Blame Ronald Reagan
From The New York Times
By Jonathan Kaufman
Somewhere right now, someone is streaming “Stranger Things,” queuing up a Eurythmics synth-pop playlist, or buying a pair of the high-waisted jeans and leg warmers her mother once wore unironically. In the White House, President Trump celebrates the decade that brought him to prominence with his retrogressive policies and his bawdy, gaudy aesthetics.
Often portrayed as a prosperous interlude between the social movements of the 1960s and our anxious, polarized world, the 1980s live on in even more ways than many Americans recognize. When I covered the corporate boardrooms, economic upheavals and political campaigns back then, I thought I was witnessing a temporary political correction. Decades later, when I returned to investigate key moments, I realized how profound the changes were.
We’re not living after the 1980s. We’re living in them, trapped in the invisible architecture built by a clutch of executives, politicians and conservative advocacy groups (that was later abetted by a generation of business-friendly Democrats).
