I used to think that my outspokenly liberal nature was, while always a part of me, something that really took off in my late teens and early twenties. But the other day I remembered something from my childhood.
When I was 8, Ronald Reagan was in office, and I did not like him. Granted, when you're that age, if you have any thoughts on politics, they come from your parents. Still, I watched the news. I knew nuclear war was scary and bad. And even at that tender age, I could see that Reagan was kind of a joke, an affable old fart with a penchant for illegal weapons sales and rambling speeches about Evil Empires. Side note: who decided he was one of our greatest presidents? Cause I don't think the historical record bears that out.
Anyway, I started hearing about this "Star Wars" program, and at first I didn't understand why people were getting so upset about Star Wars. I liked it, especially Han Solo. When it was explained to me that, no, it was actually a nickname for a nuclear weapons program called SDI, or Strategic Defense Initiative, and it would make the Soviet Union angry and cost lots and lots of money, I thought that was a bad idea. Actually, as soon as I heard "nuclear weapon" I thought about how a nuclear war would destroy the world, which I had read somewhere ("somewhere" being closer to Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing than The Economist), and I worked myself up into quite a state of righteous indignation, if memory serves. I got so angry I decided i was going to write the president A LETTER.
So I sat at our dining room table and wrote something along the lines of "Please don't start a nuclear war with Star Wars. Nuclear weapons are bad and we should be friends with the Soviet Union." I think it was a little more fleshed out than that, but you get the drift. I also drew mushroom clouds with sienna crayons to illustrate my point to dramatic effect. My mom mailed it for me and I waited for my response. I was certain I would receive a tear-stained letter from Ronnie, telling me that I had made him see the error of his war-mongering ways, and he was convening a diplomatic envoy to Moscow; would I please serve as Junior Ambassador?
Weeks went by and I started to get a little annoyed that he hadn't responded yet; after all, how many articulate (and illustrated!) pleas for peace could the president be receiving from precocious children? I couldn't imagine very many children wrote to the president.
Finally, I came home from school to find an envelope from the White House waiting for me. I tore it open, read it eagerly, then cried "What the hell is this shit?" (That's not a verbatim quote. My truck driver vocabulary has been developed over many many years and was still in the incubation stage when I was 8). In response to my impassioned letter, I had received a picture of Ron and Nancy, a "Just Say No" sticker, and an incredibly lame brochure, printed on cardstock, about the Youth of America being The Future.
I was not pleased. I promptly threw it all in the trash and declared that I would wash my hands of this bozo president of ours. If he wasn't going to listen to an 8-year-old girl from Minnesota, who on earth could get through to him? My cynicism began to develop that day, and the following year in school, when we talked about satire and put together a silly little magazine, I drew a scathing cartoon that depicted Reagan freaking out about running out of jellybeans while weapons (including arrows, which I could never really explain, but they were easy to draw) flew past his head in the Oval Office. It was the sort of thing that almost certainly could have brought the government to its knees had it received distribution beyond the parents of the ten kids who worked on it. I'm a grudge-holder, what can I say?
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