Early American Musings

Less than two days until our departure. Packing is almost complete.

I remember surprising little about my actual journey to New York in 1984. I’d booked the ticket through STA the student travel agency. It was a flight on El Al from Heathrow to JFK. I do remember my first exposure on the flight to bagels though!

1984 was the height of the Cold War and September was the year that the BBC docudrama Threads dramatising the impact of a nuclear war on Britain was first released. Politics in the US and the UK were deeply divided. I left the UK at the hight of the miner’s strike, and arrived in America which was approaching a presidential election between Ronald Regan and Walter Mondale. Political differences have changed today, but they were almost as deep in the 1980s. I think what is different today is the ease with which false perceptions and information can spread. It is all too easy to believe what you want. In 1984 access to information, both correct and incorrect, was much more difficult and the news was much more tightly controlled, and probably much less partisan.