The Eighties: You Had to be There
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
That came out after the first Geneva Summit when we seriously began to believe we could come out of the Cold War, not only without a nuclear war, but as victors. It was a time of brief optimism.
The end of the Cold War (with the Soviets) came about 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. The Mainstream even today refuses to acknowledge it. The new Russian Federation has overcome the worst of the economic collapse. There are now over 200,000,000 churchgoing Christians in Russia.
The 200mill Russian Orthodox Christians were always there. Christianity is deeply ingrained into the Russian culture.
St Pope JP2 during his reign wanted to bring Catholicism to Russia. He took his eyes off the Faith in Europe and consequently you have a godless western Europe today, littered with Muslim “refugees”. That was a major flaw of the Churches unnecessary focus on the Soviet Union. And the fact it hasn’t been determined if Russia was in-fact consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as our Lady desired. Lots of loose ends in Russia.
The Rocky series are enduring. That particular one is iconic. We grew up watching them. The later Rockys, including Creed have shifted their focus to align with racial equality. Signs of the times. Rocky is Italian American. His ring-side crew includes his Italian brother-in-law and his black trainer and not to mentioned his Jewish trainer in the earlier movies, the endearing Mickey. It’s a far cry from what’s politically correct racial representation in Hollywood movies today. Apollo Creed was the antagonist in the late 80’s. They wouldn’t be writing that in the storylines today.
Even with a Nuclear Threat hanging over our heads, I still loved living in the 80s.
. . .today, Generation Y & Z live without a nuclear rival or threat, yet they live miserable lives lamenting imagined problems that only exist between their ears.
Not really.
The kids that get TV attention? Sure. Same way that the idiot Boomers that got attention were the hippies and jerks, and the Gen X in popular culture/attention were likewise losers.
I remember reading the same complaints about Gen X in Readers’ Digest when I was little, and the late-sixties to 70s popular media likewise had the same kind of complaints.
Side-effect of the guys who are picking the stories having a story to tell, if there’s any connection to reality or not.
It’s just not popular to point to the threat of nuclear attack right now– the news-folks get more power and cheap grace from global warming and other environmental “emergencies.”
(which, by some stroke of luck, happen to have the same solution as every other emergency– but without the “so maybe we should be able to hit them back?” angle of USSR nuclear war threats)
Gen Y & Z are living through an age of biological warfare and loss of personal freedom. And a future which will be devoid of the innocence the Boomers took for granted for decades. All brought about by the Boomers. Gen Y & Z are a product of the complacent Boomer generation.
Granted TV was our opioid.
If one could live without it during the 80s, they were much richer (culturally) for it.