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With the explanation of “Ronnie['s]” death so casually “[Thatcher herself] certainly believed that he had been given back his life” to live “life [with] a purpose.”

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Originally “a geek, is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens, according to Webster’s World Dictionary.” Friedman changes this by replacing the term “street performer” with “freak.”

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Fridman argues that at Harvard people whose “top priority during the [school] year” is to learn and actually excel in school is part of the “minority.”

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In the third paragraph, Fridman shifts to an explicative tone and begins to address how “anti-intellectualism is rampant” throughout the American school system.

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Reagan’s ideas were “so clear” they “were never simplistic,” because he “saw the many sides of the truth,” and that gave him many tools to use in politics.

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“Despite its easy inclines and farmable plains,” the midwest was once assessed, by Edwin James, as “wholly unfit for cultivation.”

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...and continues to show throughout the American economy, where "professional athletes" are paid millions and "faculty members at prestigious colleges" are paid an average salary of $200,000.

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Fridman implements the definition of geek, better defined as “a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens” into the essay to demonstrate the humiliating connotation that the “intellectually curious and academically serious” must undergo that they are compared to a person biting the head off a live chicken.

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Fridman claims our "system of values" is "very wrong" because we only use "derogatory terms" when addressing a group of people who are "intellectually curious".

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He was optimistic by “inspire[ing] America and its allies with renewed faith” and while “others prophesied the decline of the West” he saw the good in everything when others dismissed his arguments.

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Thatcher encourages how easy it was to “forget what daunting historic tasks he set himself”

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Reagan knew how to hold his own weight “when the world threw” issues at him and he “instinctively” knew what needed to be done to solve what was at hand.

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Our society’s overwhelming nationalism “is very wrong” in that it drives us to believe that any individuals who are “intellectually curious” inherently are “freak[s]”.

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She wants them to feel the lack of excitement that comes from “Driving west from Fargo on I-94,” even a sense of sleepiness as if they had been driving for hours on end “on a straight-ahead path.”

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She humanizes him by explaining how he was “a cheerful and invigorating presence,” and how he was very empathetic by “mend[ing] America’s wounded spirit.”

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She claims that Reagan approached his problems that were “heavy at risk” with a “lightness of spirit”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDF-Pdwr-f4

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She further sets up the disdainful tone by referencing how the Midwest is the birthplace of  “prime-time TV dramas” with the sole purpose of making the lives of Midwesterners seem “tragic”.

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First Marquart talks about the desolate landscape complete with “roads so lonely, treeless, and devoid of rises and curves” as a way to both visualize the setting and to look self-aware.

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Thatcher begins by referring to Reagan as "a friend", as well  in the first sentence of her eulogy she refers to Reagan as “a great president, [and] a great American” interjecting at the end that she had primarily lost a “dear friend,” Showing that while Thatcher saw Reagan as a great leader, she firstly saw him as a greatly
friend.
*humanizes Reagan, as a friend, brings him down to our level

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Fridman then goes on to talk about how “nerd[s] and geek[s] [are] intellectually curious, and academically serious” which makes nerds and geeks sound good..."

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As Marquart take the audience on a drive through “a road so lonely, treeless, and devoid of rises and curves,” the reader can not really see any reason why the author could have ever learned to appreciate such a place.

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Thatcher speaks of communism and how Reagan aggressively “mend[ed] America’s wounded spirit”, “restore[d] the strength of the free world”, and “free[d] the slaves of communism”.

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What the “others” predicted would happen was “the decline of the west”, however, Reagan “inspired America” instead and “ renewed faith” in the economy.

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Margaret Thatcher opened her eulogy by claiming that not only had “America lost a great president” but that she had also lost “a good friend” The fact that she opened by saying this tells the reader that one of her primary goals was to see Reagan as a person as well as a politician.