The horrors of the 1970s, pt 4: 1978-1980
In which I further bag on a decade of malaise.
Further Carter atrocities:
The economy: the economy was bad, or at least not so good, before Carter, though things were getting better. The inflation rate was at a reasonable level, and unemployment was high but going down. Carter did his best to make inflation go up, and unemployment ... also go up! It takes a special kind of genius to do both: in the pre-80s economy, it was a no-brainer fiddling with the money supply to get a balance between unemployment and inflation rates. Carter didn't actually fail macroeconomics 101. He just couldn't make up his mind what to do. He effectively hit the gas and the brake on the economic automobile. Because of this, 8% unemployment (effectively a lot worse than a modern 8% would be: now if the economy shrinks, we just send home the foreigners), and an insane 14% inflation rate. The worst figures since the Great Depression. And, does anyone remember gasoline rationing and lines?
Latin america used to be a nice, comfortable american satrapy. Not a nice place, but our not-nice place. After all; the american empire needs bananas and cocaine. We weren't doing anything terrible there, but we were supporting some real assholes, for keeping the communists out. Carter thought this was a bad idea, and that peace and love and earthy kindness would come if he stopped supporting Nicaragua's dictator. Of course, communists took over, shit got a lot worse there and in countries surrounding the place. He also gave Panamanians back the canal we built. I suppose this is fair, but Panama is a made up nation: as was Nicaragua: both were part of Colombia until we decided we needed them for something. That's like England giving Belgium (another anglo nonsense country) the Rock of Gibraltar.
Korea: one of Carter's campaign promises was to "bring the troops home" from Korea. Presumably this was to capitalize on the popularity of bringing the troops home from Vietnam, except that america actually won in Korea. He actually tried to go through with it. Eventually the army basically wouldn't let him. The Koreans treated this as what it was: Carter had abandoned Korea to the communists. The North Koreans massed on the border. The South Koreans assassinated the greatest leader Korea ever had (possibly one of the greatest leaders Asia has ever had), Park Chung Hee, because they thought that's what we wanted (Carter was whining about Park Chung Hee's civil rights record). Later, to complete his fuck-up, Carter basically ordered the Kwangju massacre, which was Korea's Watergate and Vietnam combined.
Speaking of Asia, during Carter's regime, one of the most tragic genocides in human history occurred in Cambodia. Pol Pot started under Ford, though Ford knew what he was, and had the good sense to send in the marines a few times. Carter seemed to think Pol Pot's "agrarian reform" was a good idea. He liked Pol Pot so much, he ended the travel ban to Cambodia, and when the Vietnamese invaded to set the country to something approaching "rights" -Carter send Pol Pot boat loads of military aid. Nice. Generally, I forgive presidents for funding unpleasant people, as it is often necessary. I fail to see how this was necessary on any level.
Oh, did I forget Africa? Well, Africa has always been "in a state of nature," but under Carter, the Angolan republic (Angola had better health care than Portugal in those days; one of the best run colonies in the world) was handed over to the communists, Rhodesia handed over to Mugabe (who, believe it or not, used to be a decent leader, but we now know what a good idea that was). He handed Ethiopia, historically an american ally, over to the communists, failing even to provide aid to the heroic Eritreans.
Jimmy Carter was so bad, a washed up actor whose most famous costar was a chimpanzee seemed like a good idea. The horror of it all is, compared to Carter, Reagan really was a damn good idea. I will be the first one to admit, Reagan was a frightening cement head. But Jimmy Carter made Reagan look like the Cincinnatus of our age. Reagan was the freaking Cincinnatus of our age: all he really had to do was show up to work every day and do one or two modestly sensible things and stick with them. The rest of the time it was OK for him to make decisions based on his belief in Astrology and Space Aliens, and that Jeebers was coming back real soon now. Reagan got the important shit right in a way that Carter never could: communism, bad; america, good. Carter was too much of a neurotic to even make up his mind that the country he was supposed to be leading was, in fact, a reasonably good idea.
1978
Van Halen's first record
January: Soviet satellite causes nuclear apocalypse in canada. Sweden bans CFC's. America surrenders the Royal crown of Hungary to the Soviet occupation.
February: Roman Polanski flees the country for rogering a 13 year old girl.
August: Pope John Paul I becomes 263rd pope. Iranian muslim nutbags burn a sinful movie theater killing 400 people inside it.
September: Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov killed by poison, probably by soviet intelligence. Egypt makes peace with Israel. Pope John Paul I dies; probably assassinated by vatican operatives.
October: Vietnam invades Cambodia
November: Many (though, not enough) crazy San Francisco liberals drink poisoned kool aide in Guyana and die. Crazy San Francisco conservative eats too many twinkies and kills a famous gay politician and the Mayor. San Francisco feminists stage first march for rape fetishists.
1979
January: Communist Dictatorship Vietnam liberates Cambodia from Pol Pot. Really and truly; there are worse things than communism. Iran falls to radical muslims. Young Punk Rock Girl with a Mullet slaughters a bunch of schoolchildren at one of the first school shootings. Blames it on PCP and Bob Geldof.
February: Maoist China invades Vietnam to teach them a lesson for messing with Cambodia. It snows in the Sahara for the first recorded time, due to global cooling.
March: British leave Malta to its own destiny. Scotland nearly votes for home rule. Three Mile Island ignites nuclear hysteria which makes solution to energy crisis impossible. Oh, and a new energy crisis begins, due to Iran revolution.
April: Bokassa kills and eats 100 schoolchildren for protesting their uniforms. The Shah's goose is cooked. Carter is attacked by a killer rabbit.
"I couldn't make this up"
May: Thatcher elected.
June: Rhodesia government changes from white rule to Robert Mugabe.
July: Disco riots in Chicago. Sandanistas take over Nicaragua.
August: IRA assassinates a bunch of Englishmen.
September: Chrysler asks for a handout to avoid closing shop.
October: Park Chung Hee assassinated. US Department of Education formed to destroy America's educational system: a great success.
November: Iran hostage crisis begins. Sunni fanatics take over Mecca's Grand Mosque. Are driven out by French mercenaries. Muslim world believes it was done by america and jews, and as a result, American embassies in Libya and Pakistan are overrun and burned by insane mobs. IRA hitman sentenced to life in prison for killing a bunch of Englishmen.
December: Soviets invade Afghanistan. Guardian Angels vigilante group forms to deal with rampant crime and social decay in NYC.
1980
Bonn Scott dies
January: Steel Strike in UK. 1.5$ billion bail out of Chrysler corporation. 6 diplomats begin tradition of americans pretending to be Canadians and escape from Tehran. Carter decides to get tough on the Soviets by not selling them wheat.
March: Carter decides to get tough on the Soviets by not playing hockey with them.
April: Carter decides to get tough with the Iranians by not talking to them any more, then doing the silliest attempted hostage rescue in American history. British resident Iranian terrorists attempt to mess with the British in their London Embassy. SAS kills all the Iranians. Britain may be a mess, but they're run by a woman, rather than Jimmy Carter.
"The limeys show the world how it is done"
May: Tito dies; Yugoslavian economic pyramid scheme (Tito basically took payola in the form of loans to prop up his economy from both sides) begins to crumble. Mt. St. Helens blows up because of global cooling. Thousands of South Koreans die in protests. Carter decided to get tough on the Soviets by re-instituting draft registration.
June: Blues brothers released. Hafez Assad wipes out a village that tried to kill him.
July: Carter shows the Soviets who is boss by refusing to play games with them. No, really; he said no american would play handball or Volleyball with the Sovs in the Olympics. Apparently, he was worried we'd get our asses kicked on the field as we were in the rest of the world.
November: Reagan beats Carter in the election. OPEC raises oil prices.
December: John Lennon dies.
Nothing that happened in the 1970s was an improvement. The cars sucked. The music sucked. The clothes were horrible. When I see evidence of 1970s aesthetic or attitude, I feel an instinctive horror and revulsion, such as my grandparents might have felt when they saw something associated with Nazis or Soup Kitchens. When I see wormy, smug hipster-ironic dipshits with afros or cheesy 1970s moustaches or bell bottom jeans, or even people who espouse other kinds of 1970s nonsense, I honestly have a primal urge to murder them; to wipe them off the face of the earth, like the blight that they are.
The 1970s were the era in which western civilization shrugged wearily and let the world go to hell. It was the era in which leadership roles were given to people who couldn't even govern themselves; people who had been kept away from leadership for all of human history. It was an era of navel gazing. The problem is, what's really in the area behind your navel is half digested food and stale urine. While everyone was gazing at their navels, the trash piled up such as it never piled up before, or since. Being wiped out by Mongols is a terrible fate, but it is something that happened after struggle, and it is something that happened to people. Being wiped out by anomie and laziness and self-loathing ... that is to me the ultimate negation of life. That's what happened to the Romans when the Christians took over. That's what almost happened to the ancient Persians when the Mazdak revolution happened. Society seemed so immoral and hateful, the other-worldly nincompoops who made it up wouldn't have minded if it had all ended. That's what almost happened in the 1970s.
"I felt like putting a bullet in the eye of every panda that wouldn't screw to save its species..."
Once past the economic disasters of the early 1980s (harsh medicine for the mess Carter left us with), the 80s were an absurdly better time. And ... the 80s were pretty bad also. The 80s were basically a revolt against the excesses of the 1970s. It was an era run by reactionaries. They were better than the 1970s, but they were not progress. The reactionaries got a few things right, but let a lot of stuff slide that shouldn't have, and they mostly capitalized on worthless symbolism. And new evils sprung up. Now, in the 21st century, our choices are between dying monsters of the 1970s and the monsters they bred in the 1980s. Decency, fairness and hope for the future is now an anachronism. The Persian empire struggled for 100 years after it rooted out the Mazdaks, before it fell to the Byzantine and Muslim empires; its internal fibers ruined forever by the same anti-life philosophy that nearly ate us in the 1970s. History will show if the locusts descend upon the west by 2080. Thankfully, I'll probably be dead by then.
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lupoleboucher) wrote,
