Morning in America

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan waving from the limousine during the Inaugural Parade in Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day, 1981. (Credit: White House Photographic Office)

The death of Antonin Scalia and the passing of Nancy Reagan signify the end of the Ronald Reagan era in the political history of the United States. The final days are being heralded by a godless leader (Donald Trump) and his barbarian hordes, who are shattering the Reagan coalition that served the Republican Party well for over three decades.

Mindless devotees of the old president, dedicated to emulating Reagan’s example rather than to cultivating new ideas, do not understand present developments. (Observe, for example, the “puzzlement” on the faces of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as they contemplate the ineffectiveness of notions that once seemed mighty and invincible.) From the perspective of today, the famous “It’s Morning Again in America” campaign ad seems a quant piece of propaganda released by the Ministry of Truth in an Orwellian republic presided by an aging Big Brother.

Damn Cubans (Rubio)

A 1900 Republican campaign poster for the US presidential election. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

For a natural-born Cuban like me, the sight of two Cubans—more precisely, two descendants of Cuban immigrants who came to the US during the Batista (this is significant), not the Castro era—running for the Republican presidential nomination is a spectacle of horrific proportions.

Cubans were ubiquitous in US history during the 20th century. They were leading participants in significant events such as the Spanish-American War, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the October Missile Crisis, the Watergate break-in, the Mariel boatlift and the Bush-Gore election in Florida. They have re-appeared (like birds of evil omen) at critical moments for the US almost as often as the New York Yankees have played in the World Series.

Now, if you please, two US Senators of Cuban heritage are running for president of this great country. Like the Washington Senators baseball fan in the Broadway musical Damn Yankees, I begin to yearn for a Devil who will buy my soul in exchange for the prevention of such a future eventuality.

Abraham’s Angels

Abraham Lincoln, 9 Feb. 1864. (Credit: Library of Congress)

After listening (a painful experience) to the Republican primary debate last week, I fled from its display of vanities, Orwellian language and outdated thinking to the words of Abraham Lincoln:

Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

(First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861)

Who is so small as to claim Ronald Reagan to be their model and exemplar when they have inherited the mantle of Abraham Lincoln? What do you say about people who prefer Reagan’s speeches to the poetry of Lincoln? Reagan was a B-movie Hollywood actor; Lincoln was a student of the King James Bible and a critic of Shakespearean texts. And yet in our unfortunate times, it is Reagan who is called the Great Communicator.