Charleston Gazette-Mail
We’re at a point culturally and politically, both in West Virginia and the U.S., that reminds me a lot of the 1980s. An age when the line “The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good” from the movie “Wall Street” was not received as an alarming message of cultural nihilism but the brash, no-BS code of an anti-hero.
It was a time of consumerism for its own sake, deregulation of industries, massive domestic job losses and the beginning of the end for the middle class. The music was really good though, especially if you knew someone with access to a college radio station and a tape deck.
I can remember visiting big cities as a kid in the 80s and seeing the massive amounts of homeless on the streets and in the subways. Frankly, it scared me. The homeless, the 80s told us, were not only violent and dangerous, but social leeches. The label of societal drain was also placed on those who received government assistance. We were told cities were scary and deadly. Drugs were scary and deadly. Everything was scary and deadly and coming for us in our comfortable suburban abodes. Forget bombing Russia, we needed to bomb Detroit.
