Ronald Reagan won his presidency based on promises to dramatically increase military spending, cut taxes, and balance the Federal budget. It was all a lie, because even his future vice-President once called the plan "voodoo economics". But Reagan’s handlers, the penultimate sleaze crowd of market manipulators, knew that Americans, more than anything else, are desperate to feel good about themselves. Political handlers learned under the Reagan program that since Americans love to feel good about themselves, and since the only way for Americans to feel really good about themselves is to believe lies, then the bigger the lies, the better.
George W. Bush is a political scion of the Reagan Revolution — the Revolution of Grand Lies. No lie was too grand for Reagan, and no lie is too spectacular for George W. Bush. As a result, Americans felt good under Reagan and the deaf, dumb, and blind crowd of Reaganite Americans still tends to feel good under W. Bush.
The lies of Reagan led to financial bankruptcy of America, causing America to go from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation in one eight-year term. Reagan’s financial program of massive debt burdens was a way of wealth transferral from the masses to the massively wealthy few. This is a program that George W. Bush has wholeheartedly endorsed, under the guise of "Save the Children". The only problem is that the children Bush wants to save are the children of the ultra-wealthy, whose inheritance taxes were abolished by Bush in a move that would have made Ronald W. Reagan very proud.
Reagan’s administration was lawless, just like Bush’ administration. A nation of laws was led by lawless governance, which defied Congress and armed dictators around the world, and fought democracy with the dramatically rearmed American military. Reagan pursued policies of pure corporate interest in Central America and around the world, causing the deaths of countless peasants who simply wanted to be free to live on their land and take a small portion of its wealth.
Ronald Reagan, like his heir George W. Bush, was an amicable dunce. He could charm your socks off, but if you were a poor peasant with no spare socks, you were now stuck in a sockless situation and would be unlikely to afford socks or shoes. Reagan was the dummy that the ventriloquist entertained the crowds with. He could make you chuckle, but the words were not his own. Reagan hired speech writers who wrote serially lying lines that were delivered with devastating effectiveness.
It remains a wonder and a mystery why America has not been able to produce an intelligent, principled leader of the opposition who was/is capable of effectively countering the charisma and lies and popularity of serial liars like Reagan and W. Bush. John F. Kennedy had that sort of charisma, and in a hillbilly sort of way, so did Bill Clinton, but Clinton could not keep his pants zipped up and therefore lost the benefit of any good he could have done in countering the "lying right". As Gore Vidal said recently, Clinton lied about sex because it was "the gentlemanly thing to do", but Clinton’s lies led to impeachment and the lies of Reagan led to canonization, and those of Bush have led to disaster, but not loss of personal popularity.
If liars go to hell, as the Bible says, the Ronald Reagan is already roasting and toasting, and probably enjoying himself in company with hypocritical liars of past generations. And the American people still feel good about Reagan and his lies, because those lies made Americans feel good about themselves.
