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We have all those types of problems and more, wars, HIV and diseases. A lot of those problems you point out was the government that was growing and being to globalist. Some of the problems you mentioned were even really problems in America. Did nothing improve today over the past like pollution controls and less smoking. Of course not. None of that is the real point.
Indeed. There is a good side and a bad side to any time period, including our own, and reasonable people just disagree about how much good and bad each era had. When people recall what was great about a previous epoch, they don't want to bring back atrocities from that period any more than someone who prefers our time would like to have ISIS burn people to death, the US torture people in Gitmo, citizens to snitch on parents who dare to let their kids outside, or governments put entire cities in "lockdowns". They want to resurrect a zeitgeist, a way of living, and a fashion that was unfairly lost to time.
Some people were excluded from that, but the way of life of the downtrodden is not what is being fondly recalled here, and a resurrection of the zeitgeist of any time period would naturally include everyone we include today. To suggest otherwise in the absence of evidence to the contrary is disingenuous, and is honestly a sign of desperation; apparently no argument against the actual lifestyle, fashion, and zeitgeist of the period exists so it's just said that because it didn't expand to encompass everybody during its existence it was evil . You can take your pick of such instances today, so why the present day is spared from such "arguments" remains a mystery.
Besides, it's not as if exclusion of everyone but white Christian men was a defining characteristic of the 1950s; a 1950s fashion, zeitgeist, and way of life that was completely non-discriminatory would still be the 1950s and otherwise would be identical in every respect with our 1950s. The same logic applies to almost any time period after the 18th century or so*; very few eras had exclusion and discrimination as a defining essential characteristic as opposed to one that could be expended with otherwise little change.
*Before that it gets fuzzy because there really wasn't any such thing as a social-cultural-economic mainstream for common people, so including everyone in such a thing would really change a lot. When people pine for periods back then it's usually for the zeitgeist, fashion, and lifestyle of aristocrats.
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Originally Posted by TamaraSavannah
Two things I immediately recall from my childhood. The first was the surprise I learned in 4th grade about the problem about JFK's election because he was Catholic......and at the time in my child mind, Catholic, Christian, Episcopalian was all the same to me. I didn't know there was a difference.
From what I've been able to make out, in 1960 most people didn't care if a candidate was Catholic, but enough people did for it to be a significant factor in whether JFK could win the election; he successfully neutralized that factor by convincing people he wouldn't take orders from the Pope and that was the end of it. Anti-Catholic prejudice was almost completely out of fashion by then, though; it first rose up in the 19th century as a reaction to the Irish immigration wave, probably peaked in the mid to late 19th century, then receded steadily until it almost completely vanished by the late 1960s.
In 1928 it was much more of a factor for Al Smith, and in that election being Catholic hurt him in the South but actually helped him in the urban North. Since the South was the only real electoral vote base for the Democrats and it was a big GOP year to start with, Hoover peeled off a few Southern states (helped tremendously by the South prospering in the Roaring Twenties for the first time since before the Civil War) while Al Smith could only pick up a few small Northeast states and cut into Hoover's margins elsewhere in the North. He was probably hurt by a few points nationally, but any Democrat would have been up against a wall that year. So even in 1928 anti-Catholic prejudice didn't present a tremendous barrier to a Presidential candidate, and yes, Hoover was deploying a Southern strategy before it was cool (while being mildly progressive on civil rights no less).
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Secondly and more importantly, as a military brat in the 60's, there was no segregation in my elementary school, not forcibly, not by custom, ZERO. So it was kind of a surprise to hear about in school, perhaps in the mid 70's, because I, quite frankly, had never heard of segregation. It was something that I had never experienced in the military brat community.
Most children in that era didn't hear of segregation, because as of the early 1950s separate public schools for each race were only required in the South and the border states. It was either prohibited or very uncommon in most other states, and this was the case long before Brown v. Board of Education; Iowa, for instance, banned segregated public schools in 1868, one of the first states to do so.
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So, really, when we talk about the old American society, just what part of that society are we talking about?
The more politically-correct progressive types usually talk about the most regressive segments they can find so they can make people feel guilty for wanting to resurrect anything better from the past that the present day doesn't offer.
Only scared white people (mostly men) look longingly back at the 50's. I guarantee it's no wonderful panacea if you were black in the south, a driven woman, an immigrant, gay (unless you were Hoover) or fell under the paranoia of McCarthyism.
All I remember about the 50's was growing up I played baseball every weekend. I wasn't worried about the atomic bomb because my teacher told me my school desk would protect me.
Because they were full of booze, Valium, and barbituates. "Mother's little helpers."
By any conceivable measure "mother's little helpers", as in prescription drugs to combat depression, are vastly more common now than they were even 20 years ago, let alone 60. What does that say about the wages of modernity?
And although I couldn't readily find statistics for American women or mothers, for Americans as a whole alcohol consumption levels are currently similar to what they were the 1950s:
My grandparents missed the 1930s. My parents missed 1960s. I was born in 1985 and don't know the differences. Memory Lane is not an actual, physical street.
I think to a lot of people, The “good old days” were a simpler time that allowed for a simpler life and, therefore, a simpler people. I can understand why people feel they were simply happier then.
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How do you quantify either of these?
. You can take your pick of such instances today, so why the present day is spared from such "arguments" remains a mystery.
