Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches Visions of America: The Reagan Era Quotes

Thousands upon thousands of Americans became infected with HIV in the 1980s. The lesion Prior reveals to Louis here was by this point a known sign of full-blown AIDS. One of the major criticisms of Reagan's presidency was his silence on the AIDS issue. Some say his long silence on the epidemic significantly increased the death toll. Reagan's harshest critics claim that the disease was not a priority because, at the time, it largely affected the gay community and drug addicts, whom Reagan thought were in some way being deservedly punished. Fans of Reagan say this idea is totally unfair liberal propaganda. Do your own research. Where do you weigh in on this debate?

In some quarters, Reagan's presidency was greeted with an overwhelming sense of optimism. Reagan saw America as a force of good in the world and any country who opposed it as evil. He famously called the Soviet Union and its brand of communism the "Evil Empire." To Reagan, America's "sacred position" was to be the democratic leader of the word, vanquishing the communists. The US was Luke Skywalker, and the USSR was Darth Vader.

Joe is a proud Reaganite. If he could, he'd like to have Reagan's babies. Reagan was famous for stating simple "truths" that the general public could easily understand. Coming from Joe, this quote is a pretty ironic – he's got a big secret that he definitely isn't speaking proudly.

The US had a tough time in the 1970s, going through a period of serious economic decline. Unemployment was rising and things were really starting to suck. There was also a string of foreign policy nightmares. The Vietnam War ended without a victory, making an already incredibly unpopular war seem ultimately pointless. Basically, America had a serious case of low self-esteem. And then in walked a smiling Ronald Reagan with his message of hope.

While Joe is one of the most vocal supporters of conservative Reagan ideology, Louis is one of its most vocal detractors (making it pretty ironic that they get together at the end of the play). While polls showed that the majority of Americans supported Reagan's agenda, many liberals thought he was a total monster. One of the left's main gripes was that conservative policies were "heartless."

Reagan was, and still is, a hero to many American conservatives. He was the face of a conservative revolution that is still being felt today. Every president after him has either fought against the ideology that Reagan popularized or tried to spread it. (Read more about it in our guide to The Regan Era.

Here, Louis says he's been thinking a lot about Reagan's children and how crazy it must be to have him as a dad. The fact that Louis refers to Reagan as the "American Animus" is pretty interesting. There are lots of layers to this. Animus is a term used by Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist who developed the theory of the collective unconscious. (More on that here.) Jung defined an Animus as the masculine aspect of the female psyche; it is an unconscious drive that exists in all women. So it seems like Louis is saying that Reagan is the incarnation of all that is macho in America (if we think of America as female). Note that earlier Louis also refers to "Reaganites" as "macho assholes." It doesn't stop there, though. Animus has other meanings as well. It can mean "a basic attitude or governing spirit" and also "a spiteful or malevolent will" (source). Both of these definitions would seem to fit Louis' idea of Reagan.

Louis implies here that everyone is Reagan's child. Remember before when he was saying how disconnected the Reagan family is? Well, he's using that as a metaphor for what he sees as general disconnectedness and lack of community in the country as a whole.