The president was bundled into his limousine, where it was discovered that he, too, had been wounded in the chest. Fortunately, the bullet, lodged in his lung, had failed to explode and was removed in an emergency surgical operation. “I hope you’re all Republicans,” the president quipped to his surgeons.
The shooter, 25-year-old John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., was the drifter son of a wealthy Denver oil engineer. Hinckley was obsessed with screen actress Jodie Foster, who had made a sensation as a teenage prostitute in “Taxi Driver,” a 1976 film dealing in part with political assassination. Hinckley apparently decided to kill the president to impress Foster.
A jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity, and fie was confined to a psychiatric hospital. All of his victims recovered, except for Brady, who was left partially paralyzed. Brady became a passionate advocate of federal regulation of handguns—a policy President Reagan had himself opposed.
Real Life
The words put into Gordon Gecko’s mouth were paraphrased from a real-life Wall Street manipulator, Ivan Boesky, who told the graduating class of the School of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, on May 18, 1986: “Greed is all right, by the way … I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”
Word for the Day
During the Reagan years, the Wall Street word for the day was arbitrage–the art of buying securities, commodities, or currencies in one market and immediately (sometimes simultaneously) selling them in another market to profit from price differences. Arbitrageurs like Ivan Boesky acted on takeover bids and impending mergers, buying blocks of the target company’s stock at a low price, with the hope of selling them at a much higher price when the merger occurred. If the merger failed to occur, losses could be devastating.
Real Life
Michael R. Milken (b. 1946) was a star executive at the prestigious Wall Street trading firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. He engineered a number of high-stakes, high-profile corporate takeovers through the use of high-yield junk bonds, making many of his clients and himself enormously wealthy in the process. However, it was subsequently discovered that much of Milken’s trading was based on illegal inside information, and in 1989, a grand jury handed down a 98-count indictment against him for violating federal securities and racketeering laws. When Milken pleaded guilty to securities fraud and related charges in 1990, the government dropped the insider trading and racketeering charges, which carried greater penalties. His 10-year sentence was later reduced to three, and Milken returned to the world of finance upon his release. His spectacular rise and equally dramatic fall mirrored the course of the economy and cast a harsh light on the era’s questionable business ethics.
Stats
On “Black Monday,” October 19, 1987, $870 billion in equity simply evaporated as the market dropped from a Dow of 2,246.73 to 1,738.41 points.
Word for the Day
AIDS–Acquired immune Deficiency Syndrome–is caused by infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which attacks immune system cells, ultimately producing severe suppression of the body’s ability to resist other infections.
The disease is transmitted sexually, through the blood (for example, through transfusion with infected whole blood plasma), and during birth, from infected mother to their children.
Stats
Since the first AIDS cases were formally reported in 1981, approximately a half-million AIDS cases and mote than a quarter-million AIDS-Mated deaths have been reported in the United States. It is believed that another million Americans, have been infected with HIV through the mid-1990s but have not developed clinical AIDS symptoms.
Voice from the Past
“So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”
Word for the Day
Americans learned two important Russian words during the 1980s. Perestroika (literally, restructuring) was how Gorbachev described his program of liberal political and economic reforms. Glasnost (openness) described how the traditionally secretive and closed USSR would now approach its own people and the rest of the world.
Stats
Combined U.S. and coalition forces in the Gulf War amounted to 530,000 troops as opposed to 545,000 Iraqis. U.S. and coalition losses were 149 238 wounded, 81 missing and 13 taken, prisoner (they were subsequently released). Iraqi losses have been estimated in excess of 80,000 men, with overwhelming loss of materiel.
Real Life
The only thing Americans cherish more than their cynicism is their heroes, and the Persian Gulf War produced one in General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, overall commander of operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on August 22, 1934, Schwarzkopf graduated from West Point in 1956. He served with distinction in numerous staff strategic and personnel management assignments, as well as in field command in Vietnam and in the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
During the Persian Gulf War, Schwarzkopf commanded a combined U.S.-coalition force of 530,000 troops opposed to 545,000 Iraqis and achieved overwhelming victory. Frequently appearing on television press conferences during the conflict, he impressed the American public with his forthrightness, military skill, and softspoken humanity. “Any soldier worth his salt,” Schwarzkopf declared, “should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.” Much honored, he retired after the war.
Democracy
(1992—)
In This Chapter
End of the Reagan-Bush years
The New Right, Libertarians, and militia groups
An electronic democracy
Writing about what has happened is much easier than writing about what is happening. Because we don’t live in the future, it’s no mean feat to say one current event is historically significant, but another one isn’t. The history of our times has yet to be written. So this closing chapter is nothing more than a moistened finger lifted to the prevailing ,winds. By the time you read this, some of these winds may be forgotten breezes, and I may well have overlooked the coming storms.