Threats from Moscow. Rampant inflation. A deadly disease resisting eradication. Worries about the replacement of American workers. Sly. Ahnold.
Looking at the news of the past several years, we might think we’ve been rocketed back to the 1980s, just with less neon and fewer Rubik’s Cubes. History is repeating itself, and not only through fractured politics and the threat of a new Cold War.
In the ’80s, a parade of one-man armies marched into movie theaters, dispensing justice and obliterating the baddies — and all the real-world anxieties those villains represented. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and the action stars who followed in their slipstream jibed with the national mood.
