The eighties were great! Disco replaced the Beatles, which I always have thought of as music to slit your wrists by.
I graduated high school in 1980 and I was in German with the Army for the first few and last few years of the eighties, so I saw the height of the Cold War, when the liberals just knew that crazy old codger was going to start a nuclear war, and then at the finish of the Cold War when the old codger's victory was completed by his successor. In between: four years of college on the eighties version of the GI bill, enjoying the benefits of being a man among boys on a campus with thousands of single girls.
The thing about being a soldier in Europe during the Cold War, is that we knew that if "the balloon goes up," we'd all die. So our risk was no more than any civilian. We didn't fear that we'd be sent to an endless war of attrition, like Vietnam. The old codger showed how to fight a war against a weaker nation. Quick and clean, out almost before we were in. Minimal casualties on both sides and mission accomplished.
