It's no overstatement to say that George W. Bush is the Ronald Reagan of the new millennium.
But that isn't necessarily a compliment.
Like Bush, Reagan led a country hypnotized by a decade of fear.
You kids won't read this in your history books, but American foreign-policy in the early-1980's was driven almost exclusively by the widespread fear of All-Out Nuclear War.
Reagan's immense popularity lay in his tough-talking, finger-wagging mantras about the "Evil Empire" (Soviet Russia in those days) that was going to blow up the planet at any moment, much like the ubiquitous "Axis of Evil" of our own time.
There's really no way to capture the Zeitgeist of the Reagan Years in writing.
But there are four movies that really crystalize the paranoia of the era quite beautifully. If you are at all interested in why people in their late-30s (perhaps your own parents) are so messed-up, or want an idea of the kind of struggles that lay ahead for our own country, I strongly recommend renting these movies.
You can even get your parents
to rent them for nostalgic reasons. Nothing softens up old folks like a little trip down memory lane. Trust me--they will be
astounded by your gifted sense of intuition.
The movies are:
The Day After (not to be confused 2004's
The Day After Tomorrow),
WarGames,
Red Dawn and
The River's Edge.
Be warned though. Some of these movies are as contrived and wooden as the Reagan years were. So don't expect any groundbreaking entertainment.
Red Dawn in particular has some really bad acting in it. Yet, it accurately captures just how juvenile the paranoia of the period really was.
The Day AfterLike the events of 9/11, this movie really represented a turning point in the American psyche. Broadcast on national prime-time television at the height of the Cold War,
The Day After was the first genuinely realistic depiction of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. And like 9/11, practically everybody in the U.S. saw it. It generated controversial discussion in the national media for weeks on end. If ever there was a film that anticipated America's reaction to 9/11,
this is it.WarGamesBefore personal computers became household items, there was a lot of paranoia about computer errors potentially starting a war. In WarGames, the idea is taken to the extreme as America's nuclear arsenal is set on full-alert by a machine known as the WOPR (prounounced Whopper, a subtle testament to the popularity of Burger King in those days). Though the film is mainly a play on the robotic attitudes of America's Cold-Warriors of the time, the film's final statement that the only way to win a game of nuclear war is "not to play" struck a chord that encouraged thoughtful re-examination of the nuclear build-up of the Reagan years. Notice the DefCon display in the NORAD control center. Look familiar? Is it a nuclear warning or a Terror Alert?
Red DawnThis movie is the quintessential expression of middle-America's paranoia about Soviet Russia in the early-80s-- it's largely a response to what conservatives interpreted as a weakening of America's resolve to continue growing its deadly nuclear arsenal.
Red Dawn was a reminder to us that the enemy was
still out there, and planning to land in our back yard at any moment if we didn't keep the pressure on. Probably one of the stupidest movies you'll ever see, but this movie's blatant scare tactics were partially responsible for the reinvigoration of Reagan's defense budget in the summer of 1984 and his subsequent re-election that November.
The River's EdgeA true story about a senseless murder that occurred right in my own neighborhood. Shows how a half-decade of apocalyptic thinking numbed a whole generation of youth to the dangers in their own backyard. The overt drug-use in this movie seems gratuitous--but it's true to the era. The disconnected attitudes of the players are pretty accurate as well, typical of the many children-of-divorce of the mid-80s. Disturbing and frighteningly prophetic. Pay special attention to Feck (Dennis Hopper) , a Vietnam Vet who has no problem dealing dope to local teens, despite Reagan's ubiquitous
War on Drugs.
How does George W. Bush fit in to all this, you ask?
Because he is riding a
wave of fear almost chronologically identical to the one that landed his father, George Senior, in the middle of the worst political, social and economic crises of the last century. Were it not for the technological innovations and the shrewd fiscal management of the 1990s, both Reagan and George Senior might have gone down in history as the
men who killed America.But there's a huge difference between Reagan's era of optimism and Dubya's era of endless war, mass unemployment, and corporate globalization.
We can't count on another technological revolution to bail us out of this one, George. All our jobs have been shipped overseas, and we've got a surplus of workers currently serving in Iraq with little hope of finding employment when they return (if they ever do). Add to that the burden of the Baby Boom generation's impending retirement and what you have is a crisis of Biblical proportions on your hands.
Could Dubya'a War on Terror look any more like Revelation Chapter 6?
God help us.
