Informant38

I'm writing this to figure out why all the talk about Reagan seems almost supernatural to me.
Even the liberals and leftists, talking about that insane ketchup, and the unimportance of redwoods, laying the wreath at Bitburg. Nobody that I've seen has mentioned the Challenger, the space-shuttle that exploded on his watch.
The Challenger, you remember, blew up in front of millions of horrified children and childlike Americans. Back in the days when disasters were entirely unexpected.
It's common knowledge in some circles that the launch of the Challenger was rushed, against the advice and in spite of the warnings of those most responsible for its safety, to bring it off on the day of Reagan's State of the Union Address. As spectacle and patriotic stimulus. A Hollywood moment.
Instead he got to be the sober father figure to a shocked nation of television watchers.
The objection that comes most readily - to those so inclined - that of course even if it were the case that pressure from the White House was applied to NASA, that it wouldn't have been Reagan doing it, it couldn't have been, is most apt in its way.
He was incapable of that level of hypocrisy, he didn't have that Nixonian split down the center of his soul.
But that's the point, he didn't have a soul. Reagan was the first of the Stepford Presidents, he wasn't any more there than Max Headroom was there. A face, a voice, an attitude, all made of light. But the thing that wrote the script he acted was purest evil, by anyone's definition.
Reagan was one of those Faustian bargain-hunters who make it a part of the deal that they never have to confront what they've done directly, never have to be seen publicly deferring to the buyer of souls.

Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe should have their names linked to Ronald Reagan's, permanently.