Broback's Blog

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One major reason IMHO that many Americans get all tingly over the Gipper is not generally discussed. Those on the left certainly won’t bring it up.

It has nothing to do with the skyrocketing employment or the plummeting inflation numbers he presided over. It has to do with our survival. Youngsters (and old pacifists) don’t remember the “Doomsday Clock”, but most who were raised during the Cold War sure do. It became a staple of the nightly newscasts.

“The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face, maintained since 1947 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is estimated to be to global disaster. As of January 14, 2010, the Doomsday Clock now stands at six minutes to midnight. Since its creation, the time on the clock has changed 19 times.”

Notice how (like with the employment numbers in that era) we see a singularly steep and positive spike during the Reagan/Bush run.

One of the single biggest jumps (unsurprisingly) came after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. Hey I seem to remember someone in 1987 specifically calling for the wall to be torn down! Who was that again…?

Oh — and most importantly it must be stressed that the enhanced feeling of safety from nuclear attack was evenly distributed across the populace. Whew.