Like most Americans, I arrived at the election watch party on Nov. 4, 1980, expecting a long night.
asserted
I → arrive → night
By 9:05 the television networks had called the election for Ronald Reagan and against Jimmy Carter.
asserted
networks → call → Carter
The party’s host, a good friend and conservative, Reagan-supporting medical student, laughed exuberantly.
asserted
host → support → ?
Stragglers walking into the party were stunned that the election night was already over.
asserted
night → walk → party
Over the next 10 years, as a reporter and writer, I covered many of the events of the 1980s.
asserted
I → cover → 1980s
I was interested in an eclectic mix of issues, which led me to crisscross the country and to fly around the world: the rise of the power of business and the continued immiseration of poor Black Americans; Jesse Jackson’s campaigns for president and the controversies that swallowed him; the rise of China and the massacre in Tiananmen Square; and the eruption of anticommunist revolutions in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall, an assignment that ended as I flew home at the end of the decade on Christmas 1989.
asserted
I → lead → Christmas
Three years after that shocking election night, in November 1983, I was sitting in the newsroom of The Boston Globe, where I worked as a reporter.
asserted
I → sit → reporter
An editor came by and assigned me a story on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
asserted
editor → come → Kennedy
How was Kennedy remembered?
asserted
Kennedy → remember → ?
I started making phone calls.
asserted
I → start → calls
Kennedy was a hometown political hero, and, not surprisingly, memories of his presidency and the 1960s were bathed in hope and optimism.
asserted
memories → bath → hope
Then a professor I called pulled me up short.
asserted
I → call → me
“You know,” he said, “one day people may look back on these as the good old days.”
uncertain
people → know → days
That seemed absurd.
asserted
That → seem → ?
I recently bought a house in a gentrifying part of the city with a mortgage interest rate of 16%.
asserted
I → buy → %
The liberal assumptions that had governed American politics since the New Deal were under systematic assault.
asserted
that → govern → assault
Yet, in hindsight, that professor turned out to be right.
asserted
professor → turn → hindsight
We were witnessing the construction of modern America—the economic systems, media landscape, and political structures that still govern our daily lives 45 years later.
asserted
that → witness → lives
The decade began with Americans worried about losing their leading role in the world, beset by rising oil prices, high interest rates, stagflation, and surging Japanese competition that was laying waste to American manufacturing.
asserted
that → begin → manufacturing
The decade ended with a booming economy and the resurgence of American optimism, leadership, and confidence.
asserted
decade → end → optimism
Then, like an exclamation point, in 1989, Eastern Europe jettisoned communism, soon followed by the Soviet Union, joining China, which remained a police state but injected the free market throughout its economy.
asserted
which → jettison → economy
The 1950s and the start of the Cold War had shaped America’s military and geopolitical place in the world.
asserted
1950s → shape → world
The 1960s, with its civil rights protests, antiwar movement, and stirrings of women’s and gay liberation had redefined what it meant to be an American and had expanded liberalism.
asserted
it → redefine → liberalism
The 1980s—for better and for worse—rewired the way most of us live and work, the way we get our news, the political choices we have.
asserted
we → rewire → news
So much flowed from that decade.
asserted
much → flow → decade
I covered Jesse Jackson’s quixotic campaigns for president in 1984 and 1988.
asserted
I → cover → 1984
Twenty years later, I was covering the breakthrough campaign of Barack Obama.
asserted
I → cover → Obama
Working as a national reporter for The Wall Street Journal gave me an intimate view of how a new business class, including Jack Welch, was reinventing and reinvigorating business and the American economy—and the price we paid.
asserted
we → work → business
I covered the economic boom of the 1980s as it crested into the 1990s.
asserted
it → cover → 1990s
I profited from it as the stock market surged, swelling my IRA, and my house grew in value year after year.
asserted
house → profit → year
Having left New York City at its nadir in the 1970s to go to college, I then witnessed the city’s stunning rebirth—joking that streets my mother wouldn’t let me walk down I now couldn’t afford to live on.
asserted
I → leave → streets
I traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, and saw early the price of inequality, the pain of workers laid off from shuttered steel mills and auto parts factories, and the devastation of small cities and towns.
asserted
I → travel → cities
I lost touch with a college roommate who, it turned out, was spending his time fighting for the—I thought hopeless—dream of gay marriage.
asserted
I → lose → marriage
So much of what unfolded starting in the 1980s wasn’t “either-or.”
asserted
what → unfold → 1980s
The 1980s both revitalized American business and destabilized American workers.
asserted
1980s → revitalize → workers
The drive for deregulation both unleashed innovation and enabled dangerous speculation.
asserted
drive → unleash → speculation
Media fragmentation both increased creativity and choice and decreased shared truth.
asserted
fragmentation → increase → truth
Everyone likes to write about the 1960s—the protests, the music, the cultural upheaval.
asserted
Everyone → like → 1960s
Chroniclers have generated shelves of books and television specials celebrating that decade’s drama.
asserted
Chroniclers → generate → drama
Many Americans know more about what happened in 1968 than in 1988.
asserted
what → know → 1988
…and 2 more, not listed.
The Aporia
