Kirwan Articles 

The Flim-Flam Man

June 25,  2004

You can also view this article at Old American Century  

By the time he'd become the governor of California, Ronnie was well on his way back to the days of the Robber-Barons, back to the days when money ruled every waking moment and the lot of ordinary people was reserved for sweat and blood and dying. Regan hated dissent in all its forms. He came to erase the 1960's and to bring back the image of the father that always "knew best," even as he didn't.

When Viet Nam protests began to get serious in Berkeley, Ronnie took charge like an outraged high school principal, determined to punish the unruly and imprison those who could really make a difference. He put fat-Ed in charge. Little Eddie Meese, the man who popularized the hated plastic handcuffs, and used an American football stadium for a public holding pen - in his journey to become a forefather for 'J. Edgar' Ashcroft. What a pair those two deficient lawyers would've made. Meese & Ashcroft like the smell of urine and feces wafting on a summer breeze. There's been so much history that the public chooses to forget, it's amazing we've survived so long - with so little remembrance of all things past.

Remembering the Flim-Flam man brings out the patterns in the sham that passes for a public life today. Men and women are known by the words they choose, and by the way they speak them. Ronnie was really good at that. But there's a second part to that equation: and that's where the entire boatload of these imposters always fails. It's what "one does" that counts! Ronald Reagan set up California for decades of corruption and massive failures on every front.

Ronnie was the father of serious "privatization." He believed in it! He began to privatize everything, public health, public libraries, public transportation, and all the public services he could lay his filthy hands on. And when you look out over this country today you will find that almost all our troubles stem directly from the greed associated with the efforts toward privatization, that Ronald W. Reagan built his political career upon.

The second most obscene thing that Ronnie brought to the world was the extension of power to include the idea of Empire. He first coined the term "Evil Empire" and though people believe he stood up to threats, his record was that of a coward incarnate. When push came to shove "the Gipper" split. He ran from Lebanon, and then attacked Granada, to distract the public from his failing. He was thought to be strong, but the only place he excelled was in wasting our money. He talked tough, but he was an actor to the core - none of that bluster was remotely real. By the time he left office "Morning in America" stood for the worst hangover in the world. Now the Neo-cons quote his policies as though they're speaking about god himself - and the very things they look to (like deficit spending) are what brought us down immeasurably.

He treated the whole of Central and South America as our back-alley, to be scorned and used like some distant relative, that needed to use the back door, whenever they came to call. His global view was small-town, movie-driven and limited to those he could charm or con into his scheme of class divisions. There was only one standard for him and that was money.

People here seem genuinely moved by his death, but if those people had watched what he did and come to understand why; they would've discovered that Reagan detested people, because people tended to get in the way of the kinds of power he was there to restore - and ultimately to serve.

This is a Republic, not a Monarchy: This full week of ceremony was designed by the Reagan's down to the last tiny detail, right after he was elected the first time. He was NOT a king, NOT a god; he was a man like any other. No country, especially today, can stop all major activity for an entire week. This is nothing less than one huge free ad for the policies and programs that Ronnie and the Neo-conservatives have always pushed for: the divine right of power and money to rule over everything and everyone - for as long as the sun rises in the east.

The airtime devoted to the one-sided myopic "remember-when's" is disgusting. As Bush has said so often "We are AT war!" Yet we have been forbidden to view the coffins of the slain, just as we have been forbidden to know how many we have killed, or captured, or tortured in this vainglory of the wars that Bush has declared in our names. Yet - as a friend noted; a single coffin has become American television's new test pattern for every event, for every story, and that's going to continue for an entire week? Really-is there nothing else, no world events, no power struggles elsewhere even worthy of notice, to move that flag-draped coffin from our center stage?

The Flim-Flam man has done it again. The well-intentioned public, to judge by the reporting on multitudes, would seem to confirm that the reverence as genuine. Remember, those of you who watch this solemn march of bodies, that this was the man who stood not for public demonstrations, but for law and order, and jail for anyone who disagreed with what his government decreed. That is not what he said he stood for: Two of his pet themes were smaller, more attentive government and controlled federal spending. In reality: He increased the size of government 300 fold and he took us from the world's leading creditor nation to the world's leading debtor nation in just eight years.

Bush has done the same thing, in under four, and taken us far deeper into debt than even Ronnie could've imagined. And now Arnold, the permanent understudy, is waiting in the wings to do unto the country after he's finished destroying "Cullifornia."

These men are all cut from the same bolt of cloth, but the enabler of all of this was Ronald W. Reagan - the original Flim Flam man. And though it may not appear to be that way now, a longer view of history will find the truth one day, and at least the later generations (IF there are any) will come to see how gullible we've all been.