Arsonists set fire to a life size Ronald Reagan statue at a California sports park. Interestingly, only the Reagan statue was damaged.
According to The Press-Enterprise:
The life-size statue of Ronald Reagan, at his namesake sports park in Temecula, was damaged by vandals in an apparent arson fire, authorities said Friday, Sept. 20.
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The bronze likeness of the 40th president was blackened by the blaze.
“It’s an insult to the president as well as to the community,” said Perry Peters, founder of the nonprofit Friends of Ronald Reagan Sports Park, which donated the statue to the city.
A park worker discovered the damage about 7 a.m., said Sgt. Terry Jones of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Jones said there was unrecognizable burned debris near the base of the statue. Inscribed granite tiles from the decorative wall behind it had fallen to the ground, apparently due to the heat from the fire. The landscaping and lighting were also damaged.
Jones said they don’t know who started the blaze or why.
I would guess that the person/people who started the blaze is/are not big fans of Ronald Reagan. Sports parks are magnets for vandals. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a small town or a big city. If you have a community sports park, baseball fields, football fields, or basketball courts vandals will target them. Arson is a crime, and whoever did this deserves to be prosecuted, but the real oddity here is that the statue of Reagan was targeted.
Maybe this was a symbolic political attack on the Republican Founding Father of trickle down income inequality? Could it be that the attack on the statue was motivated by politics? It is delicious irony that after House Republicans voted to deny healthcare to tens of millions of Americans and cut off food assistance for an additional 3.8 million people, Ronnie goes up in flames. People aren’t stupid. They see what the Republican Party is doing.
Many of those who are among the have nots in Republican Party’s two Americas have had enough.
Ronald Reagan has taken on a god like status within the GOP since his death, and Republicans have honored his legacy by adopting an ideological cruelty that the former president could not have imagined. The fire could have been the work of apolitical firebugs, but the karma is unmistakable.
Republicans are pushing people too far, and pretty soon they aren’t going to take it anymore.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
