Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, in 1985 the stock villains weren't terrorists Libyan Terrorists were stock villains in a lot of 1980s entertainment (especially on TV like the A-Team and MacGuyver), including perhaps most notably their very clear presence in 1985 in Back to the Future .
That's a fair point. Still, terrorism was nowhere near as much on the radar then as it is now.
Jingoism has a hard time with nuance and diversity, so the "War on Terror" (sigh) mentality that terrorists are some how a coordinated force, and "mostly" religious extremists, and who cares what methods they use to promote terror just lump it all together.
Which is to say in metaphor terms, I don't think the number of terrorism "bogeys" on the radar changed, so much as the "friend or foe" system just started using the same color and tag for all of them, instead of somewhat more individual labels. It looks like "more on the radar" because it's easier to spot clusters, but they were there before.