EVENT
I really hated them…
by Glenn McCoy
image acquired via the New York Times
by Pat Oliphant
image acquired via the New York Times
…the 1980s…
by Tom Toles
image acquired via the New York Times
I was two years old when Reagan was elected and ten when his presidency ended.
At least one of my parents voted for Reagan in 1980, but I’m certain neither did in 1984.
In Michigan, such voting patterns were widespread and led for many autoworkers to be lumped together as “Reagan Democrats,” particularly in 1984.
Michael Deaver has written, “The Reagan Democrats lived in a world today’s Generation X would hardly recognize. Stagflation. Malaise. Gas lines. Crime waves. The Ayatollah. Voluntary thermostat controls. One percent pay raises. Mujahadeen. WIN buttons. Hollow military. Killer rabbits. Exploding Pintos. Unemployment. Misery index. Billy Beer.”
Carter had left people pretty uninspired.
The 70s had gutted Detroit, Flint, Lansing, and Saginaw through massive plant closings and layoffs and racial strife.
Somehow we’d wound up with disco…
Why not vote for Reagan? He did, after all, promise to resurrect our reputation as liberators and warriors of freedom abroad. He did, after all, speak with passion and flair. He did, after all, have a physique quite imposing for a man his age.
See where I’m going?
And then the 80s happened.
“How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
“You can’t help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”
“Morning in America?”
Well, we do know your fondness for naps. Now we know you’re napping.
* * * * *
It’s all about the idea right, and a person is just a person?
Okay, then, you’re fogiven, forgiven.
Rest well, rest well, and may we never meet in Hell.
* * * * *
I was going to turn the rest of this post into a rant on the 80s.
I was going to direct it at University of Chicago students who generally idolize that decade, which marked the final ruination of the core of many American cities, ugly cars, bad hair, hollow materialism, and the ultimate hypocrasy: “compassionate conservatism.”
And point to Madonna and note that despite the Material Girl’s hardscrabble to the top, her roots lie in rusty little Bay City, a fact she’s denied on numerous occasion.
And maybe point to Depeche Mode and the Cure, and remind you that you didn’t really listen to them until the 90s, if you were even old enough, that is.
You feminists and democrats, liberals and socialists, and haters of W. Bush; how on earth can you so unequivically embrace the era that personified most what you’ve hated? But I know… you don’t remember. I do. I saw Flint cush and crumble.
And remembering that has made me too tired.
Maybe I’ll go take a nap.
~ Connor