Was the world about to end in 1980?

[Avonrepus]

Whilst not from America, I've heard enough about Reagan to know that alot of those on the right seem to claim America was on the verge of an invasion by the USSR before he saved America and made it belive in itself again.

My question is, given I was born in 1985, was America a wreck in 1980, I doubt it but I wanna hear opinions.

[lil-petunia]

1. you bet

The bears had a pathetic season, the cubs and sox looked horrible, and I stubbed my toe that year.

Yeah, the world was about to end.

Oh, and it rained in April that year.

[molly]

2. Nope

[librechik]

3. not at all

that was just the Republicans taking advantage of a fairly constant condition of living too close to midnight on the nuclear clock.

[Freddie Stubbs]

4. Certainly not, but

things weren't really going great either. The country has to be doing pretty badly for the voters to turn out an incumbent President.

[demnan]

5. I thought so when that ass Reagan got in

n/t

[Zolok]

6. No....

the cold war was a little colder thanks to the USSR's unilateral intervention in Afganistan....inflation was up, as was unemployment we had hostages in Iran, things stacked up a bit on President Carter there is no doubt about it.
But it was hardly the end of the world, I was about your age then and I wasn't worried.
Carter talked Paul Volcker (the fed chair)into administering a deflationary shock to the system, he asked for a 900 ship navy from congress and tried to get the hostages freed.
Alas Americans were feeling powerless that year and took it out on Carter...which is a warning to all pols I think...do what you want but don't let a feeling of impotence invade the body politic...tis fatal.
Reaganism admits a great deal of jingoistic self praise...thus anything they did was the salvation of the nation despite the fact that it was mostly Carter's decisions that revived the economy by getting inflation under control.

In sum we were in way deeper shit in 1968...
www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

[Marymarg]

7. I thought so

I was living in Dallas during the infamous summer of a record-breaking string of hundred degree days. Having two babies both under two years old, all I remember is being up to my eyeballs in sweat and baby shit. And living in a crummy suburb of Dallas. :puke:

[FloridaPat]

8. There was no invasion problem. In fact, 1980 was good. It

wasn't until Reagan took over things got bad - interest rates went in to 20%'s. The controllers got fired and the airlines got the run of the airports (they were only 10% of the traffic - the other 90% was banned from talking to controllers). The economy sank like a rock. Unemployed was said to be the same percentage as the Depression (25%), but of course the actual government rate was around 10%. The poor credit card companies were hamstrung by state laws that would allow them to charge a max of 10% or thereabouts. Reagan got the Feds involved and changed that. Looks like they can charge anything they want now as then.

The Fed up the bank insurance so bank failed at an absolutely amazing rate. Reagan got the tax code simplified. I use to do my own taxes. I'd get a tax book from the box store every year and read that. The book went from 1 inch think before the "simplifacation" to 3 inches afterward.

People were buying homes as rental property. They could tax the losses off their incomes. Reagan changed that and a lot of people went bankrupt or had to sell all those homes.

Reagan decided that unemployment benefits were actually income so got the taxed. Put moving expenses on schedule 'C'.

He rolyally screwed the middle class. He was definately a republican.
Things were a disaster during those years. Then there was Iran-Contra fiasco.

[RandomKoolzip]

9. No, but Reagan's win

certainly made many many Americans believe that "the end times" had surely begun.

If anything, Reagan and his RW pals initiated and fostered a false climate of apocalyptic doom....the fact that much of Reagan's support came from the fundamentalist right was a big factor.

Don't buy any of this bullshit revisionism of Reagan's legacy. He didn't help anybody but the weak-minded and the pathologically greedy "believe in" themselves. It seemed as though after Watergate and the Church Committee and Carter and Jonestown that America was finally starting to come to grips with the legacy of the sixties and be honest with itself. Then the hostage crisis happened, the shah was deposed, Carter "gave away" the Panama Canal, and Russia invaded Afghanistan (not in that order) and all of a sudden the American media latched onto this sort of vague defensively jingoistic thing; remember the yellow ribbon craze? The skid was then greased for Reagan's victory - it would not have happened were it not for the media suddenly getting all John Wayne on our asses that year.

The Reagan years were scary and unpleasant for anyone with a brain or a heart. He plunged this country deep into right-wing hell and corporate control, forced into fruition defense/tax cut programs that themselves forced budget cuts in needed social programs, put millions of homeless onto the streets, gave legitimacy to ignorance, craven materialism, selfishness, homophobia and racism, and lied about using Grecian Formula in his hair.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. I remember having a conversation with a fellow grad student

after Reagan got elected.

"He's going to get the Russians all steamed up," he said, looking very depressed. "We'll be lucky if there's no nuclear war by the end of this term."

Reagan was lucky, extremely lucky that during his first term, the Soviet leaders were even older and more decrepit than he was, and during his second term, he had Gorbachev.

If he had been dealing with someone who was as fanatical as he was, we might not be here today, and giant cockroaches would be crawling among the glowing ruins of our cities.

ON EDIT: Reagan's first term was hell on the economic front. I was an unemployed college instructor signed up with three temp agencies and feeling lucky if I got called three or four times a week. When I went to apply for a part-time job at a bookstore, I was one of 200 applicants. I went around to other stores, and they all told me that they had no openings, and that people like me--educated and with work experience-- were coming in every day. I would never have survived if my parents hadn't helped me out massively.

Don't believe the Reagan myth.

[Warpy]

11. The economy was a mess

During the 1970s, OPEC had jacked up oil prices and the resulting inflation had been over 10% for much of the decade. There had been high unemployment in the mid 1970s, but that was starting to ease. The progressive tax code had been tied to specific dollar amounts, so as wages started to climb to almost match the inflation rate, people saw their taxes skyrocket. Carter had allowed the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates to extreme levels by late 1978 as a method of slowing inflation. That is what finally cost him the election.

Reagan came to office promising tax relief. His across the board tax cuts gave workers pennies and rich men millions. He then promised a tax system so simple we could put it on a postcard. He set high rates on working people into stone, while again lowering the rates on the rich. When that caused extreme deficits without actually doing anything for the economy, he sold a social security tax increase to the US public as a way of shoring up that program, raised the taxes six times, and robbed 50% of the revenues to fudge his books on the deficit. Since those taxes are only on the poorest workers, it amounted to a massive shift of wealth away from labor and toward capital. This system continues, which is why we are saddled with such massive wealth disparity in this country.

I know this is a bit windy, but this is what happened. Reagan was scum if you have to work for a living, a god if you inherited great wealth.

[ieoeja]

16. What Warpy said, plus some other things.

Strikes were fairly common place which was souring people on unions.

And while incomes were outpacing inflation (in large part because of those strikes), the double-digit inflation had people extremely worried. Especially since the inflation occured constantly throughout the year while the income increase only happened once each year. While Carter did, in fact, whip inflation (to borrow a line from Ford), the results weren't seen until too late for him.

The energy crises were a pain.

And then there was the granddaddy of them all: the loss in Viet Nam. This really had Americans depressed about their country. Coupled with the military's inability to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis -- something a pre-Vietnam military wasn't setup to handle either; Carter initiated the creation of Delta for this reason -- this depression increased.

It was even worse within the military itself. To the loss and feelings of betrayal by our leaders was added massive budget cuts. With the end of our participation in Vietnam the need for these cuts was fairly obvious. But that didn't make it feel any better. When Iran brought the morale problems to Carter's attention, he began the reformation process, again too late in his adminstration to get him any credit. In fact, the first step in reformation was a purge of post-Vietnam malcontents who continually infected new recruits. So Carter cleaned house while Reagan came in just in time for the rebuilding. Of course, Reagan did go on to build it over and above our requirements which made him even more popular within the military.

So what did Reagan do outside the military? He made people feel good about America with his jingoism. It's a silly thing, but it is true. He did do that.

[datasuspect]

12. it was a joint

cuban/vietnamese/soviet invasion.

they came in from mexico and canada and invaded the heartland.

we had to be reeducated in camps. i saw my father locked in one of those places.

the razor wire, the marxist-leninist bombast bellowing 24-7 through megaphones. my father was haggard and tired when my little brother started to cry, i started to cry and my father told us to fight.

we went up into the mountains, armed with hunting rifles, handguns, and the hope in our breasts that we could reclaim our homeland.

soviet thugs that suspiciously looked like henry silva took our women, our scotch, and budweiser.

then a lone drifter with large knife and a machine gun walked in behind three horsemen: St. Reagan, Elvis, Jesus, and Rambo came to redeem us!

WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!!!

[On the Road]

13. LOL -- That's a Great Scenario

a la "Red Dawn."

That movie is hilarious until you realize that everything depicted in the movie was real, only the identities of the countries were different.

[datasuspect]

15. i always took it as. . .

reagan era war porn

[Generic Other]

14. Mt. St. Helen's blew up

but it was hardly the end of the world.

Seems like we were just beginning to discover what PAX Americana was really going to cost us. Sure we won the cold war by bankrupting the soviets, but we also made critical (and I think dumb) choices for the direction of our own nation.

We spent more on the military than we did for anything else. We chose having the ability to destroy over creating wealth to sustain life.

In that sense, I think we did see the death of FDR's social vision for America under Reagan, but it didn't die out so completely as it has under *.

[kentuck]

17. People were dancing the disco....

What do you think? :)