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David Stockman was assigned the job of chief executioner who would "cut, slash and chop" the victims.

Similarly, the huge rise in defense spending - $l.6 trillion in five years - complemented rather than contradicted the other parts of the Reagan program, because it, too, destroyed surplus which we otherwise might have enjoyed. Military spending solves a crucial problem of post - World War II economics of nations. Since childrearing has improved since World War II, nations in the West have recently replaced Great Wars and Great Depressions by limited wars and limited recessions. The result is that, in America, our real Gross National Product since World War II has jumped by over 30 percent a decade, a prosperity so unprecedented that if it continued unabated it could soon do away with poverty for good. One way we have found to prevent this from happening has been to pour $2 trillion into the military since World War II, using up resources which, if they had been put instead into new technology, would have given America a productivity rate far exceeding even that of Japan (which accomplished its "miracle of modernization" simply by spending very little on their military.)(32)

Reagan's task was seen as "taming the Man Eater" through budget cuts and military buildup

This "disinvestment" strategy of ensuring low productivity by draining resources into military expenditures is further sustained by the shared fantasy of most Americans that the Man Eater-the International Communist Serpent, really our own projected feelings-was growing and was about to devour us at any moment. By the time of Reagan's election, after the prosperity of the Seventies, fully 71 percent of Americans said we must spend more for the military.(33) That this involved an enormous increase in useless and highly dangerous

military expenditures-almost a billion dollars a day, every dollar of which is drained from our present or future pleasures-is not a drawback. It is an unconscious purpose. An extra billion dollars a day in pleasure would simply be intolerable to our puritanical consciences.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that it was pleasure which was the enemy that Reaganomics was designed td defeat. It is no coincidence that the bible of Reaganomics, George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty, was written by a man who had become famous writing anti-feminist books opposing the sexual revolution, saying that men have been "cuckolded by the compassionate state" which had encouraged women's sexual and career independence to such an extent that a man could "no longer feel manly in his own home."(34) The enormous anxiety felt by men of the older psychoclass about the sexual freedom of women cannot be overestimated. Earlier in the century, the average American woman rare-ly had orgasms and wanted sex only once or twice a month.(35) Today, women not only have sex much more often, but are so open about their ability to enjoy it that young women wear T-shirts saying "God, it feels good" . . . an attitude toward pleasure which cannot help but produce anxiety in the older psychoclass.

The puritanical counterattack of the Reagan team against the sexual revolution is consonant with their sacrificial economic program of "feed the rich" and "punish the poor." When Gilder was asked by an interviewer whether it wasn't true that "the rewards of supply-side economics are given right now, to the wealthy" while "the penalties are imposed right now, on working-class, low-income, welfare citizens," he replied, with a grin, "That's life, folks."(37) And when his fellow "supply-sider" Jude Wanniski called his Reaganomics team "the wild men" who fought against "the forces of darkness,"(38) it was the "dark force" of sexual pleasure as much as it was the pleasure of consumption which was being combated. The gratitude felt by most Americans toward the man whose task it was to bring the dark forces of our pleasures under control was overwhelming. Washington had never seen the likes of the $8 million Inaugural Celebration, supplemented by 40,000 guests attending "satellite balls" across the country. The New York Times Magazine ran a front cover instructing Reagan on his regal task, with the follow-ing headline: "MEMO: TO THE PRESIDENT. What this country wants and needs is not a board chairman or a passive

The Reagan Revolution was seen as opposed to pleasure.(36)

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President, but a strong one, even - yes, even - something approaching the old and besmirched Imperial Presidency."(39) Those who wondered if all the ostentation of the ten-thousand dollar gowns and the $1,000-a-plate new dinnerware wasn't perhaps an inappropriate way to begin the cutting of the budget for the poor didn't really understand both halves of the principle of "feed the top and punish the bottom." Reaganomics needed both the golden presidential plates and the welfare cuts to carry out its fantasy.

The overt adulation of the country toward Reagan personally knew no bounds during his first year. Time made him "Man of the Year." The New York Times thought he was simply radiant: "Mr. Reagan is the first President in years who seems comfortable in the public eye, and he is radiating charm, decency-and competence."(40) The New Republic agreed that he shined all over: "Reagan is direct, simple and sincere-candor shines out all over him."(41) TV reporters saw him as a messiah who would reverse our disastrous past, as Jimmy Carter had promised but had failed to do: "After 20 years of pessimism, after assassinations, Vietnam and Watergate, at last, the burden was off our backs. It was America Reborn, a New America, America All the Way!"(42)

Reagan was seen as being in charge of the government guillotine.

Swept up by the nation's adulation, Reagan's team could proceed with the sacrifice of the 150,000 people with dispatch. David Stockman found out "how much pain the new President was willing to impose" simply by listing program after program to be eliminated or drastically reduced, each with a little box for Reagan to check-something like the Roman system of sacrificing Christians in the Colosseum. The victims would ascend the sacrificial ladder each time a box was checked. One observer, present during the proceedings, told of the ease with which the sacrifice was carried out: "Reagan, this insider says, would look at the proposal, glance around the cabinet room table, and say, 'Well, is there any disagreement on this one? No? OK, that's done, let's go on to the next page."'(43) Each stroke of the pen, like an ex-ecutioner's ax, struck a blow against the symbols of our excesses. "Cut," down go 3 million children removed from the school lunch program. "Slash," down go 340,000 CETA jobs for unemployed workers. "Chop," down go the handicapped children helped by government aid. It was as easy as cutting the 79 cent food allowance had been in Sacramento. In fact, it was even more im-portant for Reagan personally to cut the budget for children now. When he had become Governor, he had just been made a

millionaire, and he had sacrificed the needs of a few thousand children as symbols of his "greedy" desires. When he became President, he had deposed the former President (a father-figure), had himself taken over as the most powerful man in the world and now ate off thousand-dollar plates. Millions of children would now have to suffer for the hubris of his daring. Even stopping the nation's money supply growth wasn't difficult for Reagan, despite the supposed independence of the Federal Reserve Board. "It took only one visit at the end of April 1981, when President Reagan finally called Volcker to the White House and in no uncertain terms asked Volcker whether he intended to control the money of America. . . the Fed officials froze money growth for six months to October 1981, thus precipitating the current recession." What's more, adds the reporter, "The President should have pinned Voicker's ears back long before April 1981. "(44)

One after another the victims of Reaganomics ascended the sacrificial ladder.

That Reagan could perform his sacrificial role so effortlessly while still being thought of as "charming" and nice is more a testament to our desire to delegate to him the unpleasant sacrificial role than to any innate "charm" in his personality, which could be quite prickly when opposed. During the passage of the budget bill, House Speaker Tip O'Neill said of Reagan, "He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job and still he's popular."(45) He might more accurately have phrased it "Because he's cutting hearts out, he's popular." Given our euphoric idealization of Reagan in his sacrificial role, it was comparatively easy for him to implement his program. Despite The Washington Post's quite accurate statement that "Reaganomics never was taken very seriously by the bulk of the economics profession,"(46) the public took it very seriously indeed.

As soon as the President's program passed Congress, the stock market dropped. Despite Reagan's magical scenario about the revitalization of America which would result from the sacrificial cleansing of the body politic, Wall Street knew precisely how bad the Time of Sacrifice would be. Despite $143 billion worth of tax reductions for business depreciation,(47) and despite slashes in corporate tax rates, they knew that profits were nevertheless going to drop sharply while Reagan pushed the

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economy down to a utilization rate of below 70 percent which would be required to destroy some of the surplus of recent years. Although businessmen would not have to actually lose their lives as would the 150,000 human victims of Reaganomics, they would have to do without some of their profits for a while as their contribution to the Time of Sacrifice.

Nor did the Democratic party oppose the sacrificial slaughter. The few who noticed that the work of decades was being dismantled were reduced to impotence within the party. "It's heartbreaking," said one. "We

Both parties asked Reagan to chop off heads.

spent years putting those programs together, and they work. Now they are being destroyed."(48) "People are watching programs they have put their hearts and sweat into being cut and abolished," said another. "They're walking around in shock."(49) Democrats played key roles in passing every part of the Reagan program. As one Republican said, "Without them, we could not have won."(50) Appropriately, they were labeled "Gypsy Moths" and "Boll Weevils," devouring insects, symbols of the devouring, biting mouths of the Man Eater to whom their victims were being sacrificed. As one New York Times editorial put it, they "were victimized last week not so much by a Republican man-eater as by Democratic boll weevils."(51) As in the world of the Kwakiutl, Reagan's America seemed to be filled with biting mouths, "Republican man-eaters," "Gypsy Moths," "Boll Weevils," and millions of hungry mouths in the Pac-Man games which swept the nation at that time.

The other symbol used regularly in these early months came right out of the pages of Reagan's autobiography, Where's The Rest of Me? Since Reagan's main fear was of castration, of losing his legs, every slash of the budget ax gave him a chance to prove that he was able to do to others what he feared his father had wanted to do to him. Everyone around him

joined him in the use of castration imagery during the budget-cutting process. Rep. O'Neill said his hope was that budget cuts for the needy would be modified so as to "cut them off at the knee instead of cutting them off at the hip. "52 An Education and Labor Committee aid said, when informed of the cuts, "It's like being told to amputate your own leg."(53) Reagan himself regularly used the phrase: "Vote against me, and you will cut me off at the knees."(54) When Reagan finally signed the budget bill at his California ranch, a reporter asked him to hold his leg up in the air, ostensibly to see his new boots. The resulting photo of

Ronald Reagan displays his powerful phallus
after signing the sacrificial legislation.

Reagan, laughing, with his leg high in the air, was run in almost every newspaper and magazine in the nation. He did have a powerful phallus after all. He showed it to us. It was the victims of the bill he had just signed who were castrated, not Reagan. The sceneno from Where's The Rest of Me? was so much on everyone's mind during the signing ceremony that as the meeting broke up, after Reagan had displayed his leg, a reporter asked him what he was going to do next. He replied:

PRESIDENT: "Go out and cut the brush."
REPORTER: "Well, don't cut your leg off."
MRS. REAGAN: "Where's The Rest of Me?"
PRESIDENT: "You shouldn't have mentioned it."

The castrated had become the castrator. The child once sacrificed to his father's rage had become the sacrificer. This time, America had chosen the leader it needed. After feeling "out of control" for so long, it felt good to be in control again.

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