The 50s Were So GREAT In America- Really? REALLY?.......

1. 86

   gmwilliamsposted 6 years ago

   
   Some pundits maintain that the 50s were such a perfect time in America.  They hate what America has become in the 21st century with its progressivism i.e. gradual equality for all its citizens.  They want to return America back to its old, golden days-let's see how "golden" America was in the 50s- here are the links:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Tcwww8nVI
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amZD8XxTsjQ
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB61C_iTPnI
   
   Good "old days"............................for WHOM? Your thoughts?

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      wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, we've come a long way, haven't we?  Although, looking at some of the comments in the link:
      
      "White people white people white people, u have to pay for your sins against GODS people, u have not repented for anything, youre totally unconscionable then and now. I know u!!!!!!"
      
      "What a evil people. Made straight from Satan's spawn...May they rot in hell!!"
      
      "all white ppl were racist in those days.. Sad that they make excuses about those days... pure evil ppl... Hell is were they will Go."
      
      Perhaps we haven't come quite as far as we think we have?
      
      But the "Golden Age"?  Well, our inner cities weren't war zones from gangs killing each other in the 50's.  Half the kids in the country weren't from single parent families.  We didn't have religious nuts flying planes into buildings.  We didn't have the threat of total nuclear destruction having over us.  We didn't see mind altering drugs destroying lives every day throughout the nation.  We hadn't been invaded by millions of illegal aliens.  We didn't have half the nation taking charity from the other half.  We weren't using abortion as a birth control method. 
      
      I think we can find things wrong, badly wrong, with any decade we choose to look at - the trick is to look at the whole picture rather than just one facet before we condemn it as being an awful time in human or American history.  All in all, though, I think I prefer modern society to what we had back then.

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         Live to Learnposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Wow. If her links are full of such racist rants, I'm glad I didn't waste the time to click on them.

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            wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            I clicked.  And got a minute or two into it before I shut it off.

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      Credence2posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Well, Grace who would believe that the 1950's were once us? America at a state of relative innocence and naivety. But TV and the media was just a funhouse mirror, what housewife would wear high heels and pearls while preparing dinner? Ask Ms. Cleaver.
      
      The fifties were, in reality, the representation of a boiling cauldron of an American society, with many social issues and grievances bottled up for sometime and postponed during 1940's due to the war. This was more involved than just civil rights, we cannot forget Betty Friedan and the "Feminine Mystique" which was much of the foundation of a new appreciation of relations between male and female that will come of age in the very next decade. The drab and conformity of corporate America will get a shake up, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit". The sterile suburbs were where people  would attempt to find shelter from the tsunami that was around the corner.   The sixties was when it all was going to go 'boom', what an exciting time that was....., It was my decade. The 1960's as we appreciated them, began on November 22, 1963. There has been a cynicism within American life from that point on.
      
      The reality is that the 'good ole days' are always relative. For what ever challenges we did not face during that time, were replaced with other concerns not appreciated today.
      
      I, for one, am glad that the Fifties went out with a bang, because the veneer of respectability for the time was just the pressure cooker ready to blow. We, as a people, were in a state of agitation and had accelerated expectations as to what was to come and what was long overdue.

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         gmwilliamsposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         +1,000,000,000,000,000,000!

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         wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         "We, as a people, were in a state of agitation and had accelerated expectations as to what was to come and what was long overdue."
         
         LOL   Are you talking here about the 50's or the 2010's? 

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            Credence2posted 6 years agoin reply to this

            "LOL   Are you talking here about the 50's or the 2010's?"
            
            Oh no, no, Wilderness, I was referring to the Fifties, for the AA Community it was a time of agitation and heightened expectations for the future. Bus Boycotts, Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Court Ordered Desegregation of public facilities, etc.
            
            Things a were shakin', so let the good times roll....

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            1. 95

               wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               And now we we want (and look forward to) free medical care, free college, hundreds of thousands of DACA kids becoming citizens, truly equal treatment for gays etc.  Perhaps in the next 50 years we'll be wanting free houses for everyone and true total support cradle to grave.  We always want more than we have - common to virtually all humanity - and there's nothing wrong with that. 
               
               It just struck me that your statement applies as much to us now as it did in the 50's.  Our wants have changed as we got (mostly) what we wanted back then, that's all.

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                  Credence2posted 6 years agoin reply to this

                  It isn't going to be as dismal a picture as you paint it, Wilderness, because of the universal constant 'that someone has to pay for the soup'. Everybody wants free stuff now, is that not human nature. The fact that there are costs to production will prevent that wish from coming to fruition anytime soon. Never fear, in this culture true socialism a la Scandinavia will never work. While the concept of socialism within limits never frightened me, there are limits that I recognize that I would have trouble crossing. According to a hubber friend of mine living in the UK, some of the accommodations that are made in Britain for its unemployed got my attention as very lenient.
                  
                  Fifty years is a long time, society as we know it today may be completely reoriented based upon social change and technology, who can peer into future with any accuracy?

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                     wildernessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                     I don't know that I can agree with either there will always be a cost OR that everyone wants free stuff.
                     
                     One day (if the species lasts long enough) nearly anything we want will have no real cost, not in human terms.  Raw materials and energy, yes, but not in terms of human endeavor.  Nor do I agree that everybody wants a free ride - lots of people (most, I think) would rather be useful, would rather produce something, than to ride through life on the shirt tales of others.
                     
                     In that 50 years we could be looking at a nearly totally automated, robotic, production system, and as it comes into sight we'll want it all.

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         Live to Learnposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         I didn't bother to listen to her links but I will tell you, the b.s. belief wilderness quoted from the link that this generation of any particular race is somehow responsible to pay for the sins of another, and that this generation of another race is somehow owed anything because of the suffering of another makes little sense. And never will.

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            Credence2posted 6 years agoin reply to this

            I never made any reference to the point that you are making, as it is a land mine.
            
              The links were just historical accounts of the way things were and were not saying anything about anyone owing anybody.
            
            But many are upset to revisit history and would rather ignore it rather than learn from it and make certain that it is not repeated in its many forms.
            
            This is about more than race, it is gender, the phony status quo of American life that was the foundation of the creation of beatniks and hippies. This among other things.
            
            But in the main theme of Grace's thread, I would dump the 1950's in favor of the current time in a heart beat despite all of our contemporary problems.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 6 years ago

   Oh yeah, the '50s were fabulous...if you were a straight, white, Christian male. Otherwise you were pretty much persona non grata.

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   1. 86

      gmwilliamsposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Totally concur, if you watch the videos I listed, these videos say EXACTLY that.   Happy to be living in the 2010s where things are MUCH BETTER!   Blacks, women, & those who refused to conform  were marginalized & seen as THE OTHER or WORSE!

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   Onusonusposted 6 years ago

   It's actually pretty sickening how much in reverse we are going in this country when it comes to race.
   
   Trump recently tweeted this:
   "If you're a black woman in America, it's statistically safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term or give birth."

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