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Bad Times Make Fools of Us All
Posted by Kevin

Via Roy, I see that Megan McArdle has said something, well, silly.

First of all, the notion that this is some sort of uniquely horrible moment in world history is absurd. I grew up with the very real fear that one day, without much warning, I would simply vanish in a radioactive cloud. The fear of nuclear annihilation was the ever-present undercurrent to the lives of children living in major urban areas, or near military installations, in a way that you simply cannot comprehend unless you’ve lived it. Compared to the threat of global thermonuclear war, any of the world’s current problems, including climate change, are trivial.

The notion that “today”, whenever today happens to be, is not a uniquely horrible time is a banal observation. With very, very few exceptions, “today” has almost never been uniquely bad. But the notion that today is not worse than the eighties is, well, again, silly. I assume that McArdle is talking about the 80s because, based on her bio, she appears to be one year younger than I am. Unless she was an almost rainman-like political prodigy, I doubt that McArdle’s political memories stretch much past Reagan. And, yes, I remember the fear of nuclear holocaust. I remember being afraid because my parents were afraid after the Korean airliner had been shot down. I remember being terrified of the Day After. I remember thinking Reagan’s desire to put weapons in space was nuts. I even remember the day our air raid siren went off in town.

But I also remember that no one in town had any idea what the heck the air raid siren was. I remember that we did not have fallout drills. I also remember being completely surprised to find that my church had a fallout shelter. I remember, as I got older, of learning about the concept of MAD. I remember the anti-proliferation and weapons control treaties. I remember Gorbachev and the thawing of relations while I was still in high school. I remember, in my junior year, the Berlin Wall coming down. I remember how deliriously happy my Polish family was then. I remember, in other words, people working very hard to prevent a nuclear holocaust and I remember that no one in any position of respect or authority thought that a nuclear war would not be a catastrophe.

I cannot say the same about global warming, to use her example. It effects will be just as widespread and while not ending life on Earth, they will still have enormous detrimental impact on human beings. And yet, even today, there are people who deny that it is happening, who deny that its caused by humans, or who deny that we can or should try to do anything about it. And there is nothing like the serious anti-proliferation and arms control treaties of the seventies and eighties in the fight against global warming. Unlike the scourge of our childhood, there is hardly anything being done to combat global warming and there are still far, far too many people with power who are determined to see that sorry state of affairs continue. It is much scary to see a disaster unfolding and realize almost nothing is being done to stop it than to live with a potential disaster that everyone in the world is trying to prevent.

It’s not just global warming. I remember that the Reagan Administration never tried to argue that it should have the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial or access to the outside world. I remember that the Reagan Administration never tried to publicly defend the practice of torture, to make it an official part of our national security apparatus. I remember that the Reagan Administration never came close to failing in a natural disaster like the Bush Administration did during Katrina. I remember that Reagan Administration only started wars with countries they knew they could beat in a day. I remember that the Reagan Administration was not filled with foreign policy lunatics who thought the solution to every problem was to invade and occupy as many countries as possible.

And those were the bad times. I also remember the Clinton boom and the decrease in poverty and homelessness and economic inequality and the expansion of gay rights and the end to South African Apartheid and the explosion of the Internet and the crushing of the hard-line coup in Russia.

I remember the past, the same past I shared with McArdle, and it was better than today. Pretending that it isn’t, especially when you want to pretend that the eighties and nineties were much worse, is, well, silly.

October 24th, 2007 General | 3 comments