American Culture of the 1970s & 1980s
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The decades of the seventies and eighties in the U.S. saw profound changes in the ways in which Americans perceived their government. The sixties, that tumultuous decade of social foment and altered consciousness, paved the way for the seventies culture to reevaluate our political system and its ability (or inability) to withstand constitutional crises such as Watergate. Socially, the seventies and eighties began to evolve away from "us thinking" toward "me thinking." In fact, the eighties have been dubbed the "me decade" by social critics such as journalist Tom Wolfe. Economically, the twenty years leading up to the present decade saw recession, tremendous inflation, and the self-serving economic policies labelled as "trickle down" by Reagan detractors and supporters alike. The seventies culture has been resurrected recently in a short-lived recreation of the disco years. Part of the dusting off of KC and the Sunshine Band and Donna Summer has to do with the marketing of CD's, the original recordings of which have more than paid for themselves in the 70s. Now they can again be marketed to a new generation of slackers with ironic detachment. Seventies pop music culture is as ironically hip to today's grunge rockers as Sha Na Na were to the celebrants at the original Woodstock. Andrew Ferguson makes a razor-sharp observation about modern life when he says, "in the modern age nostalgia zips along so quickly you scarcely have time to feel nostalgic" (80). His point is
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s on to catalog a further list of 1970's harsh realities:
We learned that the vice president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt. We learned that Nixon, re-elected in a landslide in 1972, had the presidential offices bugged and taped, and it was these tapes that lead to his new death [during Watergate] . . . Power shifted more from the presidency into the hands of the media. (45)
It is interesting to note that a brave new world of technological wonders were all that separated us from dishonesty. Video cameras brought out the truth about Watergate; intelligence gathering bugs brought about the downfall of a president. The media entered the political arena with their watchful video eyes trained on corruption and deceit.
Ford pardoned Nixon and people in the seventies grew more cynical. There was some hope in despair, however. Nixon had tested the mettle of the republic, and the republic had won. During the balance of the 70s it was largely irrelevant who was president, because most Americans saw Ford as a temporary fill-in for the presidential slot. Later, Carter was to be accused of not being presidential enough, in contrast to two previous presidents who were accused of overstepping the bounds of their office. When Reagan entered
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Approximate Word count = 1794
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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