Well, Reagan is dead. Having lived through all 8 years of his administration as the child of a UAW member, I am ashamed to say a small little part of me did a happy dance.
Everyone remembers him as "The Great Communicator". The smiling, grandfatherly image caring for all of us. The man at the podium telling Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." You know the single greatest legacy Regan left to me? The thing that I will always remember him for? He kneecapped the unions. When he told the airtraffic controllers that in 24 hours they would no longer have a job, and they didn't, the entire cosmos changed for me. From that day forward no union anywhere had any power other than what the company deigned to give it. He singlehandedly undid the work of 50 years. Spat on the blood-soaked ground of 1930's Chicago. Obliterated the work of Woody Guthrie and Upton Sinclair. He might as well have carried an axe-handle into every factory in the United States and cracked the skulls of every worker for daring to hope for a living wage, let alone a better life.
His legacy to the common man of America was the elimination of the middle class. Remember the days when there WAS an American Dream? A house, with a white picket fence and a car? 2.3 kids and a dog? This is what we were all supposed to be working for. And up until that day there was at least a chance that if you worked hard and lived right, you could attain that. Women could still stay at home and raise the children and men could still work and earn enough to support the household. You didn't get rich, but you had enough.
I moved out on my own (well, with John) in 1988. We were both working and he was going to school. We had no kids. I was working for a nursing home as a kind of "utility worker". I made maybe $150 a week. Then I moved over to an in-home care agency. I was making $3.45 an hour. Then I worked as a short order cook at a restaurant. Here I hit the big time. $5.25 an hour. John was working at Hardees and going to school. Our rent on the single-wide trailer we were living in was $170 a month not including anything. We still had to pay water, lights, phone et. al. In 1991, we moved to Maine. Bush Sr. was in office and things still sucked pretty bad. John worked at 7-11 and went to school and I worked at a restaurant. He made about $5 an hour and I made about the same. Our rent was $400 for three rooms in an attic.
Then Clinton got into office. You know when we bought our house? 1996. There was finally starting to be a middle class again. In 1997 we decided to have a kid. In 2001 we decided to have another one.
You know when I first heard the term working poor? In 2002, after my hubby and I were both downsized at the same time. Since then the job John got after he was unemployed for about 7 months was eliminated and the warehouse moved to Vermont. So he is unemployed again and we are bankrupt. Our state senator had to work to get funds released so all the guys from his warehouse could get retraining money. Older guys who had been working there since the 60's lost everything. Their company pension, their seniority everything. All they have left is what they will get from the Teamsters if they were vested. And they are in their 60's and 70's and unemployed. Bush Jr. is using Reaganomics as a template for his economic policies. He is trying the trickle down effect again. We're getting trickled on, alright. The rich are pissing on the poor again and loving every minute of it.
Reagan was a very charismatic fellow, I suppose. For some reason, people just love him. "Good ol' Dutch" is all I have heard for the last 2 days. I suppose you can add this to my list of things that makes me un-American but I don't mourn the passing of Ronald Reagan. He has left a swath of destruction through the path of my life I don't know if I will ever recover from. No amount of granfatherly charisma is going to fix that.
at 9:06 AM :: ~#~
