* My parents have been visiting me this week. Wednesday, I came home from work and they were watching the Reagan casket procession, or whatever it was. They were just watching to kill time until we went out to dinner, but after only a few minutes, I got sick to my stomach and had to leave the room.
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The way Dan Rather and the others were praising Reagan, going on about what a nice guy he was, how he brought optimism back to America, sickened me.
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It wasn't that he decimated social programs while he lowered taxes for the wealthy, radically increased the defense budget and created a huge budget deficit. It wasn't even the Iran-Contra affair where he oversaw illegal acts to supply arms and fund groups that no doubt caused torture and many deaths. It was this: It was his silence in the face of a rising epidemic. Why was he silent? Because it was primarily being spread amongst groups of people he considered immoral. Reagan didn't even mention AIDS by name until 6 years into his presidency, after it was responsible for over 20,000 deaths. Why did he finally speak up? Because it had begun to spread to "normal" people. Even then, he offered no new education initiatives or additional funding. Around 1987, then vice-president George Bush was quoted as saying there was still a "giggle-factor" about AIDS. Ha ha.
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The thing with an epidemic is that you have to try and control it early on or else it spreads like... well... an epidemic. The UN estimates that during 2003, AIDS caused the death of 3 million people. The United States has been luckier. With better access to drugs, the cumulative AIDS related deaths have "only" just surpassed 500,000. How many of those deaths could have been prevented if Reagan had been the leader he should have been and called for increased funding for research and education, even just a few years earlier? This isn't 20/20 hindsight. The administration knew what was going on; they just didn't care. We'll never know. His silence truly did equal death.
