Reply #48: It's hard for me to turn on Reagan - though I know I have already [View All]

[mikelewis]

I loved Reagan, though I didn't know any better at the time. I still love Reagan, not for what he allowed to happen just for the way he made me feel about this country. I didn't understand what was going on and frankly, I didn't care. I was just a kid in the 80's and I had much more important things to think about. I just remember him well and it's hard to get rid of that image. I know what he did, now. A part of me believes most of the evil things wasn't his doing. I believe George Bush Sr. was behind a lot of the stuff that happened and that bullet he took hurt him a lot more than we knew. None of it can be proven of course and it's more sentimentality and nationalism that makes it difficult for me to turn away from the mental image I have of President Reagan. Deep down I don't want to believe he was responsible for Death squads and drug smuggling and all of the terrible things I know happened in the 80's. I know he was, even if he wasn't aware of it, "The Buck stops here" so to speak but it makes me sad so I try not to dwell on it.

You are right about the real news and the hunger for more. I find they are especiall starved for news about Iraq. The MSM really does a shitty job, {that's such a waste of time saying anymore}. I usually lead into politics with a discussion on Iraq. Bring up Iraq and you will know what you are dealing with in 5 seconds. Even though I am disappointed with Bill Mahr's 180 on Iraq, his talking points help when I'm trying to deprogram a Republican.

I usually ask them if they've heard any news about what's going on or if they have family or freinds over there. {One guy was a virtual gem of information, one of his students was in Iraq. He had graduated from St. Ed's and went on to John Marshall law school. He was then stationed in Iraq and sent to Abu Ghraib after the prison scandal. The guy told me his quasi-adopted son was handing out wads of cash and getting affidavits signed from the people they released to keep them quite about what they saw or what heppened to them. It was a great conversation. Anyway, I lead in with what do you know about Iraq and then start informing them about what Sy Hersh is saying and tidbits of info I pick up from the net. I am also lucky enough to have an Iraqi national aquantance who has family living in Baghdad so I get a lot of information from there too. It doesn't take long to move the conversation over to what's going on in our government. Soon, they're learning about election fraud, 9/11 and why the nuclear option is a bad thing. I've gotten quite good at steering the conversation and I find they are suprisingly receptive to the information. I usually wrap it up by telling them to seek out the truth and the best place to do that is the Internet. I have no idea how successful I have been with conversions but I do know I'm not offending anyone. When I first started, I started getting complaints from my boss and he told me not to talk politics with them anymore. Bwa-hahaha, right. I just got better at it and so far haven't pissed anyone off since. I enjoy it actually, it just takes a lot of practice and a lot of studying.