DarthScorpio11 said:
what about the pictures from "i love the 80s" of people walking down the street smiling in wacky clothes with the boomboxes, and dancing to micheal jackson, and the movies like E.T, and whatnot. I always hear people say stuff like, "man, those were the days..."
"I love the 80s" is one of the main things I blame for this distortion of the 80s. The point of any TV show is to deliver eyes to advertisers. Advertisers don't like to be associated with things they think won't get people in the mood to buy their product. And "I love the 80s" or "I love the 70s" that actually told it like it was, wouldn't match the "funny, happy, cheesy" vibe the show is trying to sell.
DarthScorpio11 said:
how was america not in any threat in the last decade? the people who died in the WTC were just everyday Americans who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one knew if this was going to happen again, or where it was going to happen. Who is that not intimate?
Funnily enough, I was also alive for the 90s, 00s, and now...so I remember all of that, too.
And about 9/11. There was terrorism before 9/11. Airplanes were brought down regularly (Air India Flight 182, Pan Am Flight 103, UTA Flight 772, and on and on). There was the Beirut Barracks Bombing. And if you weren't American is was worse. I remember watching the news all the time as a little American kid and seeing regular reports about terrorists attacks by the IRA against London and all the troubles in Northern Ireland. And in Germany the 70s and 80s saw regular attacks by the Red Army Faction and the Revolutionary Cells, Italy had the Red Brigades, Spain had the ETA.
Also hot wars like Afghanistan and Iraq...I was in the Army during the first Gulf War in 1990. And you know the thing about the Cold War is that involved lots of little wars...the US involvement in the Lebanese Civil War, Grenada, Panama. There were death squads raping nuns in El Salvador. The 80s was full of conflict around the world.
And I have to say, none of those things were as scary and disturbing that the threat of nuclear armageddon. Because that would have destroyed the *entire world.* Not just 500 here or 1000 people there...but *everything.* That is a level of heaviness that is hard to imagine if you didn't live through it.
There is a reason why the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s brought us some unhappy music--punk, new wave, metal...then there was all the alternative like Joy Division, The Smiths, Tears For Fears, The Cure. Those were some heavy times.