Monique Keiran: Unlike today, 1980s were a time of relative optimism |
It’s a mad world.
That may reference a popular song from the 1980s, but it also describes the current state of world affairs. Who, 20, 30 — 40! — years ago, predicted the turn the world has taken recently on so many fronts?
Other references to the ’80s have come up in the last while.
The Ontario government’s use of video clips of 1980s U.S. president Ronald Reagan in an anti-tariff Super Bowl ad last fall is the most straightforward.
When Mark Carney took on the role of prime minister a year ago, we learned of his time at Harvard in the 1980s.
We’ve heard that Jeffrey Epstein began preying on young, often underage women in that decade. We’ve also been told that U.S. President Donald Trump’s past friendship with Epstein began in those years.
More broadly, European countries’ moves to reinvest in defences against Russian aggression reverse a decades-long relaxing — then removal — that began in the 1980s of security measures against what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza, and the start of construction of new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank mirror 1980s events in the same........