{"id":1954,"date":"2013-04-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/04\/i-was-right-2.html"},"modified":"2013-04-21T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T10:00:00","slug":"i-was-right-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/04\/i-was-right-2.html","title":{"rendered":"I was right!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

If National Geographic Channel can be\u00a0believed\u00a0 \u00a0So it\u2019s been running a series on the 80s. \u00a0That\u2019s the 1980s<\/a>. \u00a0The decade that formed me. \u00a0I was in 8th grade in 1980, and graduated college in 1990 (the extra year due to changing majors). So I\u2019m somewhat familiar with the 80s. \u00a0I haven\u2019t watched the show, since shows like that are usually more flash than substance. \u00a0But I\u2019ve seen a few clips here and there.<\/p>\n

Last night, I caught the part where they talked of the TV movie The Day After<\/i>. \u00a0For those who don\u2019t remember, that was a little Hollywood love letter to Ronald Reagan,\u00a0explaining\u00a0in dramatic form that his policies would lead to nuclear\u00a0annihilation\u00a0 \u00a0It wasn\u2019t presented that way by Nat Geo. \u00a0Though the impact it had on Reagan was mentioned. \u00a0That made me wonder what impact it might have if we had\u00a0Hollywood\u00a0productions that\u00a0directly\u00a0attacked the policies of Obama or Clinton. \u00a0Might it jar them? \u00a0Not that Reagan was jarred the way the\u00a0producers\u00a0wanted. \u00a0It only encouraged him to step up his resolve to economically break the floundering Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

But it did impress upon Reagan the need to step up, since each day we were at a\u00a0nuclear\u00a0standoff was a day someone could flinch. \u00a0Again, the Nat Geo show didn\u2019t mention that the movie itself was part of the grand \u2018we\u2019re all going to die because Reagan\u2019s president\u2019 mantra that we heard from the day Reagan took office. \u00a0Pushed by the emerging Left as the Boomer liberals began to seize control of our cultural\u00a0institutions\u00a0 the difference between 1980s and\u00a0the 1950s was twofold: first, unlike the 50s where everyone knew there could <\/i>be a\u00a0nuclear\u00a0war, in the early 80s, we were told there\u00a0would\u00a0<\/i>be a nuclear war. \u00a0Big difference. \u00a0And unlike the 50s, where it was those rascally Ruskies who were the baddies and the reason why, if there\u2019s ever a war, it will be due to their godless evil, in the 80s, courtesy of the emergent Left, the reason for our inevitable doom was, well, us. \u00a0The US. \u00a0 The warmongering Right and old Imperialist Washington. \u00a0We had met\u00a0the\u00a0enemies, and it was us. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ronald Reagan as seen in the anti-Reagan video
for Genesis\u2019 song\u00a0\u201cLand of Confusion<\/i>\u201c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

What Nat Geo did do was link this to an observation I\u2019ve made for years. \u00a0For more than 20 years I\u2019ve told people, including my parents, that this generation of instant gratification may not have started in the 80s, but it was given high octane gas in the 80s and put into\u00a0hyper-drive. \u00a0 This drumbeat of\u00a0inevitable\u00a0doom couldn\u2019t help but impress on a certain\u00a0generation\u00a0of young people the idea that saving and planning long term were exercises in futility. \u00a0Why worry about\u00a0tomorrow\u00a0when tomorrow won\u2019t be there? \u00a0While not the only reason, as no thing ever has only one reason, I\u2019ve long maintained that the rather purposeful\u00a0pounding\u00a0on the desk that Reagan was going to kill Earth had a profound impact on an entire generation, even if we didn\u2019t realize it at the time.<\/p>\n

Of course, again, Nat Geo doesn\u2019t link this to a\u00a0politically\u00a0motivated stunt or anything. \u00a0But it does say that the feeling of\u00a0inevitable\u00a0destruction\u00a0may have had an impact on the decline of savings and preparing for later years in life that we see today (dropping interest rates are probably another reason, but that\u2019s for some other time). \u00a0Not that those of us alive couldn\u2019t see that by late 1983 when the movie aired, Reagan may not have been so keen to nuke the world as we\u2019d been told. \u00a0It was clear by late 83 and early 84 that he wasn\u2019t planning on nuking everyone, that the economy was\u00a0improving\u00a0 and that America seemed strong again. \u00a0Which is why he was reelected. \u00a0But Hollywood tried its best to scare the bejesus out of us, and it did have an impact, even on Reagan himself. \u00a0For good or ill. \u00a0What impact might a Hollywood\u00a0assault\u00a0on the HHS mandate have I wonder. \u00a0But far easier was it to imagine a nuclear holocaust in 1983 than a 2013 Hollywood production that would ever challenge a liberal Democrat president. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If National Geographic Channel can be\u00a0believed\u00a0 \u00a0So it\u2019s been running a series on the 80s. \u00a0That\u2019s the 1980s. \u00a0The decade that formed me. \u00a0I was in 8th grade in 1980, and graduated college in 1990 (the extra year due to changing majors). So I\u2019m somewhat familiar with the 80s. \u00a0I haven\u2019t watched the show, since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nI was right!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If National Geographic Channel can be believed   So it's been running a series on the 80s.  That's the 1980s.  The decade that\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/04\/i-was-right-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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