Written by guest columnist Llewelyn Moss
I was ready to watch the original “Red Dawn” movie, and I noticed that it was released in 1984. So that got me thinking about the book, “1984”. Then I decided to see what other memorable events happened in the year 1984, and whether or not there are ramifications of those events, of 35 years ago, still felt today.
The intro to the original Red Dawn could almost be today’s headlines.
That movie came out in 1984. Today, we’re living in an Orwellian 1984.
What other events in 1984 that rippled down, affecting us to this day?
Jan 22- The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous ‘”1984″‘ television commercial.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=axSnW-ygU5g
Sept 20- A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people. The second attack (at the relocated embassy) in just over a year.
Sept 26- The United Kingdom agrees to the handover of Hong Kong.
October 12- Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds.
October 31- Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards. 1984 anti-Sikh Riots break out in New Delhi and other cities and nearly 10,000 Sikhs are killed.
December 4- Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers.
December 19- The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China is signed in Beijing, China by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.
ANNNNND…The year ended with a BANG!
December 22- Bernhard Goetz shoots four African American would-be muggers on an express train in Manhattan section of New York, New York.
“…in a situation like this, your mind, you’re in a combat situation. Your mind is functioning. You’re not thinking in a normal way. Your memory isn’t even working normally. You are so hyped up. Your vision actually changes. Your field of view changes. Your capabilities change. What you are capable of changes. You are under adrenaline, a drug called adrenaline. And you respond very quickly, and you think very quickly. That’s all. You think! You think, you analyze, and you act. And in any situation, you just have to think more quickly than your opposition. That’s all. You know. Speed is very important.”
— Goetz
Any incident, no matter how small, is not just a snapshot, isolated from the stream of time. Everything that happens nowadays is connected to, and the result of, countless moments of time in the past. Events from a year ago, ten years ago, thousands of years ago, have had a bearing on our present life, our country, our world. We are the sum of all of the past.
A simple example? Look at your crown molding, your chair rail, and your base molding. That ceiling-to-floor profile is a direct image of the design of ancient Greek columns.
Because of the fact that what happens today, or what we allow to happen, will affect the coming days, years, centuries and generations of not only America, but of the world, we should take seriously what is going on in our Republic and in our lifetime. We witness daily the never ending battle between ideologies, often characterized as “the fight of good vs. evil”.
Evil seems to presently have the upper hand in many ways. Compare our own nation of today with that of 35, 45, 55 years ago. Consider how the rest of the world has changed during that same time.
We’re at a crossroads, a short period in time, where we will either decide that our nation will again become a mighty force for good in the world, or we will let the evil win out and plunge the world of America’s children and grandchildren into a new period of Dark Ages.
Anyway, I’m gonna to watch Red Dawn now.
