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2003-07-13 - 11:31 a.m. While going through the piles of paper saved from the destruction of my office, I found several old issues of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and quickly became distracted. In the May 1985 issue, we have John Kessel's meditation on Ronald Reagan, called, "A Clean Escape." In the story, the senile president, called Havelmann, has destroyed the planet and now has conveniently forgotten all about it because he suffers from Korsakov's Syndrome and can't form new memories. The doctor treating him tries to confront him with his guilt, accusing him of faking his symptoms and not very well at that: "You're not a good enough actor." It seems to me that I read several stories along these lines back in the day, although perhaps not many handled with Kessel's deft touch. Although the media seemed afraid to come clean about the fact that "the clothes had no emperor," in Paul Slansky's apt phrase, it was generally known to all but the True Believer that Reagan was suffering from the beginning stages of dementia even during the first campaign and administration. Of course, he was never bright -- I think James Garner, who had to deal with him in the Screen Actor's Guild during the Hollywood years, is the one who said, "He was always ga-ga" -- and now I am wondering if there was another factor besides the admitted Alzheimer's disease. Here is MEDLINE's description of Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, the alcohol-caused progressive disease which I believe our current so-called leadership suffers from:
"Patients often attempt to hide their poor memory by confabulating. The patient will create detailed, believable stories about experiences or situations to cover gaps in memory. This is not usually a deliberate attempt to deceive because the patient often believes what he is saying to be true."This description applies equally well to Reagan and Bush. I wonder if, in earlier years, some of Reagan's symptoms might actually have been caused by this syndrome rather than, or in addition to, early stage Alzheimer's. One gets different stories on whether or not Reagan was actually a full-fledged alcoholic. Reagan made this statement on October 10, 1965, as quoted in the Fresno Bee:
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas." Well, OK, if you say so...
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
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