Today is Ronald Reagan’s second worst nightmare day. The worst, I suppose, would be a posthumous indictment from the International Court of Justice for murder and violations of international law and human rights, but that’s just a pipedream…
The victory of the FMLN in El Salvador marks the realization of a dream for a great many people, and one that has taken tremendously hard work, and cost great suffering–the estimate I heard today on Democracy Now! was that Reagan’s death squads murdered 70,000 people in El Salvador alone, at a cost of over $6 billion.
I have a small personal stake in seeing one of Reagan’s evil projects ultimately fail, since it provides some small compensation in the face of the injustice he visited on me personally, back when he was Governor of California. His vindictiveness against California’s teachers’ union was so vicious, he made it his personal project to deprive California teachers of the Social Security they had earned in prior employment. We California retired teachers are unique in many ways, but the one I rail against personally every chance I get is this one–we are the only group in the US not allowed to collect our rightful Social Security earnings (I stand to lose 60% of my meager Social Security pension).
That’s how I get to celebrate my birthday–resigning myself to never being able to right this petty wrong, and accepting a small injustice. That justice has finally been done in El Salvador is a wonderful counterpart to this, and I can take a tiny bit of comfort in it.
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