The worst decade in American history award

Only one decade provokes disdain in my mind. History has always been a soft spot for me, I recently gobbled up David McCullough's John Adams and fantasized about living in the late 18th century, meeting John Adams, witnessing the quintessiential installation of political idealogy, all of that. I always have to do this with an extra bit of dissociation from reality, because the color of my skin would have most likely put Mr. Adams and the rest of the United States off if I were not especially sycophantish and feeble.

I have closely looked at each decade in America's beautifully racist, sexist, isolationist, homophobic, xenophobic, unsympathetic, strange, ugly, determined, hard-working, magnificent and creative past, and I have discovered that I would never like to be transported back to the time period between 1980 and 1989, the 1980's. Why? It's a combination of a lot of things -- which I'l rattle off, but America's cynicism was at an all time high, Reaganomics became a known malady, Michael Jackson changed both his race and gender, cocaine was everywhere, HIV/AIDS became an epidemic, Challenger exploded, affirmative action was beginning to severely disrupt the mindset of the African-American community, and continue to stir simmering racial tensions.

On a superficial level, the fashion in the United States in the 1980's has to rank among the worst in human history. I'll look for it, but I am sure that that can be attributed to the influence of cocaine. Everyone just looked bad, and I am glad that I do not remember it.

Sure there were good things, like the emergence of personal computing which makes this rant possible, and of course in 1985 a light shone upon the earth when I was born

Shamelssly stealing a term from Stephen Colbert's comedic genius, the 1980's are now on notice.