If you read my post on politics the other day and it made you mad, made you think, made you upset, you need to watch this video. If you were born between 1978 and 2000, you need to watch this video. And if you have kids born into this generation, you should watch it too:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2032854&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
If you think I’m the only one sick of broken, polarized two-party politics, unending wars, social and economic irresponsibility, and a selfish, greedy, consuming view of the world, watch this video…
Ronald Reagan – we use to call him Ronald Rayguns – highjacked America, riding a conservative backlash against the progressive ideas and ideals of the 60s and 70s into the White House, popularizing the elitist notion that if the wealthy got richer, prosperity would trickle-down to the poor. The rich did get wealthier, and the poor got tricked.
Twenty-eight years on, and America seems poised to realize what a disaster, both nationally and internationally, the whole Reagan right wing agenda was. The Iran-Contra affair was not a mere diplomatic blip, it was a piece in the politics of assassination that Reagan promoted. At least four democratically elected Latin American leaders were killed by the CIA under his direct orders, and many others threatened with a similar fate if they didn’t tow the U.S. line. That’s why Chavez in Venezuala hates America, because he’s knows what they have done.
Reagan’s cavalier dismantling of the restraints on the finance industry have led to the currect economic meltdown, and the current polarization of the American electorate is part of his legacy as well. Can this current generation see beyond his narrow and distorted view of America and restore the idealism and the hope that my generation considered our birthright?
Tuesday will tell.