...
who was/is the most evil and ignorant, Lil' Bush or Reagan.

Burn in hell, Ronny! (not that I believe in hell)

[BDBionic]

I'm saddened by his death and believe him to have been a good man.

I think that it's definitely a luxury to be able to look back on the past and criticize others with the benefit of hindsight.

I don't agree with everything he'd done and every aspect of his legacy but I do feel he was a good man and did a great many things for this country and its people.

Further, I can't help but feel sad for Nancy and the Reagan family and all they went through in the last 10 years of his life... namely having lost the man they loved so many years before he actually died. It's a heartbreaking thing, Alzheimer's, and let's hope that while George W. Bush goes about glorifying and praising Reagan's legacy, he acknowledges that Nancy is an outspoken proponent of stem cell research and the promise it holds in alleviating other families from the kind of suffering her own went through.

[Xstr8guy]

I don't agree with everything he'd done and every aspect of his legacy but I do feel he was a good man and did a great many things for this country and its people.

Huh?! Do you really think that?

[BDBionic]

Yes, I really do.
Despite accusations to the contrary, I don' the least bit feel he was an uncompassionate, uncaring man. I think he was genuine and sincere to a degree we almost don't even expect presidents to be anymore.

Further, the statement that he refused to even say the word "AIDS" in public is wrong. In fact, he said it 5 times in his State of the Union address in 1986.

The federal government spent nearly 6 billion dollars on AIDS research while Reagan was president. Could he have done more? Sure. But I don't think that in the context of the times any president or public figure would have acted in a way we'd be able to look back on and say was "enough". They didn't even have anti-viral medication back then. AIDS wasn't identified until 1982. I don't think it the least bit unreasonable to suggest that any president would have been caught off guard by the epidemic, and I think it's unfair that he's been accused - through things such as that Showtime TV show or rhetoric in years since - of saying and doing (or not saying or doing) things that have since been made up.

When someone is president - so public a figure faced with such a wide array of decisions and the focus of so much attention and criticism - it's very easy to confuse who they are as a man and who they are as a president. I don't believe those two things are one in the same. I don't believe that every decision a president makes comes down to where its sits on a moral compass. Anyone in a leadership position confronts that - the difference between what they believe to be best for the nation and what they personally feel is best. But the world's not so black and white and I don't much care to paint presidents black and white either.

He may very well have made some decisions as a president that people here disagree with or that, ultimately, we can look back on and say were wrong or less than best.
But I don't feel that makes him any less human or a bad man.

[Xstr8guy]

Very well spoken... er... written BD. But I don't understand why you have such personal compassion for this man.

Sure, he may have been a good father and husband, but that does not make him a great president... the same goes for Li'l Bush. Imo, they are very similar; tax cuts for the rich, a political agenda ruled by christianity, arrogance and aggression towards the rest of the word (cloaked as patriotism), HATRED of gays, a secretive and conspiratorial cabinet, etc.

Both men, imo, were merely pawns of their party. Both are/were "as dumb as a box of rocks"... Reagan - senile while in office, Bush - just plain ol' redneck dumb, and a manipulated puppet-like, by the real powers of the republlican party.

I will NOT miss the man, just as I will not miss Bush when he is voted out of office this November, and he rides off into the Crawford sunset.


amen.

[basschick]

a lot of people are saying they feel reagan was "a good man". a lot of them seem to be people who have/had someone dealing with alzheimers in their family, so the feel a connection as if he were a relative.

i personally have NO idea if ronald reagan was a good man. i didn't know him. all we know is what we were told.

[BDBionic]

Just as you don't understand my personal compassion for him, nor do I understand your personal hatred of him, XStr8.

I don't treat any policy of a president or politician as an attack on me personally and I see everything they do in light of the political system within which they work. That system breeds the people who perform in it, not the other way around.

Personally, I'm not of the belief that Reagan was a clueless marionette of the Republican Party. I don't think that the image many have of him as going about his life with a vacant grin, unaware of how he was being manipulated to perform for others is an accurate one.

I think he was highly intelligent, creative, clever, and yes - passionate. And that he used those talents and traits to do some great things. Did he also use them to push a conservative agenda? Of course he did, but I don't feel conservatism in itself makes someone a bad person. It just makes some of their opinions oftentimes different than my own.

I despise George W. Bush as much as the next man, but think it far too convenient to say they're similar to one another. I won't go in to what I feel to be the glaring differences between the two and how Reagan and Bush Jr. were nothing alike, and will instead let Ron Reagan Jr. do the talking on that point.

[jIgG]

That was a great read.
I don't think there's even comparison between Bush Jr. and Reagan.
Even people in Bulgaria who despise American foreign policy, particularly as of late say Reagan was the best.

When I was growing up, my grandfather used to say how I'd learn English and become a diplomat, and be so good to sit on one table with Reagan.
That comes from a guy who held his communist party passport and made sure he paid all his dues.

True, former soviet republics and communist countries like mine don't have it too well, but that's in part of our own doing. But there's no dening the fact if it wasn't for Ronnie I wouldn't be soaking in the Florida sun

God bless him at least for that

[BDBionic]

jIGg... thank you for bringing up that part of his legacy.
In another gay chat board I post on, there's a debate going on about who Reagan was and whether or not he should be mourned. People blaming him for the AIDs epidemic on one hand and lauding him for returning optimimism to this country.
The most poignant statement on that argument was made by a young man from Poland who stated simply and eloquently,

Rest in peace Mr Reagan.
You were one of those who made my country free.

[basschick]

he was a fellow human who suffered for ten years and died. that is sad. he was a public figure for many years before he was a politician, so he left a legacy beyond his conversative political actions - or any other political actions.

i didn't find reagan a great president, but he wasn't the worst. he was the man who took away a lot of funding for college students, and our economy took a turn for the worse, while unemployment rose during his terms. but i didn't see him as simply a political puppet nor as a person with his own financial axe to grind. that's always a plus. even if i didn't agree with what he did, at least i felt a person was responsible for some of what he said and did - as much as can be true of any politician. and that is a big plus.

[desslock]

Well since the ball is rolling, I'll throw in my personal bit - I am deeply saddened by Ronald Reagan's passing. For me, he was President when I was in junior high and high school - and for me much of his Presidency was inspiring.

I happen to deeply appreciate life after the Cold War.

I think that one of the great untold stories of recent years is the recent awakening of life in Eastern European countries. Interestingly - many of us adult webmasters make a good amount of money on adult porn coming from the Czech Republic, Hungary and other surrounding countries. These are now free countries, which can now legally produce pornography. That is definately an indicator of freedom --- never allowed under the confines of Communist government.

Before the fall of the iron curtain in East Germany (DDR) - if you were *pegged* as gay, you went to prison. That was the law. Today, I promote Cazzo films, which are filmed in now East Berlin. Things are now very different. Those countries over there were like dreary cemetaries. The entire world map was changed, and clearly for the better. And that's why many feel Reagan was important -- at least for me.

As a conclusion, I'll say that one of the negative legacies of the Reagan administration is the refusal to deal with the then-newly emerged AIDS issue. Okay - the man did not walk on water. Did you know any other men in their mid-70s during 1985 or 1986 which had difficulty dealing with the gay issue? He should of handled it better. History will record that. But keep it in perspective. Furthermore, don't forget how Reagan publically opposed the anti-gay Briggs Ballot Initiative in California back in 1978.

Anyway, there - I guess now you all know a little more about me. :-)

Steve

[Huskyhunks]

I don't see how 10 and 12 year old's could possible feel the volume of hate that occured to gays in the 80's during his administration. You got the text book version of Ronald Reagan. If you are 35 or older, you probably felt the same way alot of us felt, scared out of our wits about HIV and scared about being a gay person because to the Reaganites, every gay person was infected.

You really had to be an adult in those days to feel what I'm saying. If you were gay in 1986, you knew where you stood with Ronald Reagan. He just simply hated gay people. He didn't want to deal with us and that was that.

There seems to be a big difference in the feelings of members that posted here who actually were gay adults living in the Reagan Era and those who read about it in books or soundbites.