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Back To Our Future: How The 1980s Explain The World We Live In Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything (2011)

by David Sirota(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0345518780 (ISBN13: 9780345518781)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Ballantine Books

review 1: The idea that Vietnam veterans were "spat upon" by antiwar protesters is one of the enduring myths of that war. It might interest "real Americans" that this idea was used previously to some great effect by: the government of Nazi Germany well as the government of France, in the years that followed WWI leading to the breakout of WWII. There are absolutely no corroborative, evidenced accounts of this EVER actually occurring: though it made for some great campaign strategies and speeches by Ronald Reagan, GHW Bush, and a few others we ought to ignominously forget rather than remember even their names. And yet, it lives on as a meme in the collective consciousness of America, a lie every bit as noxious as the one LBJ used to send American kids in to die for with his "Gulf of T... moreonkin Resolution." That's one thing you'll learn, reading this excellent book on what Revisionist Historians managed to do to America in the 1980's...
review 2: I've been enjoying the cracked.com pieces pointing out the total absurdness of the pop culture I grew up with, but Sirota applies a political analysis to try to explain why so many people whose formative years were spent this way have the bizarre attachment to both huge militarism and a distrust of functional government. The answer for Sirota is to be found in examining the simplistic glorification of the 50s and vilification of the 60s (dirty hippies!), doing a textual analysis of the opening voiceover of the A-Team, studying the geopolitical ramifications of WWF villains, asking why teens with primitive computers always saved us from the Russians, explaining why white people liked the Cosby show and pointing out that, if you're a small business owner, no good can come of the nosy EPA shutting down your ghost containment system. Also, there was a Rambo cartoon, and I somehow missed it. How did that happen? less

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