Part Three
The
day President Reagan was shot the world was plunged into uncertainty. Joe and
Issy were glued to the TV patiently waiting for news of the shooting.
“Maybe
it’s a good thing… if he dies. I don’t mean it like that, but he was sounding
like he was ready to go to war with Russia. I don’t wish him dead.”
But,
part of him did wish him dead. He saw the expression of shock and disbelief on
Issy’s face as he said what he felt. The stress of living in constant fear was
taking its toll, it was making Joe sound just as mad as they were.
“You
don’t mean it, Joe? Do you…,” Issy asked.
“Stress
and fear can make you say stuff Issy…when you really don’t mean it,” he
replied.
It
can also make you do things totally out of character. Joe remembered, reading
about how soldiers under extreme stress can go crazy and become a killing
machine. They become addicted to killing, as a junkie is to heroin. It’s not
just pulling that trigger. There is that trigger point in all of us that can
send you over the edge. And when that happens there is no going back. He was at
that edge, a tipping point.
“What
are you thinking?” Issy asked.
“Listen…I
hope it’s not another conspiracy like the Kennedy assassination. They reckon
the Russians were behind that one,” he snapped.
Joe
and Issy sat there, their eyes glued to the TV waiting for news about the
shooting; it was a day that they would never forget.
You
remember what and where you were, the day you hear a president has been shot,
and everybody says that, Joe was thinking while listening to the TV news.
“President
Reagan has been shot and is in a critical condition… he was shot by a lone gunman while attending…,” the TV commentator announced.
“Doesn’t
sound good, for Reagan,” Issy said crying.
“Oh,
it’s a terrible shame. There are some mad people in this world. What do you
think, Joe?”
“It
only takes one.”
“We’ll
have to see, what happens…maybe he’ll make it, Issy. Who knows?” Joe said without conviction.
The
TV news broadcasts were sketchy in detail, but they did not look good. Reagan
was an old man. Would he survive? Joe was thinking and I guess Issy was
thinking the same, and most likely the rest of the world was thinking the same.
Anyone that is shot is not going to be up for much. A few millimeters here or
there, and it could mean life or death.
Click Below and Listen
*
President Reagan did survive, and as
the decade progressed the newspaper headlines were about major unrest and
violence in the Middle East, the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet-Afghan war, the 1982
Lebanon war, and the bombing of Libya in 1986 in response to the terrorist
attack on Pan Am 103.
The
tension eased somewhat when Mr Gorbachev came to power he appeared decent,
intelligent, and sane compared to Reagan. It came to be called the late 1980s
‘purple passage’ of the autumn of nations. In the end, there was no monkey bite,
as Joe had feared. He remembered, reading how a monkey bite had started a world
war.
By
the end of the decade, with the break-up of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union
declared an end to political hostility and the Cold War.
*
It’s
now 2011, forget about what they say about the 1980s as if all we cared about
was ‘loads of money’, the latest haircut, and who was wearing what. It was a
decade of fear brought about by the rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher and her alter ego Ronald
Reagan, who were warmongers, who scared the shit out of millions of people.
I
was 10 as the 80s ended, and my dad told me what he remembered about the first
part of the decade, as a mix of riots, unemployment, AIDS, war, and nuclear
paranoia. Anyone, who tries to tell you that they spent the decade with an
asymmetric haircut, wearing legwarmers, and doing the Rubik's cube is lying, my
hair was always plain and simple and while Thatcher did her thing, I did mine.
I still have a nagging resentment about the Thatcher legacy though, but it is
hard to imagine going back to just British Telecom and our big red brick phone
again.
Oh, by the way, my name is Fran, the daughter of Issy and Joe.
