Reagan and AIDS

[rm]

Ronald Reagan didn't say the word AIDS in a speech to the public until 1987. That this sin of omission is being recommitted in the endless coverage of his legacy that refuses to note this is appalling to me. He was our first AIDS-time president. And what he didn't do, and the vitriol with which he was reviled for it, is as critical to today's political and social landscape as anything else.

I don't think he was as craven as our current leaders (words I never thought I'd say). But people died because of him and the rhetoric he and his supporters spewed and perpetuated. In the 80s it was a perfectly normal idea that some AIDS patients were innocent -- meaning that many were not. That was fucking appalling; it remains fucking appalling.

It is the nature of being president that all of them must at some point take responsibility for terrible things. For people that were once here and are no more.

But it should never have happened like that.

And while he was an old man, with Alzheimers, and there may well not have been much of a point in being angry anymore, I can't believe that we are somehow supposed to forget that we were.

And while we're quoting Reagan in the comments -- read this folks: http://www.livejournal.com/users/insomnia/422922.html?mode=reply

Comments

[lieveling.livejournal.com]

thank you for saying that. you've said something that many people have been afraid to say tonight. there was so much coverage of his death today, so many good things said about him .. that it made me physically sick. he wasn't a decent man or president, even if i didn't know him ... i still have good reason to think that. his administration was a joke and many called him a charismatic man. however, the man i remember is the man that fell asleep at speeches. ohhh, yes. very charismatic, i'd say.

<3, hayley

[volund.livejournal.com]

And while he was an old man, with Alzheimers, and there may well not have been much of a point in being angry anymore, I can't believe that we are somehow supposed to forget that we were.

Some of us have never forgotten, and have been disgusted for some time at the premature and undeserved political canonization he and his presidency have had conferred upon them.

And now that he's just died, after "bravely" suffering a degenerative ailment and diminishing faculties for the past several years, it will be a bit longer before anything approaching a truly critical assessment of the man and his legacy is forthcoming.

[camfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Ronald Reagan didn't say the word AIDS until 1987. That this sin of omission is being recommitted in the endless coverage of his legacy that refuses to note this is appalling to me. He was our first AIDS-time president. And what he didn't do, and the vitriol with which he was reviled for it, is as critical to today's political and social landscape as anything else.

Ronald Reagan, "Message to the Congress Transmitting the Fiscal Year 1987 Budget", February 5, 1986:

High priority programs should be adequately funded. -- Despite the very tight fiscal environment, this budget provides funds for maintaining -- and in some cases expanding -- high priority programs in crucial areas of national interest. Necessary services and income support for the dependent poor and the elderly receive significant funding in this budget. So do other programs of national interest, including drug enforcement, AIDS research, the space program, nonmilitary research, and national security.

[camfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Also, from a Reagan press conference, September 17, 1985:

Q. Mr. President, the Nation's best-known AIDS scientist says the time has come now to boost existing research into what he called a minor moonshot program to attack this AIDS epidemic that has struck fear into the Nation's health workers and even its schoolchildren. Would you support a massive government research program against AIDS like the one that President Nixon launched against cancer?

A. I have been supporting it for more than 4 years now. It's been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and including what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it'll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.

[rm.livejournal.com]

As I said above in a public speech by his own choice. I should have been more clear, and I will edit the above post to say so, but get the hell out of my journal, right now.

It's worth noting...

[reive-d.livejournal.com]

That Ronald Reagan continually tried to reduce spending on AIDS. The Congress kept giving him more money than he would ask for, and each time this happened Reagan or the Health Secretary would announce the "radically increased funding," in effect taking credit for that which he had actively resisted.

As for the figures quoted, $100 million in '86, over half a billion for AIDS research over the years, includes every dollar spent on immune system research. Money spent looking into the common cold, or leukemia, or the effects of chemo-therapy - all included. Despite the fact that those dollars weren't doing anything to help with actual AIDS research except in rare, unanticipated, peripheral instances.

Like so much of the Reagan presidency, this was all smoke and mirrors. If you read the book "And The Band Played On" by Randy Shilts you'll discover that early on the Regan administration decided to make "AIDS the nations number one health priority." Unfortunately that ammounted to little more than saying the words - time and again it was congress that forced the administration's hand, even while the administration denied congress access to CDC reports, budget estimates and AIDS statistics.

If you're looking for info on the history of Ronald Reagan about the last place you want to look is at quotes he made to the press!

My thoughts.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

Although he made those claims regarding the budget, they were not at all accurate.

And please, 1986 is still too late. AIDS came to the US in 1976. That's ten years of people suffering and dying.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I should have been more specific -- in speeches to the general public, of which what you cite wasn't. AIDS funding under Reagan was pathetic as was his public leadership and acknowledgement of the issue. And without the generally available Internet at that time, no one had any way to know he was at least acknowledging the disease in more private governmental settings.

Regardless, his AIDS legacy was deadly, and we could be years ahead in current research had he not bowed to the power bestowed on him by conservatism, and stood up and said not just difficult things, but any damn thing at all.

Additionally, a six year silence is hardly better than a seven year one.

Finally, I don't like you. I don't know why you persist on reading this and it seems the many other journals you read just to dissagree with their owners' choices, perception, values and communication styles (which I will also note are a damn bit more effective than yours).

I know a lot of morally superior jackasses, but you're one of the most pointless and boring ones I've ever had the displeasure to have interacted with.

You are ignorant and petty on such a broad range of social issues and nicities it astounds me, and while I spend a lot of time trying to be a more gracious individual than I have been in times past, I'm not feeling it right now.

I can't stop you from reading my public entries, and I recognize and accept that. But I really do wish you would both go away and find a productive use for all your negative energy and misplaced self-satisfaction.

[folk.livejournal.com]

Bitch, please. The man was a fucking murderer by omission. If there is a Christian God, Ronald Wilson Reagan is having a distinctly unpleasant time roasting marshmallows his own shriveled-up testicles on a spiked pole.

Now, please fuck off and go attend an Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh-sponsored faggot-bashing or nigger-lynching or whatever the fuck you people do.

[lachupacabra.livejournal.com]

WOOHOO!
jezus h christ i am SICK TO FUCKING DEATH
of ppl who HATED his guts while he was in
office backpedaling now & saying that he
was @ least a nice old man.
fuck him fuck nancy & fuck his goddamn jelly beans.
fuck em all.
thank you for posting that reive & you too folk.
:D

[tommx.livejournal.com]

what appals me even further was that people credit him with ending the cold war, totally ignoring the fact that he provided assistance to groups that eventually became the talibann and al quaeda.

add that to the aids infected blood on his hands...

there simply isn't a hell bad enough for someone like him, but i honestly wish i could think of one.

[spiralflames.livejournal.com]

i think a friend of mine who lives in DC summed it up well- "well, reagan finally died. it'll be really interesting now to watch them all try to re-write history."

sigh.

[00goddess.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

R made me watch more than half an hour of coverage on TV yesterday. No one even MENTIONED the fact that Reagan and his administration willfully let millions sicken and die.

I was also really disgusted when they credited him with the fall of the USSR; the USSR was already falling apart, and the lives of the people in the former USSR aren't much better now than they were then; worse in some cases.

The current administration has worked very hard to whitewash Reagan and Bush 1. It's not going to stop here.