The hit 1984 version was just the start.

The film retrospective will begin with 'The Princess Bride.'

I recently had a strange, sad experience while watching an old movie with the family. Most Saturday evenings, the Kengor abode delights in what we call “Family Movie & Snack Night.” The missus — my lovely Susan — lays out a cornucopia of exquisite snack food. The spread is so good that it rises high above mere snack-level, though she includes plenty of conventional snack fare, such as popcorn, of course. You can’t do a movie without popcorn. During this time of year, the family’s film choices naturally turn to Christmas themes. They range from kid favorites such as Home Alone and Elf and the fantastic 1983 A Christmas Story, to older classics such as Going My Way (Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald) and its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s (Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman), Holiday Affair (Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum), The Miracle of the Bells (Frank Sinatra and Fred McMurray), and various versions of A Christmas Carol. The latter includes the 1938 version with Reginald Owen, the superb but largely unknown 1984 TV remake with George C. Scott, and even the surprisingly excellent 1992 “Muppets” version with Michael Caine. And of course, each year we hunker down for the best movie ever made, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life — the perfect film. (READ: Paul Kengor, “It’s a Wonderful Film—Yes, the Best Ever.”) A couple of weeks ago, we tried an old movie we had never seen: Bob Hope in The Lemon Drop Kid. Unfortunately, we soon learned it isn’t a good movie. It’s a comedy loaded with slapstick silliness, most of which isn’t particularly funny. Moreover, though considered a “Christmas movie,” it isn’t much of one, except for one scene that’s not only good but splendid and almost magical. Dressed as Santa Claus, Bob Hope and his romantic interest, played by actress Marilyn Maxwell, stroll through the streets of a city bedecked with Christmas lights and snow and beautifully sing “Silver Bells.” Personally, the scene particularly resonates with me because it reminds me of Christmas images from downtown Pittsburgh (the town of my birth) back in the era. And indeed, the song’s co-writer, Jay Livingston, was from nearby McDonald, Pennsylvania, and his images were inspired by downtown Pittsburgh at Christmas time. In the movie, Hope and Maxwell walk arm in arm and croon: Strings of streetlights, even stoplights Blink of bright red and green As the shoppers rush home with their treasures Hear the snow crunch See the kids bunch This is Santa’s big scene And above all the bustle you’ll hear Silver bells Silver bells It’s Christmas time in the city. Excellent lyrics and a great feel. I think it’s one of the best Christmas songs, period. In fact, the song is so nice that it almost saves the movie. Almost. The Lemon Drop Kid aside, “Silver Bells” was so good that Hope, in the years ahead, in his iconic Christmas specials, sang it every year, walking in the snow with some pretty girl. The Hollywood studio created a snowy lot and let the scene unfold. For instance, here’s Hope singing the song on separate occasions with Marie Osmond and Olivia Newton-John at the height of his Christmas show’s popularity in the 1970s. But what really hit me about watching Bob Hope in The Lemon Drop Kid is this, which prompts me to write this piece for this Christmas season: I was very surprised to learn that the older kids in my family as well as my future son-in-law and daughter-in-law (who love and know a lot about old movies and history) had no idea who Bob Hope was. Thanks to their old man, my kids have quite a knowledge base of old actors and movies. But somehow, Bob Hope never came up on their radar. Taken aback by that, I proceeded to ask my students if they knew of Bob Hope. I got a bunch of blank stares. And he was once synonymous with Christmas in American popular culture. This will alarm and sadden anyone over the age of 60. As folks of the older generations will attest, Bob Hope was a household name. And he was once synonymous with Christmas in American popular culture. His annual holiday special on NBC was must-see TV. He did jokes and comedy skits with leading celebrities. He sang songs in snow-filled sets with pretty girls. He presented the college football AP All-Americans, who made the trip to Hollywood and one by one trotted to Hope’s side as he made playful jokes about them. Hope even presented the annual Rose Bowl Queen from nearby Pasadena. He closed out the show by wistfully humming his sentimental signature song, “Thanks for the Memories.” Perhaps most importantly, Hope’s Christmas show included highlights from his USO Tours. And those were really Hope at his best — his most hopeful (pun intended). God bless the man. Each year, he brought Christmas to lonely troops abroad, from Europe to Vietnam. Those were soldiers who, to borrow from Hope partner Bing Crosby, longed and wished “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Alas, they were stuck overseas, far from their families. Hope brought them a smile with fellow comedians and with stage appearances by “pin-up” gals like Betty Grable, Connie Stevens, Raquel Welch, and Ann-Margret. The USO dubbed Hope “the One-Man Morale Machine.” He lifted our boys’ spirits when they were at their lowest. The only regrettable element of that service abroad is that Hope himself often was not home for Christmas. His daughter Linda recalled: “I remember saying, ‘Why does Dad always have to be away? All these other families have their dads home for Christmas.’” Her mother, Dolores (herself a great American) would gently buoy her daughter by instructing: “No, not all have them are home for Christmas. Think of boys and girls who don’t have their dads for years and years because they are serving overseas. Remember the boys and girls whose fathers may never come back.” Bob Hope remembered them first and foremost. And we should remember Bob Hope. It seems unthinkable to those of us all old enough that Hope could today be forgotten. His radio shows, his TV and film appearances, and certainly his USO Tours spanned over a half century, from the 1940s to the 1990s, from World War II to Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-91. The man seemed timeless, with us forever. To that end, some readers might remember how the country watched in anticipation to see if the ageless Hope would make it to 100 years old, a landmark he approached in the spring of 2003, giving a new twist to the phrase, “Hope springs eternal.” He made it on May 29, 2003, with little time to spare. I remember receiving the news of his death two months later, on July 27, 2003. I was in Ventura, California, getting ready to hop in the car to go to the Reagan Library, doing research on Ronald Reagan, a close friend of Bob Hope. (Hope was a big Reagan supporter and a big Republican.) The news of Hope’s death stopped me in my tracks. In fact, when I heard the news, it reminded me of first getting news of the death of other celebrity giants of the era, such as Jimmy Stewart and Frank Sinatra (also big Reagan supporters, incidentally). At the time, there was hardly an American alive who didn’t know who Bob Hope was. If you were putting together a list of the top names in entertainment in the 20th century, spanning Hollywood’s Golden Age and the height of television in the 1950s, Bob Hope would surely make your top 10. Today, his name elicits a blank stare from young people born after his death. Here’s hoping (pun intended again) that we can rekindle his memory at Christmas time. I have a suggestion: For Christmas this year, grab a few young people in your life and pull up on YouTube an old Bob Hope Christmas special. No doubt, they will find some of the broadcasts corny, archaic, even weird at times. Nonetheless, that was history. Bob Hope is history that they should know. Thanks for the memories, Bob. Merry Christmas, everyone. Editor’s note: Paul wrote a very brief version of this article for his regular column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Upon request, he did this expanded version for us at The American Spectator. READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Foul, Potty-Mouthed, Woke Women Indiana U’s Historic Season The NFL’s ‘Criminal Element’: Remembering the Raiders–Steelers Rivalry of the 1970s

There are a growing number of scholars today who can be considered anti-feminists. These men and women are starting to look under the hood of the feminist ideology. What is surprising is that more people haven’t done so before. Most people have blithefully believed that it is simply a movement about helping women. In my forthcoming book, Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can’t Be Fused with Christianity (due out Jan. 20), I look deeply into its ideological roots, going all the way back to the time of the French Revolution. Surely, 200+ years are enough for people to notice something amiss. Why is it that so few have even dared to look? As I discovered, even a light scratch beneath the surface reveals that not all is gold — that feminism is responsible for a bevy of societal ills, including abortion, and has led to mass immigration, mental health issues (particularly those connected with attachment issues such as the Cluster B pathologies), higher rates of unhappiness among women, greater strife between the sexes, and, for men, the loss of purpose, positions, and child custody, to name a few. The reason why so few have exposed feminism, despite the mounting evidence that feminism has had very negative effects, is because of some highly effective safeguards that keep the curious from looking too closely. As I’ve gotten deeper into researching feminism, I’ve discovered recurrent patterns that keep most of the world from looking behind the curtain. What, then, actually lies beyond all the glitter and the gloss, the empowerment and pantsuits, the girlboss and botox? The Guard Dogs To start, guarding the periphery are menacing dogs, unrelenting in their barking, threatening anyone shining light on the overgrown fortress: You can’t speak about this! You are a man! You can’t speak about this! Feminism gave you your rights and degree. Feminism is just about helping women. Don’t you want to help women? This perimeter fence is where most turn back. Most accept these sharp barbs as justification to just keep one’s head down and avoid drawing attention that could invite ire from an angry woman. Few are willing to breach this barrier. Impenetrable Writing For those brave enough to venture further, they immediately encounter a brick wall of impenetrable language, like this award-winning example from Judith Butler: The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. All of that is one sentence. It is hard to imagine any amount of context that would suddenly make that sentence comprehensible (I still have no idea what it means). There is also a whole lexicon of dizzying terms, such as gender fatalism, kyriarchy, manterrupting, womanism, not to mention the bevy of modifiers used to specify which feminism is being used: eco, radical,  Marxist, mainstream, maternal, reactionary, black, separatist, difference, and queer. Theologian Emily Dumler-Winkler pulls this odd amalgam altogether tidily: “I use the word ‘feminist’ in the broadest sense to include the anti-racist and anticolonial commitments of Black feminist, womanists, mujeristas, Asian feminist, decolonial feminist, and LGBTQI+, intersectional, and gender theorist, among others. As Flavia Dzodan famously and eloquently put it ‘My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.’” More recently, conservatives have been convinced that Mary Wollstonecraft is somehow a feminist heroine for all women to rally behind. Most promoters of this “the first wave was good” vision have not read Mary Wollstonecraft, except for a few pages assigned in college. Wollstonecraft’s opaque prose and passionate rhetoric (too passionate even for her husband William Godwin) make one’s eyes glaze over. A wider scrutiny of her work reveals that she can easily be called the “first leftist woman.” Her mentor, Dr. Richard Price, has been referred to as the first leftist thinker. Wollstonecraft was not at all a woman of the Right or a woman for the Right. Put on Your Gloves If one can get past the prose, passion, and opacity of feminist writing, the real philosophical roots of the feminist ideology come into focus. Deep inside, there’s a weak and sick old woman, functioning like the wizard behind the curtain. She’s rail thin, sterile, and pale, fingers yellowed from years of smoking, hoping no one will recognize that she is the embodiment of the feminist movement. Her home, filled with hoarded tropes and twisted reason, wreaking of cat urine and stale smoke, is truly inhospitable. When she dies, it will take a dumpster to hold the bags and bags of refuse extracted from her home. This is the ugly trove that awaits those willing to pull on rubber gloves and pick through the mess, overgrown and left unchecked for decades. Personally, I’ve thrown up in my mouth more than once. Here is some of the “wisdom” I excavated: In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation. ―Simone de Beauvoir Love has been the opium of women, like religion by the masses. While we loved, men ruled. ―Kate Millett Institutionalized in sports, the military, acculturated sexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, violence is taught to boys until they become its advocates. ―Andrea Dworkin [T]he ratio of men to women must be radically reduced so that men approximate only ten percent of the total population. ―Sally Miller Gearhart [W]hy is it not as illuminating and honest to refer to Newton’s laws as ‘Newton’s rape manual’ as it is to call them ‘Newton’s mechanics? ―Sandra Harding The movement is revolting against the Christian West because the feminist founders believed men used Christianity to keep women enslaved. It is also pro-communist, serving as a stepping stone to get the West to become woke. It fuels the abortion industry by telling women that their children are an obstacle to their careers and happiness. And it is responsible for the tremendous uptick in depression, anxiety, and mental health issues across the generations. No one wants to mess with this mean old ideological lady and her minions. It’s ugly and heartbreaking to see just how much damage has been done by and to women who honestly believe that feminism is their friend and savior. The widespread neglect of feminism’s roots is understandable, but given the stakes, it must be done. Her pale and frigid hands dictate and dominate our public policies, elections, and the psyche of most western women. The conservation of Western Civilization depends on it. Carrie Gress is the author of Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can’t Be Fused with Christianity. READ MORE by Carrie Gress: 5 Ways to Right the Women’s Vote Think the First Wave Is a Model for Women? Think Again. The Gospel of Discontent: How Feminism Shattered Our Understanding of Motherhood

Qian Xuesen, a Chinese rocket scientist and California Institute of Technology professor, worked on U.S. missile programs during World War II. In the 1950s, he was accused of communist affiliations and potential espionage. The U.S. put him under surveillance and partial house arrest for several years, but never formally prosecuted him for espionage. In 1955, the U.S. let him go back to China as part of a prisoner exchange. He later became a key figure in China’s missile and space programs. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine. Bo Jiang, a Chinese national and former NASA contractor, was suspected of attempting to steal sensitive space technology data. In March 2013, he was arrested while boarding a flight to China with laptops containing potentially classified information. Earlier, Jiang also took a NASA laptop containing sensitive information to China. Instead of prosecuting him, he was released two months later after pleading to misuse of federal office equipment. When I first learned about these episodes, I thought of the United States as a great aristocratic household — wealthy, full of treasures, admired by all. Yet the doors of this house are wide open, and its guests, some of them “friends,” wander in and help themselves to valuables. The host, Uncle Sam, waves his finger and says politely, “Don’t do that, or I’ll have to prosecute you.” But instead of arresting the intruders, he often just escorts them out the door. Piece by piece, America’s treasures — nuclear know-how, advanced materials, defense technologies, state secrets — slip away. Now this open house faces an unprecedented challenge: China’s determined campaign to undermine it. Already in a Cold War Beijing’s propaganda insists there is “no new Cold War.” Instead, the party claims the U.S. suffers from a “Cold War mentality.” This is psychological warfare, a deliberate attempt to brainwash American policymakers into believing that confrontation is avoidable if only the U.S. stops being “paranoid.” Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine. But this is a lie. The reality is that the CCP has always regarded the United States as its foremost adversary, and we are already locked in a Cold War with China. The conflict is being waged in cyberspace, boardrooms, universities, and the halls of Congress. It is not an abstraction; it is daily confrontation. To deny this is to blindfold ourselves. The only real question is whether we will fight it effectively — and whether we will win. While the U.S. is still waking up to this reality, China is well prepared for it, as aptly summarized in the title of a Wall Street Journal article, “Xi Has Spent Decades Preparing for a Cold War With the U.S.” And China’s main attack is through intelligence warfare. The Philosophy of the People’s War The guiding principle of the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence strategy is the doctrine of the people’s war. Mao Zedong developed this concept during the revolution. It holds that every citizen is a soldier; every village and workplace can be mobilized; and that the party survives by making the entire population serve its cause. Today, the people’s war underpins China’s global intelligence campaign. Article 7 of China’s National Intelligence Law obligates every citizen and organization to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.” In practice, it blurs the line between professional spies and ordinary people. A graduate student, a visiting scholar, a business executive — all can be tasked to collect intelligence. China turns 1.4 billion citizens into a latent army of collectors. Against America’s 340 million, the imbalance is overwhelming. The Russian Doll Strategy One of the CCP’s most effective tactics in this “people’s war” is the Russian doll strategy. Like a set of nesting dolls, the party layers its appeals. At the core is the CCP itself (dang). Surrounding it is the state (guo). Beyond that — and this is the largest shell — lies China as a civilization (zhonghua).  The strategy is subtle but powerful. If overseas Chinese recoil from the party, the United Front tells them: “You don’t have to support the CCP — just support China.” If that fails, the appeal shifts outward: “At least honor your Chinese heritage.” Once someone accepts the outer shell, the party works to draw them inward, step by step, toward the core. For foreigners who are not Chinese at all, the same pattern applies: It starts with admiration for Chinese culture, then moves toward respect for China’s “achievements,” and finally seeks tolerance of the CCP.  Ruthless to the Enemy, Cold to Its Own The CCP’s treatment of spies shows both ruthlessness and cold pragmatism. Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a CIA translator who spied for Beijing for more than three decades, discovered this bitter truth. When he was arrested in 1985, Chin believed his value to the CCP would protect him. Perhaps Beijing would arrange a swap, or at least pressure Washington. But Beijing did none of these. Instead, a Chinese consul informed him that the Chinese state would provide for the needs of his family if he died without revealing his secrets. Shortly after the visit, Chin committed suicide in prison before sentencing. The American Spectator The party shows even less mercy to foreign spies. From 2010 through 2012, China killed or imprisoned an estimated eighteen to twenty CIA sources. One of the informants was shot in the courtyard of a government building. The message was unmistakable: Espionage against China would be met with terror, fear, and death. Here lies the stark contrast: In Beijing, spies are executed to instill fear; in Washington, they are often escorted to the airport. The Asymmetry of Deterrence The difference between the two systems is philosophical as well as practical. In the CCP way, it is better to kill a thousand innocents than to let one guilty person escape. This principle, rooted in Leninist paranoia, underpins its purges and counterintelligence crackdowns. The American way is the opposite. Out of respect for civil liberties, out of concern for exposing classified information, and out of fear of “discrimination against Chinese,” the U.S. would rather release a thousand spies than risk arresting one innocent person. Trials collapse, prosecutions are avoided, and expulsions substitute for justice. Evolution of Chinese Espionage The known cases of Chinese espionage in America show worrisome trends. Larry Chin passed hundreds of top-secret reports to Beijing. Hanson Huang stole nuclear secrets. Katrina Leung, an FBI informant, doubled as a Chinese agent, her case collapsing in 2003 due to mishandling. Chi Mak smuggled defense technology to China, while Dongfan “Greg” Chung stole aerospace designs from Boeing. In the 2010s, Beijing targeted disillusioned ex-officers: Kevin Mallory, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, and Ron Hansen — not ideologues but middle-aged Americans lured by cash. Now the net has widened. In 2023, two U.S. Navy sailors, Jinchao “Patrick” Wei and Wenheng Zhao, were caught transmitting ship schedules and operational details. They were not senior officials. They were ordinary sailors — proof that China will recruit anyone, at any level, if the access is useful. And now Beijing is thinking even further ahead. Young Americans studying international relations or Chinese language are approached on LinkedIn and offered research funding or overseas trips. The aim is long-term cultivation: By the time they enter the State Department or intelligence community, they are already compromised. Espionage for Business, Not Just Politics The CCP’s intelligence machine is not confined to political and military secrets. Commercial espionage is central. Jet engine designs, biotech formulas, semiconductor technology — all have been targeted. The party’s intelligence services work directly for Chinese firms. Here the asymmetry with the United States is most obvious. If the CIA were to steal a telecommunications invention abroad, who would it give it to? AT&T? Verizon? T-Mobile? The lawsuits would be immediate. U.S. law forbids intelligence agencies from enriching private firms. In China, by contrast, national champions are fed directly by state espionage. Unrestricted Warfare The CCP does not follow rules. To Beijing, warfare is unrestricted. Any means can be used: political warfare, economic coercion, cognitive manipulation, cyber intrusion. In 1999, two Chinese colonels published a book literally called Unrestricted Warfare that laid out a strategy for China to achieve superpower status by using every available tool. Today, that doctrine is reality. The most recent example is the “Salt Typhoon” cyberespionage campaign, which struck more than eighty countries, compromised some six hundred companies, and swept up millions of call records — even President Donald Trump’s personal phone calls. It targeted telecom carriers worldwide, penetrated law enforcement surveillance systems, and allowed Chinese intelligence to track the movements of Americans. It was global, indiscriminate, and beyond the norms of conventional espionage. Patterns, Old and New Across decades, certain constants define China’s espionage, but changes appear too. First, there are often appeals to Chinese cultural or heritage affinity, as well as efforts to cultivate the Chinese communities in the U.S. Second, access comes before tradecraft. Beijing recruits insiders already near the secrets. Third, the motivation of Chinese spies is overwhelmingly financial. The ideological infiltrators of the Cold War have been replaced by mercenaries. New trends include the diffusion of recruitment channels and a focus on non-Chinese targets. Channels may include front companies, cultural associations, United Front networks, talent programs, and professional platforms like LinkedIn. A Strategic Imbalance Over time, China’s strategy has shifted but not fundamentally changed. Cold War moles gave way to industrial spies; cyber operations now accompany human recruitment; and lower-level personnel and students are now added to the mix. The guiding thread is constant: the people’s war, in service of the party. Meanwhile, the United States remains cautious, legalistic, and restrained. Its institutions are designed to protect individual rights, not to wage unrestricted war. One side fights with no rules; the other clings to legality. That imbalance defines the contest. Unless America confronts the reality of the new Cold War, abandons the illusion that it is not happening, and takes steps to fight and win, the open house will remain open — and the guests will keep walking out with the silver. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine.

This holiday season, I wish for all of Vecna’s Christmas wishes to come true. My Christmas list plaintively petitions Santa Claus to kill Eleven, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will, and all of the ancillary characters on Stranger Things. Yes, I root for Mr. Whatsit, One, Henry Creel, or, if you will, Vecna. Sometime in Season Four, Stranger Things reached The Brady Bunch Cousin Oliver stage, the Happy Days of Fonzie waterskiing over a shark, and the Cousins Coy and Vance iteration of The Dukes of Hazzard. The series, which mercifully ceases over the next week or so, feels about as vibrant as Max hooked up to that life-support machine. Even rewinds of “Running Up That Hill” cannot resurrect it. It nevertheless needs someone to pull the plug on the life-support machine or press stop on the Walkman. Why? Stranger Things can move from Hawkins to the Upside Down with encouragement and not protest from loyal viewers. But once it time-travels from 1985 to 2025, it loses that portion of its audience that recalls 1985 more fondly than 2025. The increasingly politicized mindset of the writers — alien to normal people during the 1980s — represents a projection of today onto yesterday. In the early seasons, viewers watched kids wearing Nikes and shirts with three-quarter-length sleeves riding bikes until the streetlights came on. That appealed because it rang true to the times. Too much of what viewers now see pulls at the sensibilities of 2025. When the Stranger Things kids aim to sedate the Turnbows and use the clan’s fat, brat son as bait to lure the Demogorgon into their trap, the entire coercive, heavy-handed scheme alchemizes into benevolence through a magical device inserted into the script. “Derek, wash up,” Mrs. Turnbow tells her son. “Tina, get the door, and be polite — unless it’s a Mormon, or a Democrat.” Did you catch that? The Cosbyesque forced drugging and Ottis Toole–style kidnapping is okay because the Turnbows vote Republican, which automatically transforms a family who supported the same candidate in 1984 that citizens in 49 of 50 states voted for into a sort of human representation of the Demogorgon. In an earlier season, Hopper, the former Hawkins police chief and foster father of sorts of Eleven, killed Russians. That feels so Red Dawn, very, very Rambo even. In Season Five, he kills and tortures American soldiers in the Upside Down. That’s about as ’80s as Wavy Gravy reciting Allen Ginsberg’s poetry on the hood of an AMC Rebel station wagon while wearing bell-bottoms and a dashiki. Ditto for the homosexual themes that invade the later seasons. In the back of a van in Season Four, Will asks Mike: “Can I … show you something?” He then reveals a phallic item to Mike’s “This is amazing” response. The directors want us to notice but not to accuse them of any intentionality. In doing so, the one who notices rather than the one who inserted homoerotic imagery into a scene between two teenage boys becomes the perv. The conversation continues in a less sexual but more emotional tone. “When you’re different, sometimes you feel like a mistake,” Will explains to Mike ostensibly about Eleven but really about himself. “But you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all. Like she’s better for being different. And that gives her the courage to fight on. If she was mean to you or she seemed like she was pushing you away, it’s probably because she’s scared of losing you.” This theme continues into Season Five. Robin and Vickie’s lesbian relationship similarly jumps into the foreground. And with that, the 2020s invade the 1980s more pervasively than the Upside Down invades Hawkins. Why not give the characters iPhones and Facebook pages, too? The most obvious, and annoying, deviation from the 1980s does not involve any hot-button topics. It instead pertains to the emotions that Americans displayed, or hid, or did not feel, in dealing with other Americans way back when. In Season Four, the introduction of Eddie seemed like a telegraphed maneuver to provoke a vicarious emotional response in the viewers who see matters through Dustin’s eyes. All of the bonding between the two appeared unnatural, forced, and designed to lead to a big emotional moment that never really came for any intelligent viewer who could see through the scriptwriter’s cheap trick. In Season Five, Joyce becomes more of a nervous wreck, sentenced to overacting in a perpetual loop of high-string melodrama. This puts Winona Ryder, a fine actress, in the unenviable position of imitating Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. If the various former child actors (several of them now in their thirties) do not deserve better than to be cast in an afternoon soap opera, Ryder does. More so than the Mind Flayer, post-1980s, touchy-feely sentimentality possesses Will. He not only seeks to play childish games as a teenager, but he also obsesses over Dungeons & Dragons in the mid-to-late 1980s when it struck everyone else as about as current as Gary Numan, John Anderson, and The Greatest American Hero. He cries, hugs, and displays a serious penchant for heart-to-heart talks. “I’ve been a total third-wheel all day,” Will whines to Mike in one such feelings-nothing-more-than-feelings conversation in Season Four. “It’s been miserable. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t smiling.” Not everybody acted like Bob Knight during the 1980s. But nobody talked like Will Byers. One wishes Millie Bobbie Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Noah Schnapp (who looks like he took acting classes before the current season), and the rest better success than Dana Plato, Corey Haim, Carl Switzer, and others who endured a curse disguised as a blessing in achieving fame at a young age. As to their characters, they deserve a fate worse than the Upside Down. To love the brilliance of the early seasons of Stranger Things, one must necessarily root for Vecna’s complete triumph. To quote the title of the debut album of Eddie’s favorite band, “kill ’em all.” Stranger Things ran its course just as 33-year-old actors playing teens do. A show about fending off an invasion from another dimension instead met its demise through the encroachment of a different time.

by Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts: I appreciate your support of this website over the years since you called me out of my short-lived retirement.  My Christmas column of many years ago has become a tradition beloved by many.  Here it is for 2025: The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to […]

by Steve Watson, Modernity News: As part of REQUIRED course Leaked PowerPoint lessons from a required first-year education course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reveal a shocking push of extreme left-wing ideology on immigration, race, and gender—turning future educators into activists instead of teachers equipped to handle basics like math or reading. This taxpayer-funded […]