There’s a certain kind of story we like to tell about the 1980s—clean, confident, and reassuringly bright.

It represented the return to order after the chaos of the previous decade. It represented a moment in time when things felt stable again; when the country seemed to pull itself together and move forward.

But I’ve never been very good at accepting the version of the story that feels the most comfortable. Not because I want to be difficult—but because I’m living proof of what happens when we skip over the parts no one wants to talk about.

The truth is, the 80s didn’t rise out of resolution. They rose out of exhaustion. Ronald Reagan gave that shift direction. He offered a return to structure—truth, discipline, fairness—wrapped in a vision of America that felt confident again. Not just powerful, but good. A country that led; that helped; that stood on the right side of things. It was a compelling narrative, and it took hold quickly.

In that version of events, the anti-war movement became easier to dismiss. Vietnam became something to move past rather than reckon with.

The unrest of the previous decade was simply reframed as drug-fueled irresponsibility, not an emotional response in the face of injustice. 

And reframing an uproar, isn’t the same as resolution. 

The anger and distrust that defined that era didn’t come from nowhere. People didn’t risk their reputation, safety, or their lives for nothing.

And yet, by the mid 1980’s that’s what we chose to believe.

…

I was born in 1984, and I grew up hearing my parents tell the story of the night my father was drafted during the Vietnam War. They were freshmen in college, at different universities, still connected after dating in high school. 

Whenever they talked about it, there was a shared heaviness in their memories. It carried a lingering sense that something had gone irreversibly wrong, yet my father had managed to survive it.

In my mind, that was then, and my life was now, and what mattered was that America was strong. Unshakable. Inherently good. It wasn’t an argument; it was absorbed as fact.

My mother carried her patriotism with ease, as something valuable she had inherited.  My father, however, held a more complicated view—one shaped by his lived experiences that didn’t align as neatly with the surface story. 

He lived and breathed the gap between what was said and what was true. He watched people dismiss  the traumatic reality; the same people who avoided the draft by digging into their daddy’s pockets, yet emerged with the authority to define what strength and patriotism should look like. 

It’s easier to embody those ideals when you’ve never been tested.

Those who were tested carried their understanding more quietly. They adapted to their unsettled fears and social disconnect. They moved forward like a good American. They learned, in many cases, not to disrupt the version of reality that had already been agreed upon. 

What’s sad is, they learned after sacrificing their minds and bodies for the supposed betterment of our country, that other Americans who walked alongside them just did not care.