AHC: The Eighties Never End

The other main Chinese leader Hua Gufaung!

After a quick glance, it appears that if Hua Gufaung had successfully challenged Deng Xiaoping for the main seat of power, China would not be as relevant as it has come to be today, as the hardliner Maoism could inhibit it's development, and drive a deeper wedge between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, thus continuing the trend of the Eighties.
 
Anyway, continuing:

- Bush and Romanov develop decent working relationship, Cold War ebbs into a sort of detente in the 1990s. Proxy wars still rage worldwide, but NATO - WARPACT tensions ease somewhat. INF, CFE, CWC (stop while you’re ahead) and START treaties signed. Cold War settles into natural ebb and flow of periods of tensions followed by detente. Soviets remain the go-to bad guys for conservative politicians, action films/video games, and technothrillers.
- Soviets remain in Afghanistan.
- Iran-Iraq War drags on a few years longer than IOTL, still ends inconclusively. Saddam opts not to invade Kuwait, instead strengthening relations with the Arab kingdoms and the US as an Arab bulwark against radical Iranian aggression.
- Libya under Gaddhafi develops nuclear weapons and missiles sufficient to strike Europe, becomes TTL’s version of North Korea. (In the 1980s, the threat of a nuclear-armed Libya was quite prevalent. Numerous RAND scenarios were penned; the 1983 book Nuclear War: What’s in it for You? features, among others, a scenario in which a nuclear-armed Gaddhafi leads an alliance of radical Islamic nations in a jihad against Israel; TC Boyle references the threat in one of his stories in Greasy Lake; and there’s even a Trump interview from 1987 where he talks of his fear of nuclear proliferation, highlighting the possibility of Gaddhafi armed with “twenty or so ICBMs” or a “suitcase nuke” as a particular threat).
- Terrorism remains a problem, but remains primarily a state-sponsored affair
- No 1994 peace deal, Troubles continue on
- Due to continued Cold War, US continues to back unsavory allies like Pinochet’s Chile and apartheid South Africa - those remain major sticking points for US public
- Hard rock/heavy metal remains popular
- MTV remains MTV rather than the channel regression it saw IOTL
 
...

That said, I do remember commentators referring to Black Monday in 1987 as a possible turning point, not only economically but in terms of cultural attitudes. I'm not sure how long-term the effects of that were, but to some people anyway, it seemed to be a dividing line.
...

For me it was. The optimism I'd felt at the start of the decade died then. Not to be reborn until post Desert Storm. Culturally, at least in the music and literature I was interested in the entire decade was good, better than the seemingly stagnate 1973-78. Politically and economically things never lived up to the promise of "Morning in America", or the "New Regan Man" as my Japanese friends put it. The cheering at the collapse of the USSR rang hollow for me and fatous pop phrases like ' The end of History' made it worse.
 
For me it was. The optimism I'd felt at the start of the decade died then. Not to be reborn until post Desert Storm. Culturally, at least in the music and literature I was interested in the entire decade was good, better than the seemingly stagnate 1973-78. Politically and economically things never lived up to the promise of "Morning in America", or the "New Regan Man" as my Japanese friends put it. The cheering at the collapse of the USSR rang hollow for me and fatous pop phrases like ' The end of History' made it worse.

Thanks for the recollections.

For me, I absolutely HATED Reagan(still don't like right-wingers, but am less inclined to personalize these things), so to me there was no "promise" to live up to in Morning In America. I thought the whole thing was a sham, though if I'm being honest, there probably were some relatively positive economic indicators.

When Fukuyama came along with his End Of History(first in 1989, with the essay), I remember being vaguely disturbed that things would now be really uneventful.
 
I did not hate Regan, but at that moment realized the Republican party was moving away from me in disturbing directions. Took quite a while to accept that the TR or Eisenhower Republican party was not returning.
 
As far as music goes, you could have an especially powerful batch of heroin flood the Pacific North-West in the late 1980s - resulting in OD deaths for some leading figures in grunge BEFORE Nirvana (or anyone else) has the chance to write & record a hit song that takes indie-rock into the mainstream.

(Edit) Also, have REM & Sonic Youth hit problems after signing to Warners & Geffen respectively - their successful signing from Indie labels to the majors showed that under the right conditions these weird bands could not just survive but THRIVE (commercially and artistically) once they moved into the big league.
 
Good music, not-so-good fashion sense...
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oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Given the recent cultural reflection of an Eighties revival, the challenge in this is to create a scenario in which the Eighties, with its characteristic tentative optimism, heightened Cold War tensions, and flashy consumerism, never truly ends on the night of December 31st, 1989.

That's not how I remember the 80s, not at all.
 
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