Idolatry is almost as amusing as it is bemusing. Take the Reagan Republicans for example. Their devotion to our 40th president is so misguided it would be laughable if it weren't dangerous.

Meddling in local school districts seems to be their latest strategy for spreading the ideology of a man who was a far better actor than he was a president. In fact, it must be the role he played as president and not the actual presidency that keeps these myth-loving historical revisionists so enthralled, because if they bothered to look at the Reagan presidency without wearing their rose-colored-retro goggles (with blinders firmly attached!) they would see that the legacy of government mistrust he left in his wake has contributed as much to our political woes as his economic policies have to our financial problems.

Reagan Republicans portray themselves as patriots but fail to see that the lamentable lack of patriotism in America since the reign of Reagan has a lot to do with the wedge he placed between the people and a government originally designed to be by, for, and of the people. The paradox created by his assertion that the government "is the problem" has the logical outcome of being a self-fulfilling prophecy manifesting itself today in the public skepticism caused by our divided and ineffective Congress.

No doubt, the government has earned a good deal of the distrust it receives, but we the people are getting what we deserve when we allow groups like the Reagan Republicans to proliferate their nostalgia for the faade of the past rather than to face it and learn its lessons. And proliferation can't get more grassroots than with local school boards so as funny as it might be to watch these misled men and women attempt to demonize those who do not worship their deity and who paint schools as the problem, it is also frightening.

Do I exaggerate? Read the books and articles that were not written under the spell of Reagan worship, and there will be no doubt that while his charisma was great and his persona was powerful, his policies were flawed. To fall for the charisma and to perpetuate the flaws is folly, and yet we continue to give credence to a manipulative and vocal microcosm of spellbound conservatives who have managed to alienate many members of their own party in an effort to revive radical Reagan-ism. And now they are out to mold to their liking another flawed but necessary institution: public schools.

Let us take them at their word when they claim a belief in Reagan's magic. Reagan's financial guru Milton Friedman instilled in the actor "trickledown" economic theories that created a gap between the rich and the poor that continues to widen today as it erodes the middle class. And his faulty but beloved vision of Americans as self-disciplined individualists led to the lifting of regulations on federally insured savings and loan institutions whose wild lack of self-control led to a collapse that cost taxpayers upwards of $150 billion. But Reagan's belief in deregulation persisted and history repeated itself when Wall Street repeated its deregulated abuses in this century.

Reagan Republicans bemoan the lack of honesty in today's political campaigns, but their own hero promised to have a balanced budget by the end of his first term and then his second, while history shows that he left office with a budget deficit three times as large as his oft-derided predecessor Jimmy Carter. Reagan wanted to sell public lands to private individuals in a move that was romantically labeled his "Sagebrush Rebellion" but thankfully for those of us in the wide-open state of Idaho hunters and other outdoorsman helped put a stop to it. Yet, this idea of privatizing remains strong among Reagan Republicans and if they have their way with school boards you can expect to see more of it. Expect also that Reagan's draconian clampdowns on job training programs, school lunches, the Environmental Protection Agency and many other social and affirmative action programs will be revived to flourish even as those affected by them falter, just as they faltered in his time while the rich got richer.

So where is the humor in all this? Well, there has always been a dark Mister Magoo type of humor in watching the blind attempting to navigate the intricacies of life. If readers of local papers observed how the Kootenai County Reagan Republicans tried to bully the Post Falls Education Association by accusing them of wrongdoing in the campaign for the school board elections and then saw how neither the superintendent nor the county clerk found any reason for concern, there is a temptation to chuckle. But it's no laughing matter when we realize that these people are manipulating those of us who are too busy trying to make a living to keep a close eye on them.

We should be electing school board members like we've had in the past, service-minded individuals like Ron McIntire, Ann Smart, Christie Wood and others who cared more about kids and education than politics. Reagan Republicans would have us vote for people who see government institutions like our school boards as "problems" rather than sources of solutions. And - if we are not careful - history will prove them right. The joke will be on us, then, but no one will be laughing.

Mike Ruskovich is a Blanchard resident.