Posted on 04/18/2014 5:44:50 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
The recent Soviet-er, um, Russian annexation of the Crimea got me reflecting back on my youth.
I'm a child of the 1970s and 80s. I'm not ashamed of that either. As I have grown older, I feel that the younger generations have grown soft, complacent, lazy, and unworthy of our 1980s legacy. Ironically our parents felt the same way about us (of course, we proved them wrong.)
We had vinyl albums, not because they sounded retro but because that was all we had.
Not to brag, but those of us alive in that period - we rocked. Literally. Our music remains today as iconic. Our musicians were not manufactured with audio special effects. Music tracks weren't recorded and blended in. Ozzie bit the head off a bat on stage. Today PETA would have had a collective stroke.
Hair was big in the 1980s - it was deliberately tall and sprayed stiff. And girls didn't just pad their bras, they had shoulder pads that was somehow considered sexy. We didn't let our pants sag down past our underwear. Jeans came in three styles - Wranglers, Levi's, and Calvin Kleins – the latter we couldn’t afford.
My first car was a 1974 Buick LeSabre - two solid tons of roaring Detroit metal. I could work on everything under the hood and I knew nothing about engines. Cars were made of something called metal then. My car ran on one of two kinds of gas - leaded or unleaded. That's right, we were such bad-asses we burned lead and put it in the air and breathed it in.
The Internet didn't exist - so we read books, went outside and played for hours at a time, and watched the four channels of television that we had. I can remember riding a bike miles to go to a friend’s house (without a helmet or knee pads)-and I didn't have to worry about child predators along the way. Color TV was optional and so was air conditioning. Televisions had metallic antenna that poked out on top of them with balls of aluminum foil to increase reception. Our cartoons were violent and funny and we turned out just fine. We played video games - at a quarter a pop. Nobody worried that we were turning into psychopathic killers because we weren't.
If you wanted to drink something diet, we had Tab, which had the flavor of liquid sand and Diet Coke made with saccharin, a semi-toxic bitter sugar substitute. We were so awesome, we drank dangerous chemicals and rocked on. We didn't have labels on our food to warn us how bad it was for us. In fact, we didn't label a lot of dangerous stuff because WE WEREN'T STUPID.
In the 1970s my parents were not afraid of spanking me. It wasn't child abuse or neglect. You know what I got from it? A little thing called respect of your elders and learning to keep my mouth shut. There were consequences to my actions and words. It didn't take a village to raise a child, just good parents.
We said the Pledge of Allegiance with the words "under God," and nobody was offended. Our news commentators educated us rather than tried to entertain us. We didn't cover "entertainment news," because it wasn't news. The mental image of Walter Cronkite talking about Lindsay Lohan is enough to spark a brain hemorrhage.
We went to school unless we got more than six inches of snow (hey, it was Michigan). Teacher work days? Every day was a teacher work day. And our teachers taught...they weren't forced to be baby sitters and doing the job that parents were expected to do. My elementary principal had a paddle in his office. We never saw or heard of him using it. We didn't need to...the message was clear. Today he'd be brought up on war crimes charges and sentenced to GITMO for just owning it.
Congress and the President didn't like each other but when it counted, they got together and got stuff done. Say what you will about their blatant drinking and womanizing, the government worked.
We had problems in the Middle East - namely with Iran when they took our embassy staff hostage. Suffice it to say, the day President Reagan was sworn into office, the Iranian's put those hostages on planes and sent them home. Why? Because we were done putting up with that crap. Again, we let the world know there were consequences to actions. We didn't let Hollywood dictate our politics, we put a damn cowboy actor in the White House. That’s right – a real cowboy!
When a little island country named Grenada took some American students hostage, we sent in the U.S. Marine Corps and four cases of whoop-ass.
This whole Crimea debacle just reminded a lot of us older and smarter citizens of just how ruthless the Russians can be. In the 1980s our Russians were about a thousand times more scary than Putin's band of thugs. Our Russians had nuclear weapons aimed at every major city in the United States and were unabashed about threatening to use them. We didn't threaten the Ruskies (we called them that back then) with little meaningless sanctions or "tough diplomatic language." We reminded them that we had nuclear missiles aimed at every one of their cities. Like my parents, we conveyed there were consequences for their actions. We did meaningful and public things like banning to go to the Olympics when they got uppity.
Maybe, just maybe, we need to tap our past just a little bit and see the Russians for what they are - dangerous. It looks like it's time for us to "Cowboy up." Me, I'm gonna party like it's 1999.
Frankly, I can agree with the sentiment, and even with the citations of America’s greatness. I cannot however be deluded that this erstwhile greatness of America has/can in any way be translated to the greatness of America-under-Obama tyranny and incompetence of today. It just doesn’t wash.
Ah, for the good old days.......
The Russians do not have a “community organizer(TM)” running the Kremlin..... Who’s “bush league”??
Yes, us 1980’s kids.
But, lest we forget—Obama and his ilk were 80’s kids.
We voted first for Reagan, but they also elected Clinton twice and Obama twice.
And we used 8 tracks in our cars.
We sound cool, but think about it: We are just like everyone else.
The Russians do not have a “community organizer(TM)” running the Kremlin.....
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Nope, the Russians have a self loathing, not out of the closet gay man running the Kremlin.
How many straight men do you know that lift up 8 year old boys shirt, no relation, and kiss them on the stomach?
Putin does.
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