Of Nukes, Nuts and Tarot Cards: Reagan Revisited

By Anjula Razdan
Published on December 1, 2000

Of Nukes, Nuts and Tarot Cards: Reagan
Revisited,
Alex Zaitchik, Freezerbox
Historian Frances Fitzgerald’s new book on Star Wars, Ronald Reagan
and the end of the Cold War, ‘Way Out There in the Blue,’ confirms
our worst suspicions, and adds to them, writes Alex Zaitchik in the
zine Freezerbox. Fitzgerald suggests that Reagan won
the 1984 presidential election in a landslide by colluding with
‘scheming war-hungry advisors’ to create and maintain a public
terrified of the threat of nuclear war. One has only to look at the
prevalence of Cold War- obsessed movies during the Reagan
presidency–‘Wargames,’ ‘Rocky IV,’ and ‘The Day After,’ to name a
few–to diagnose this culture of fear. And, according to Zaitchik,
we’re not entirely out of the woods yet regarding arms control.
‘Moving into the next century,’ he warns, ‘there is a firm
Republican-led bipartisan consensus that an ABM system must be
built.’ As a result, the Russians, believing that such a system
would give the U.S. first-strike capability, ‘are threatening to
pull out of all arms treaties if the U.S. proceeds with
deployment.’
–Anjula
Razdan
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