We’re Not Gen-X, We’re Gen-Reagan

This is for everyone who was raised to believe that our young lives would soon end in a nuclear war, of mutually assured destruction, quivering under our school desks with President Reagan to thank for making the pink and gray tile on our classroom floors the last thing we would ever see.

This is for those of us raised in the post-graduate, post-doctorate suburbs where Volkswagens and Volvos taught us that we “can’t hug our children with nuclear arms” and that “war is not healthy for children and other living things.”

This is for the generation that grew up watching “Welcome Back, Kotter,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Cosby Show” and hundreds of bad impressions of President Reagan as a shellac haired cowboy buffoon who didn’t have a thought in his head, followed by impressions of Dan Quayle as a simple minded bad speller who attacked the beloved “Murphy Brown” for having a baby and no husband, followed (in our adulthood) by monkey-like caricatures of the ignorant and stupid cowboy-war-monger President Bush.

We know who we are. We accept the moniker “Generation X” and we don’t even know what the heck that means. It might have something to do with being jaded and feeling crappy about dolphins in canned tuna, and about the tragic death of Kurt Cobane. It probably refers to a specific group of people who saw every John Hughes “teen” movie and point to “The Breakfast Club” as a virtual documentary. It has never signified the Generation that grew up feeling good about America because of President Ronald Reagan.

Our generation went from an early childhood of Jimmy Carter, a droopy peanut farmer with big teeth and a hostage crisis, to a happy, energetic, powerful and confident Republican president who suddenly made politics interesting.

I remember watching a Carter/Reagan debate by myself one night when my mom was out. There was no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan would be president. He was irresistible, and he made America sound like an exciting, attractive place.

I remember collapsing on the couch in the family room, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach, the day President Reagan was shot. It was in middle school. There was no discussion of the event by teachers or even the principal. My happiness that he would survive was a quiet and personal event.

While family friends and neighbors continued to wring their hands, and angrily mock what they called “Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy,” I remember him saying “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” He just seemed really gutsy. And my neighbors, who said “Visualize World Peace,” and meant it, seemed passé. Action, not words. That was hot.

In high school, I remember a school assembly before Reagan’s re-election. Nobody in our debate team wanted to be on the pro-Mondale side. Reagan’s second big win was a done deal and everyone knew it. Even before we could convincingly articulate our reasons for supporting President Reagan, and long before we could vote for him, we knew he was great, and that he was helping us.

In college, I waited in a long line of other students at USC to vote for President Reagan’s then Vice President, G.H.W. Bush. When I finally got to a voting booth, inside the small house of a Mexican-American family, I noticed on their mantle, a big framed photograph of President Reagan. That’s right. That is right.

When his second term was over, President Reagan came to speak at USC. Somehow, I managed to get a seat in the fully packed auditorium to see President Reagan in person. The standing ovation, when he took the stage, was 11 minutes long. And he was dazzling, of course. We were all riding the high for a long while afterward.

The first time I went to the Reagan Library, I was most impressed by the big chunk of graffitied Berlin Wall sitting outside, above the valley. I knew what that was about. That was a part of my growing up memories.

Tonight, I plan to go again to the Reagan Library, to pay my respects to the man who had a greater influence on my generation than any other person the media or the pundits bring to mind.

I, too, am a Tweener: too young to be a Boomer, too old to be an Xer. Reagan turned my politics 180 degrees. I'll thank him forever.

Following is an excerpt from a short story I wrote six years ago:

Around this time I was hearing about Ronald Reagan, who had transformed into a fascist right wing Republican whacko because he was working for General Electric, doing little radio snippets like that fool Paul Harvey, spouting out his commie hatred. This guy must be stopped, my buddies swore. He’s a Neanderthal Man, gushing about America this and the flag that. Funny, I remembered him as a pretty good governor of California. Reagan won election and took office in 1981, about the same time I started my own business. Working for others was chafing.

To me, suddenly, my buddies got downright mean regarding Reagan. The anger was shocking, coming from people who I knew to be politically clueless and normally detached. Seemingly from out of nowhere, a new hatred emerged for Republicans in general and Reagan in particular. He wasn't merely wrong or misguided, he was pure evil. Wow. How'd THAT happen?

Without much resistance, I feigned agreement with this new anger, but I was confused: was Reagan a foolish, stupid ex-actor or a devious evil right wing tyrant? Having grown up in a household that prided itself on calm political debate, I was disappointed in my peers. They spat anti-government invective in rapid fire, leaving no spaces open for the give and take of normal discourse. For a while, I confused this bulldozer delivery with ideological conviction, assuming only smart and informed persons would dare monopolize conversations in this manner.

Reagan held the Presidency for eight long years, and the establishment press ridiculed him mercilessly, as did virtually ALL of my friends. My friends were artists and musicians, and I see now that these groups think in a solid block much like blacks, Jews, actors and college professors. That is to say over 90% are liberal progressives. That I was existing in a political gulag never occurred to me. I was simply not exposed to a conservative viewpoint. Ever. I can recall no college debate because there was no alternate opinion imaginable. If there were sleeper conservatives around me, they kept their mouths shut ( smart move).

This herd mentality agreed with my personal outlook, because at that age I craved what every young person craves in all honesty: popularity . Popularity enough to attract the opposite sex. My work in marketing validated what I was discovering about myself. Fear of social ridicule is the engine that drives us all. How do you sell shoes, cosmetics, cars and magazines? Simply imply that they will put you in the popular clique. The more I practiced my craft, the more I was able to use the language of my generation as a bazooka to blast shame on the lame. The biggest bully and the most popular woman will fall in a whimpering heap if he/she is made fun of in the proper manner.

Thinking back to high school and college, our teachers would do anything in order to be popular among the students, to the point of idiocy. The moral relativism of our movement also generated a new educational standard: who's to say what's correct? Isn't all education merely indoctrination? What right does anyone have to critique any paper, music or art project? To my dismay, I didn't find this new relativism enjoyable, because I took my studies seriously. I put more effort into homework and class projects and so I expected better grades than those around me. Teachers had been trained, however, not to favor good work under the threat of being labeled insensitive to creators of bad work. There it was again: the threat of ridicule. I tried in vain to find exceptions to the rule.

The hairline cracks in my massive concrete ideology were disconcerting but not critical. I still believed in all the usual truths: democrat good / republican bad, worker good / employer bad, minority good / white bad, liberal good / conservative bad, socialism good / capitalism bad, long hair good / short hair bad, loud good / quiet bad, rock good / jazz bad, peace good / war bad, woman good / male bad, environment good / industry bad. It was almost too easy. No, it WAS too easy. I was beginning to get bored with the prevailing opinions of my world, but I shut up ( smart move).

When President Reagan was shot walking to his car, the network news did what it does in such circumstances: it pre-empts normal programming. I felt outraged that our leader had been shot by some nut, flashing back to the national outrage of the JFK killing. I felt that the Secret Service acted with incredible bravery, jumping into the trajectory of bullets without hesitation. I was alone with my own thoughts and reactions. I was in for a catharsis.

When I arrived at work the next day, I was anxious to trade reactions with my peers. I must admit to being completely unprepared for what I encountered: joy. My friends said things like "a few inches down and we'd be rid of Reagan for good" and " Why couldn't Hinckley have been a better aim?". I was stunned, afraid to contribute because I was afraid my voice would crack in disbelief. I had assumed that when events got REALLY heavy, liberals would shed partisan concerns and rally to the president at his bedside, relieved that he was alive. Celebration never occurred to me.

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