Quote from The Reagan Diaries

"Armageddon in the prophecies begins with the gates of Damascus being assailed." (May 4, 1983; pg 150)

This short but sweet quote refers to rising trouble in the middle east and the "possibility of an Israeli-Syrian (plus Soviet) confrontation." The idea of Armageddon (or for the less poetic, "the end of mankind") obviously is a key theme of the Cold War era. But the way Reagan writes this quote strikes me with both fascination and fear. As the inside cover of the Diaries tells me, Reagan had a fairly strong religious side. The way Reagan bridges religion and political affairs here is brilliant, but also terrifying. It makes it seem like mutually assured destruction may not only be out of our hands, but out of God's. He gives us very real sense of his fear that the world is teetering on the edge. This, to me, explains why he was so insistent on continuing the SDI program. I skimmed the Diaries, and it seems like a majority of politicians were against it. Yet he kept pushing.

Reagan seemed like a great thinker. When I look at the candidates for the current election, I see a bunch of people who don't really seem to have minds of their own...they collect what seems to be favorable to the public and sell it; sell, sell, campaign, campaign. I'm not doubting their intelligence or the breadth of their knowledge, but with Reagan I see a man who sits down each night and thinks - nay, meditates about what he learns, on various levels (one of them religious). Several times in the diaries he derides the press for how little they know. How ironic that the modern presidency is based so enormously around the media.