Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki is an American author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York. His works include Why We Fight, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics, Quest of the Carib Canoe, Season of the Lifterbees, The House I Live In, anderror. Why We Fight and The House I Live In were both winners of the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, in 2005 and 2012 respectively...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
CountryUnited States of America
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Reaganism as a political movement has enormous resources behind it and it seeks - through stagecraft and through a tremendous level of effort toward propaganda - to present an image of Reagan that is so much larger-than-life that it sort of blinds us all, and keeps us all in a warm, happy, nostalgic state, thinking of a man who can do no wrong.
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I think the film was sort of a rock in a storm for Wilton. For me, Wilton was, and is, a force in my coming of age. He opened my eyes to just how textured the thinking has to be about America now, about the grief that Americans feel, the desire for revenge, and not allowing myself to have any kind of distance from that, or ignore it - which is too often the mistake of those who do not - shall we say - concur with policy.
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I don't think Reagan is primarily funny, and I don't think he's primarily marvelous; he's complicated.
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It was natural to see the struggle for dignity for black people in America as a sister struggle of the Jewish struggle. So growing up, it was always a part of my breakfast cereal to think of myself as someone who was part of a larger struggle.
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Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called 'Why We Fight' that explored America's reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?'
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The Tea Party is a group that rejects deep thinking, it rejects the very complex analysis that is involved in public policy, it rejects the kind of textured decision-making that Ronald Reagan prided himself on.
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The thing that happens is that politicians run on tough-on-crime rhetoric. You appeal to the public and say, 'Let's put more money into taller fences, tougher laws, tougher sentencing, handcuffs,' and where does that money come from? Well, immediately, it comes out of all the money needed for corrections.
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We had a much more far-reaching approach, one that communicated that we wanted to put contemporary conditions in a historical context. They were much more open to that.
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You can call me an Eisenhower Republican. There is a gigantic gulf between an Eisenhower Republican and the kind of fringe brand of Republicanism that is being so vocally promoted today.
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War is party-blind. It doesn't care who is in the Oval Office. The forces that drive us to war don't care whether it's Republican, Democrat, or other. The fact is, these parties are prey to special interests. That is something Eisenhower was afraid of.
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The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.
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Ronald Reagan's legacy is deeply misunderstood because there are political actors in America who, for several reasons, have privately held agendas that they want to sell to the American public in the most appealing way possible. They often find the best way to do that is to package their product with the Reagan brand.
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The prison industrial complex, to put it in its crassest term, is a system of industrial mass incarceration. So there's what you call bureaucratic thrust behind it. It's hard to shut off because politicians rely upon the steady flow of jobs to their district that the prison system and its related industries promise.
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He presented himself as the friend to Main Street America, and yet that aw-shucks persona ended up packaging policies and programs that were at times deeply injurious to the very people he swore to serve. After all, Reaganomics set in motion one of the largest wealth redistributions in American history, away from the poor and toward the rich.