The last time I was young was the Nineteen-Eighties. Times were tough but I was still agile. Flexible. Also alarmed.
Such is the life of a freedom fighter. From January 10, 1990. – JDW
A pause for decade’s end. I decided to wait a week before writing the obligatory End Of The Eighties column.
To give that decade the historical perspective it deserves. And what a time it was. Seems 1980 Signaled The End Of Sanity.
A generation of swine, Dr. Thompson called it. “Huge brains, small necks, weak muscles and fat wallets – these are the dominant physical characteristics of the ’80s.”
And he hadn’t yet seen just how bad it could get.
Like the victim of some traumatic accident, I seem to have blocked out of my memory most of the last ten years. What remains is a haphazard medley of isolated images and startling statistics. I’ll share my recollections as long as permitted by space limitations and a low threshold for pain. If I get this confused, well, you remember it your way, I’ll remember it mine.
I remember when the University of Oregon went to the legislature crying bullets because the U of O needed a sin tax to fund its PAC-10 varsity tiddly-winks squad and increase professors’ salaries.
Then the Ducksters spent three hundred grand ($300,000.00 US) to appear in the Insecurity Bowl in Shrimp Port, Louisiana. For the prestige of it.
Poland of all places – no joke – elected as its President, of all people, an Editor!!!
While in this country somebody died and left Jesse “I Know It When I See It” Helms in charge of ART CONTROL.
As the decade closed – this is true – Helms was using taxpayers’ dollars to send copies of allegedly pornographic images across state lines “for educational purposes.”
You can’t begin to know what’s porn unless I show it to you.
Helms used Federal Express. Which says what about the United States Postal Service?
Nancy Reagan actually said, “I think more people would be alive today if there was a death penalty.”
Perhaps just as strange, the average term served for all homicides in the U.S.A. is now little more than six years.
The Senate voted 83-8 to eliminate mass mailings – cost $113.4 million in 1988 – and transfer the savings to treatment programs for pregnant addicts.
The House killed the measure. And probably a few pregnant addicts. And their babies.
This was the same Congress which, ignoring the will of seventy percent (70%) of the American people, crawled on their bellies like reptiles to give themselves a huge pay raise. And had the nerve to name the bill The Ethics Reform Act.
My very own Les “Is More” AwwwCoin was the sole Oregon pol to vote for this bill. This I will neither forget nor forgive.
AwwwCoin’s unconscionable self-enrichment in direct contradiction to the wishes of the very people he claims to represent is a parable for the Eighties. Ignore the masses, put yourself on a pedestal, flaunt your power, do what you damn well please, put a fancy name on it, then tell everybody it was the right thing to do. And hope we’re all too busy trying to pay the bills – or watching pro wrestling – to notice.
I remember the UFO ABDUCTION INSURANCE CO. (319 The Hermit’s Trail, Altamonte Springs, Florida 32715) which, for a mere $7.95, was selling a policy for ten million dollars ($10,000,000.00 US) in case you get kidnapped by creatures from outer space.
The policy pays double indemnity “if the aliens refuse to practice safe sex, produce offspring, or refer to the abductee as a nutritional food source.”
As to the standard of proof, in order to collect, you must provide the following: 1.) the date of abduction, 2.) mileage traveled, 3.) license number of alien vehicle, and 4.) the signature of an authorized space being.
I am guessing they got rich.
In the last ten years, the annual tax bill paid by the richest one percent of Americans ($452,000 per household) DEcreased by some fifty billion dollars, while their income, in real terms, INcreased by over sixty percent (60%.) Good for them.
But what about the rest of us?
The number of Americans living in poverty went from 29.2 million at the beginning of the decade to approximately 35 million today.
Since 1980, the government has spent $2.2 trillion – trillion with a T – on national defense. About $105 for every one dollar we’ve spent fighting drugs.
Each year, every year, the deaths from cigarette smoking, alcoholism and drug abuse is almost twice the number of battlefield casualties we suffered during all of World War II.
Alexander Cockburn says you can’t depress people into action.
But I am thinking the new year requires more than last year’s resolutions all over again.
I am thinking we need something more to get us through the Nineties safely.
Sanely. Like a code to live by.
Something like DO THE RIGHT THING FOR A CHANGE.
I would sure hate to look back on 1980-1989, the Eighties, as “The Good Old Days.”
I sure would hate that.
I sure would.
