LAST FRIDAY AND YESTERDAY, we discussed the growing ’80s nostalgia fetishism.
Today, we continue an itemized explanation of how ’80s nostalgia differs from the real time:
- Onlne Communication: Before there was the WWW, there was the BBS (Bulletin Board System) and Usenet, and also the early all-text version of CompuServe. I still run into folks from those days who miss the cameraderie of the old nerd underground (though I recall many, many insult trades and “flame wars”).
By the latter part of the decade there were the centrally-controlled Prodigy and AOL, with their sloooow graphics and censored chatrooms.
- Economics: The rich got ever-richer; the poor got ever-poorer; young people faced an apparent permanent shortage of real opportunities.
Now, there are at least enough jobs to go around for college graduates (i.e., those who could still get into college after the ’80s decimation of student aid), for nice suburban scions who haven’t gotten stuck into manufacturing or farm labor.
- Politics (conservative): Despite the poster image popular at the time with both his fans and his haters, Ronald Reagan was not Rambo. He was a doddering yet personable script reader, a front man for the financiers and weapons contractors who really ran things (and still do).
- Politics (liberal): The last whiffs of the New Deal coalition, in which labor unions and teachers and “mainstream” environmentalists toned down any serious demands in exchange for “a place at the table.” By ’89, Clinton, Lieberman, and Co. made sure corporate power would rule the Democratic Party feast from then on.
- Politics (radical): The Reagan/Thatcher crowd was in seemingly firm control, propping up every genocidal despot who used anticommunism as his excuse. No viable alternative appeared on the horizon. That made it easy to get into apparently unviable alternatives.
All you had to do to proclaim your radicalness was to distribute posters of U.S. politicians with Hitler moustaches. You didn’t have to organize any coalitions, propose any agendas beyond protesting, or reach out to any constituency beyond your own drinking buddies.
Indeed, you could boast that you were “too political” to get involved in anything as morally impure as politics.
Eighties radicalism wasn’t about getting anything done. It was just about proving your own superiority over all those know-nothing squares out there in the Real America. Today’s way-new left appears to be getting beyond this tired nonsense, thankfully.
- The ‘Alternative’ Scene: We really did think there was just one (1) “mainstream culture” and just one (1) “alternative” to that culture. This way-oversimplified dualism conveniently allowed many white, middle-class suburban kids to believe themselves part of, if not the entirety of, “The Other.”
It also helped forge a vague unity-of-purpose among a vast assortment of subcultures, from drag queens and performance artists to sex-yoga teachers and health-food elitists. With the years, many of these groups drifted apart from one another, or just plain drifted apart.
In fact, there’s a lot I miss about the ’80s Seattle I hated then. The money-mania was not quite so pronounced; there were more low-rent spaces; there seemed to be more non-life-controlling jobs around; downtown stil had Penney’s and didn’t have penne.
But do I want the ’80s back? Hell no! I’d rather be forced to listen to nonstop Linda Ronstadt ballads for eternity (which, circa 1982, was what I was doing in office-drone jobs).
TOMORROW: Nostalgia for the Bell System.
ELSEWHERE:
