Drimonis: I went from Stranger Things to even stranger things

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I unintentionally spent most of my Christmas and New Year’s holidays in the 1980s.

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First, I binge-watched The Americans, a decade-old, critically acclaimed series about KGB spies posing as an American family during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The series took me back to a time shaped by very different geopolitical realities.

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Once finished, I plunged straight into the final episodes of Stranger Things, a sci-fi series many of us have been hooked on for the past decade. The supernatural tale is about an alternate dimension known as Upside Down and a group of Dungeons & Dragons-playing kids (some with psychokinetic powers) saving the world from monsters.

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It’s also about so much more. For those of us who’ve lived through the mid to late ’80s, Stranger Things drips with nostalgia. From the esthetics (the haircuts and wardrobe) to images of unsupervised kids roaming the streets on their bikes at all hours, to the gorgeous soundtrack — Kate Bush, David Bowie, Prince, The Police, The Cars — the Duffer Brothers created something that packs a serious emotional punch for Gen Xers like me.

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The sci-fi series is pure time travel — a portal that not only transports us back to a time where few things mattered beyond our teen obsessions, but also to that innocent time where global dynamics barely registered on our radars.

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It was a fascinating time that held glimmers of hope. The Berlin Wall came crashing down, the Soviet Union stopped using force to control eastern Europe, the INF Arms Treaty eliminated an entire category of nuclear weapons, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was promoting glasnost and perestroika, ushering in more transparency. Cold War tensions eased. Fears of nuclear annihilation collapsed.

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Even though the Stranger Things finale has its share of edge-of-your-seat suspense and things being blown up, it is still — at its core — a tender ode to those defining bonds and memories that shape us into the adults we become. A fitting love letter to the magic of childhood and that moment where you cross over to another dimension, never to return to what once was.

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I watched the finale on a Friday night and woke up the next morning to news that U.S. President Donald Trump had bombed Caracas overnight and arrested Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

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I went from Stranger Things to even stranger things.

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I shook off the fantasy world overrun with monstrous creatures, snapping back into a world that’s far scarier. Mainly because it’s real.

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Given U.S. history, perhaps it was naive of me to find anything remotely strange or even surprising about the invasion of a resource-rich nation on flimsy reasoning. After all, destabilizing other countries via illegal, covert operations is on-brand for America. Even the hopeful ’80s saw the U.S. invade Grenada and Panama, bomb Libya and intervene in El Salvador and Nicaragua, leading to the scandal known as the Iran-Contra Affair.