David Sirota's Blog

The unwritten and unspoken story of the budget showdown in Washington is the tale of both parties deliberately working to once again exempt the ever-growing Pentagon from America's larger budget/deficit discussion.

This is the thrust of the new Republican plan to pass a one-week continuing resolution for non-defense spending and at the same time pass a full year's status-quo Pentagon budget. Even though military spending is the single largest discretionary spending item in the budget, and even...

The unwritten and unspoken story of the budget showdown in Washington is the tale of both parties deliberately working to once again exempt the ever-growing Pentagon from America's larger deficit discussion.

All the buzz in the entertainment/tech world about the blockbuster new video game Homefront brings back memories of the 1984 film Red Dawn -- and rightly so. The creator of Homefront is none other than John Milius, the writer/director of the 1984 film that later became the deliberate namesake of the most famous operation in today's Iraq War. But it should also bring back memories of the larger militarist themes that continue to define our entertainment culture -- themes that ultimately bring ...

Connections between the Pentagon and the entertainment industry, first intensified in the 1980s, continue to embed militarism in seemingly non-political products like video games and action movies.

Charlie Sheen is hogging the spotlight. Tron and Wall Street have just left theaters. Muammar Gaddafi is the planet's top bad guy. Millionaires are enjoying budget-busting tax cuts. Conservatives are saber-rattling against Iran. Bon Jovi is on tour. And Ronald Reagan tributes are everywhere.

If you didn't know better, you'd think we'd all just stepped out of a 1.21 gigawatt-powered DeLorean and right back into the 1980s.

And in some ways, we have. This collective deja vu moment is part coincide...

NOTE: This piece ran on the front page of this past Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section. It is based on Sirota's new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now, which is officially released on 3/15.

Charlie Sheen is hogging the spotlight. "Tron" and "Wall Street" have just left theaters. Moammar Gaddafi is the planet's top bad guy. Millionaires are enjoying budget-busting tax cuts. Conservatives are saber-rattling against Iran. Bon Jovi is on tour. And Ronald...

The similarities between today and the 1980s reflect a country now run by those who came of age in that decade. No matter where we look for the roots of today's political debates, we find the tropes of '80s popular culture.

NOTE: David Sirota's new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now is out on 3/15. Read USA Today's new cover story about the book here and pre-order the book here.

The least intriguing aspect of Republican Rep. Peter King's congressional hearing this week on terrorism and the "radicalization in the American Muslim community" is the spectacle's obvious hypocrisy. King was himself a cheerleader of a terrorist group (the Irish Republican Army), and his hearings igno...

Anti-Muslim sentiment was embedded in American society well before 9/11 -- it started as a cheap pop culture trope in the 1980s and has now become the unquestioned assumption.

My upcoming book Back To Our Future (due out on 3/15) posits that the 1980s--and specifically 1980s pop culture--frames the way we think about major issues today. The decade is the lens through which we see our world. To understand what that means, here are five classic flicks that show how the 1980s still shapes our thinking on government, the "rogue," militarism, race, and even our not-so-distant past.

1. Ghostbusters (1984): Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddmore see...