Let’s talk about today. Any unfairness? Serious unfairness?
And back to the 1950s. People understood what growing up meant, from child to young adult, there were good role models and good education and shared national values. People got married and had kids - two being average. Crime was lower.
If laws were passed to help women, that’s great. But don’t brainwash them by denying an even species relationship between men and women. Don’t put them in reeducation camps called “women’s studies.” Don’t take away their generational ties and family heritage and replace it with 1970s fiction, created by strangers.
Women were not helped by:
Artificial contraception.
Legal abortion. Or
No-Fault Divorce - created out of thin air. Go ahead, put down “irreconcilable differences,” since it’s no one’s fault.
And dating. What’s that? Forming personal relationships between men and women was common knowledge in the 1950s. Today?
I think you’re talking about why today is painted in a light that is far too rosy by comparison, not why the 1950s are unfairly portrayed.
Shared national values? For crying out loud, they had Jim Crow laws in the 1950s!! You know the list of shocking discrimination I could list…What kind of “values” were those? McCarthyism–that’s what happens when we have “shared values” run amok. There were thought police back then, too, and they also ruined careers and reputations.
Yes, I think crime was lower, but to some extent we’ll never know when it comes to some crimes, because they weren’t reported. How much of the abuse of women and children, both physical and sexual, did we find out was routinely covered up back then–I don’t just mean bishops, but mothers and grandmothers. There were a lot of victims shamed into silence, and you know they were. No, it was not all rosy and good role models. Let’s be blunt: there was a lot of lying to cover up when there was embarrassing or criminal behavior by “role models.” There was a lot of looking the other way to make a pretty picture. That is not better. That just looks better.
Is today’s brazen bad behavior a societal illness all its own? It surely is. A good deal of what was wrong then wasn’t appreciated as wrong then. Honestly–in the 1950s, they still used corporal punishment in schools. Yes, they had children hold out their hands so they could be hit with a ruler as a punishment. That’s something to get romantic about? No, I don’t think so.
Yes, it was a very optimistic time, it was economically robust, there was a lot going right,
but it was not sustainable. There were scientific advances that were wrong-headed in ways that were not understood at the time, but
they were not sustainable. As a nation, we felt we were unbeatable, but
it wasn’t a realistic self-concept.
America felt good, but in retrospect we also suffered from some false self-esteem back then, too.
If we’re going to get anywhere, we need to be honest about both what was right, what was wrong, and what was mythology. That goes for looking back as much as it does looking at things right now with glasses that are too rose-colored.
