1988 (EDIT FROM "VINYL")

It was as if the fever dreams of a thousand lonely hardcore bands actually came true. Ronald Reagan, fangs elongated and dripping green poison, hunched over the big, fat, round, red, candy-like Button with his crooked finger poised to press, cowboy hat perched on his slick black Bob’s Big Boy quiff, a crucified Christ in miniature bouncing on his right shoulder like some over-eager younger brother on a pogo stick. Too perfect to actually exist, this was the collective image that reflected back at us from the t-shirts and album covers of a terrified and neutered nation.

Except that it did exist, but only for a moment before it was swept away by the plutonium wind. “I’ve just outlawed Russia forever,” he giggled, his fawning Yes men laughing along, Nancy poised just behind with her elongated fingers brushing his collar. “We begin bombing in f-f-five m-m-m-m-m-minutes” he stuttered out like a Sigue Sigue Sputnik remix and then he pushed it down, he pushed it down and it made a tiny squeaking sound like the horn on a Fisher Price plastic car. Oddly enough, the Button was also made by Fisher Price, but unfortunately their steadfast attention to detail in this case meant that the Button actually worked, and soon the missiles filled the sky.

MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction (as every schoolchild was taught in 1988), was supposed to be the ultimate deterrent to nuclear Armageddon as any sane individual would be thought to refrain from pushing a Button that would be summarily pressed in kind by his Russki counterpart after death began to rain down from above. But Ronald Reagan, he pushed it down; and them in Moscow, they pushed it down; and you, you can fuckin’ fill in the rest.

Baby make boom boom. Ha ha.