Ronald Reagan page

 

"[The Reagan Administration] was a PR outfit that became president and took over the country. And to the degree that the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did it. But their first, last and overarching activity was public relations."

Leslie Janka, a deputy White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan

 

Books

The Man Who Sold the World - Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America

"We have never interfered in the internal government of a country and have no intention of doing so, never have had any thought of that kind."

Ronald Reagan, 1982

In the Name of Democracy - U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years

"The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became President [Reagan] and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations."

Leslie Janka, a deputy White House press secretary under Reagan

The Reagan Doctrine: Third World Rollback

"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."

California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966

Reagan, Trilateralism and the Neoliberals

"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."

Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965

On Bended Knee - The Press and the Reagan Presidency

" By the later years of the Reagan regime, a preferred nomenclature suited to U.S. interests became standardized for the Third World. In the case of nations to be rolled back (e.g., Nicaragua), governments were called terrorist and the insurgents were labeled democratic. In the case of countries to be supported against "communist" insurgencies (e.g., El Salvador and the Philippines), the governments were called democratic and the insurgents were labeled terrorists. "

from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould

Political Fictions - Joan Didion

"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."

Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error

The Iran Contra Connection

"The pattern was set early in his [Ronald Reagan] administration: leak a scare story about foreign enemies, grab the headlines. If, much later, reporters poke holes in the cover story, so what? The truth will receive far less attention than the original lie, and by then another round of falsehoods will be dominating the headlines."

Norman Solomon and Martin Lee about Reagan-era propaganda strategies

 

Articles

The Ronald Reagan Myth (quotations and commentary)
War Crimes & Double Standards (of Ronald Reagan & the press)
Bottom Line - The True Costs of Reagan and Extreme Capitalism

The Return of Reagan - US military budget after Reagan
Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein - 12/20/03 - U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984 (2/03)

"Every president who followed [Ronald] Reagan would be squired by image consultants and pollsters; the Washington press corps would not be informed of the government's real activities but distracted and manipulated; speeches would be filled with meaningless drivel; and the public would come to regard politicians as no more worthy of trust than used-car salesmen."

William Kleinknecht, "The Man Who Sold The World"


Reagan Mass Murderer - Democracy Now! interview with Allan Nairn (June 8, 2004)
Reagan Was Accomplice to Death of Thousands - DN interview with Charles Liteky (June 8, 2004)
Reagan Was the Butcher of My People - Fr. Miguel D'Escoto of Nicaragua interviewed by Amy Goodman (June 8, 2004)
Beloved by the Media: Ronald Reagan (6/04)

The Gipper's Economy (6/04)
The Reagan Legacy (6/04)
Reagan's WMD Connection to Saddam Hussein (6/04)

Ronald Reagan's Legacy - economic policies (7/04)
Reagan Myths Live On - retrospectives excluded critics, criticism (8/04)
Bottom Line - The true costs of Reagan and extreme capitalism (11/04)


"In the Reagan White House, the engineering of consent was accomplished in part by manipulation of the press. Michael Deaver, David Gergan and other media strategists made it their goal every morning to control that day's story. They would develop a "line of the day" and push it at the press corps, usually scheduling a highly visual event that would please the television networks. The effort was extremely successful in setting the agenda for the media, which spent little time analyzing the implications of Reagan's sweeping transformation of federal policies."

William Kleinknecht, "The Man Who Sold The World"


History of Guatemala's Death Squads (1/05)
Ronald Reagan's Bloody "Apocalypto" [Guatemala] (12/06)
Reagan, White As Snow (5/07)
The Enduring Lies of Ronald Reagan (6/07)
The Myth of Ronald Reagan - The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America by William Kleinknecht - a book review by Allen Barra (2/09)
Was Ronald Reagan an Even Worse President Than George W. Bush? (6/09)

"[Ronald] Reagan ... was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy. At the time of his election, I found it fitting that he was a Hollywood actor, a man who had followed orders passed down from moguls, who knew how to take direction. That would be his signature. He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government - men like Vice President George H. W. Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a U.S. military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire."

John Perkins


International War Crimes

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