I'll be brief...
I've been thinking about Ronald Reagan, which is not something I do casually. I'm old enough to have lived through his presidency with my eyes open, and my feelings about the man are complicated in the way that most honest assessments of powerful people tend to be.
I actually voted for him for his first term. Long an independent, I believed you do what feels right, not just for your party, your tribe, your...ignorance?
I did not vote for his second term. That being said, I WAS by 2000 aware enough then to NOT vote for Geroge W. Bush and gave up on America when he was re-elected. Obama brought me back to hope, not realizing that in exercising joy over better lucidity, knowledge, humanity, decency (not saying Bush wasn't a decent man, really just an ignorant one, like Donald Trump, but now here near as lazy or ignorant, self-involved and far more decent than Trump), and a better understanding of America. We so offended the right they became the Far Right, dove into fantasy and conspiracy theories and we got...Trump. Worst...yeah, well, anyway...we all know that.
So, here's the thought experiment that keeps nagging at me: what if he woke up today?
Not 1985 Reagan. 2026 today Reagan. Coffee in hand, turning on a screen, discovering that we've built machines that think, argue, write, compose, and lie with the fluency of a career politician.
His first reaction would be wonder. I'm sure of it.
Reagan was many things, but he was genuinely moved by big ideas. He'd sit with Claude AI or ChatGPT the way a kid sits with a magic trick — not looking for the catch, just letting himself feel amazed. That quality in him was real, whatever you thought of his politics.
Then the questions would start.
Who owns this? Who controls what it says? Who decided what it believes?
Because Reagan spent his entire public life warning about concentrated power. The danger of a small group of people controlling information, shaping narrative, deciding what the rest of us get to know. He always imagined that threat wearing a government uniform. He'd have to sit with the uncomfortable reality that it doesn't anymore. It wears a hoodie and operates out of San Francisco.
Or it's an American Oligarch. Embraced by government, under Trump.
He'd be disturbed by deepfakes in a way that cuts deeper than policy. Reagan was a creature of narrative. He understood instinctively that stories are how humans make sense of the world, how we decide who to trust, what to believe, who we are.
The idea that the machinery of narrative itself becomes untrustworthy — that you can no longer trust your own eyes and ears — that wouldn't just trouble him politically.
It would trouble him existentially.
He'd land on China as his organizing frame, because that's the substitution that makes sense. No Soviets, but the familiar shape is still there: free world versus authoritarian power, and whoever controls the most powerful technology controls the future. He'd be comfortable in that argument. It would feel like home.
And then he'd do what every politician since has done: try to apply a coherent but outdated philosophy to something genuinely new, dress it in the language of the moment, and hope the public doesn't notice the seams.
Which is, if we're being honest, exactly what we're watching right now. Confident men with old maps trying to navigate territory that didn't exist when those maps were drawn.
Donald Trump is lost in the '80s. For that matter, so is Putin.
Reagan at least has the excuse of having been dead.
The rest of them are just hoping you won't ask too many questions.
I'm sure it will all be "just fine." Bless their little hearts...
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
JZ Murdock is a retired Senior Technical Writer/IT administrator, and an active award-winning author/ filmmaker, documentarian, and writer based in Bremerton, Washington.
He publishes commentary on the state of things at murdockinations.com and on his creative works over at Substack. He also posts on Slasher.com on the horror genre.
If this work means something to you, you can support it at Ko-fi. Tips are always welcome and go directly toward keeping independent documentary work possible.
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