Ronald Reagan for Beginners

Welcome to the spring 2026 issue of Citric Acid, marking the beginning of our fourth year together as writers, readers, artists, activists, teachers, students, boosters, provocateurs, revisionist peoples’ historians, truthtellers, and wise guys. With so many artifacts, images, memes, and jokes to choose from I found valuable irony and instruction in this one, the cover of an ancient political comic book I already owned but found a second used copy of at the incredible LibroMobile, Sarah Rafael Garcia’s community bookstore project in Santa Ana.

It inspires this issue, along with hearing the film writer Violet Lucca on the excellent Michael and Us podcast say what I’d been thinking, feeling, and hoping I might articulate myself. She got there first:

“It’s just as bad as I ever thought it was. This is my third Gulf war. My politics, and who I am as a person, was so deeply shaped by the Iraq War, the construction of the surveillance state, the 2003 invasion of Afghanistan, the militarization of the police, all of these things that came out of the ‘Global War on Terrorism.’ It is so fuckin’ weird. It's like really the one thing… I'm, like, please don't ever let this happen! Don't ever invade Iran…and it happened…”

I’m no longer a beginner.  But I am always a re-beginner, a begin-againer, perhaps, and happy to stand, march, and protest with both beginners and veterans, new friends and old comrades. Of course, it didn’t just happen. None of it. Signs of fascism were all around since well before Ronnie Raygun. He just re-commissioned them. Lately they are everywhere, again. 

Happily, so many citizen activists are objecting, including the small, mighty local group which displays, soberly and sincerely, the actual Signs of Fascism, as listed on the flyer, first in downtown Orange and, last week, at an  intersection in Irvine.

That ancient if enduring title was published in 1984 (!) when “Reaganomics” or “Reaganism” was the go-to if purposefully understated milquetoast corporate media description of a reactionary, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, warmongering, nationalist campaign to reverse the social and economic gains of the 1960s and 70s as well, of course, as the New Deal. Now, fully realized just a few decades later, it delivers fraud and hate and ICE and invasion, a dangerous for-real fascist clown crew regime using, finally, the ultimate and singular gesture which autocracy and reaction offer: more war!  Same as it ever was. Except worse.

The book is a fun read. You’re welcome to my extra copy. (Maybe make a small donation, please, to Citric Acid?  We are orange but in the red.)

Toward encouraging humane engagement, resistance, and even more camaraderie, here’s a very full issue including short story writer Lisa Alvarez’s keynote address to the inaugural 2026 Laguna Beach LitFest, organized by the Third Street writers (with photos). There’s gorgeous poetry, two book reviews, literary meditation, unlikely OC field trips, political activism, political satire, political comix, and exemplary (political!) student work.  

We all begin from somewhere.  So there’s always much to learn, share, and celebrate. Somewhere, after all, is always here, and now. Be realistic. Demand the impossible!