Does Modern Society Unfairly Portray the 1950s?

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Most who were living at the time posting here have much positive to say about the 1950s and everybody I’ve talked to over the years, black or white, have much positive to say. Before I forget, or before someone reminds me, no it wasn’t equally good for everyone. No time ever was. This thread reminds me of American history textbooks back in college. Whatever was being discussed, at the end of the each section invariably there would be the comments letting us know that the benefits didn’t apply equally to everyone. Of course just about everyone who was taking the course knew that. I remember the professor pointing out the textbook adding the not equal for everyone after each section, and him saying how it was an insult to peoples’ intelligence. So yes we all know it wasn’t equal for everyone.
 
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The 1950s were so great because a Civil Rights Movement could happen. Now that the Leftists have the upper hand, a Return to Normalcy Movement needs to happen. In various places, they brag about how “you people don’t have the influence you once had.” And how did that influence deteriorate? Are the Leftists today giving everyone a better life? I don’t think so and history is on the side of a period of growth and normalcy. And social stability.
 
YM@snarflemike
“snarflemike said:
The 50s have been the whipping boy decade ever since I was a kid in the 60s. The more I read the hyperbole against the 50s the more I thought it must have been a pretty good decade to be alive. I’m contrary that way. 🙂
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Lol! You got it! It was a W-O-N-derful decade!
 
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0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Dog-whistle is when you say things in a coded language for a certain group of people to understand.
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To some people (say, those who think that intersectional feminism is amazing and necessary), everything said by anybody they don’t like fits that criteria.
 
That’s generally true. When adopting a certain way of thinking, a kind of automatic filtering occurs.
 
edwest211 said:
…a Return to Normalcy Movement needs to happen…
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A fetching of the baby from all that bathwater? Absolutely worthwhile.
edwest211 said:
In various places, they brag about how “you people don’t have the influence you once had.”
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I don’t believe that you personally want a bunch of influence. I think you’re objecting that there were real virtues that were widely valued in the 1950s that deserve to be widely valued and to have broad influence again, such as:
the idea that a business contract shouldn’t be more legally binding than marriage vows,
that anybody who gets a college degree that obliterates their ability to tell a girl from a boy ought to ask for their money and their common sense back,
that there are no rights that don’t carry duties and
that there are no entitlements that don’t imply an obligation on the parties that have to fulfill them, such that the fulfilling parties ought to have a right to say what they want their fellow citizens to feel entitled to as part of the societal contract.

I totally agree with you on quite a bit, Ed. I just don’t think we can go back there. We can revive some of what was thrown out and we’d be better off if we did, but we can’t go back. I also don’t think we can convince the naysayers to give the good old stuff a second look if we start with the premise that it takes a Leftist or an Anarchist or a Communist to want to live in 2019 instead of 1949.

Next year is 2020, no matter what we do.
 
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Peebo said:
Each generation has its own problems…it’s no good trying to blame one from another…and it depends on your age in each generation…I grew up in the 50s-60s…in Australia…had a great childhood…hiking…biking… sports…the beach etc…never heard of drugs…or gays…transgenders etc…good wholesome TV and movies…learned the 3r’s at school…that was it…so like I said…it was a great time…it may have even been different here in the US for kids…it was probably different for adults no matter where in the world…I can’t say as I wasn’t an adult back then…so it probably depends on who you ask about the 50’s and 60s…for me it was great
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I don’t doubt that you and other children in 50s Australia had that.

Then again, ask an Aboriginal child growing up in the same era what their experiences were (and I have, given that I work with them). They grew up with their people not having the vote, or citizenship rights of any sort, not being counted in the census, children being forcibly removed from families for the express purpose of “educating” them out of their own culture and heritage, being made to do unpaid work or having most of what wages they earned confiscated from them, often needing permission to move or marry, and on and on. Leading to disempowerment and lack of agency, contributing to overuse of alcohol and all the ills that come with it.

That is not the minority experience among Aboriginal Australians of the time, but the vast majority.

Now our friend edwest would doubtless dismiss this as “unbalanced” because they weren’t “the entire population”. So what? Jesus said “whatever you do to the least of these you do to Me”, so we don’t get a free pass to dismiss the experiences of minorities, past or present, simply because they are minorities.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Dog-whistle is when you say things in a coded language for a certain group of people to understand.
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Yes. I know.

Referring to historical oppression of certain groups the way he did indicates that either 1) he doesn’t think these people were really oppressed, or 2) he thinks their oppression was in some way justified.
 
Well, some of us never left. The garbage that was thrown at us by the media, the strip clubs, the (PORN) Adult Bookstores, created a lot of human misery and a lot of confusion. Starting in 1971, deleting those things became more and more important as TV and movies got worse as the years and decades passed. That all needs to be thrown out. It needs to be remembered and added to a list of “do not do this.”

My TV is in a landfill somewhere, where it belongs. The ‘calendar fantasy’ does not affect me just as no wisdom or enlightenment or anything else poured into people’s heads when the date changed from 1999 to 2000. And next year is going to come and so what? So what?

A mother and father owned a convenience store. They had two kids. I went to school with one of them. We were all cut from the same cloth. One day, the dad told me about a guy who came into his store to try to cash a welfare check. He refused. He told him to go to the bank down the street. He then told me how wrong it was for an able-bodied young man to turn to welfare just because he could. He didn’t name him or say where he lived. I understood that store owner. They were like part of my family.
 
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edwest211 said:
One day, the dad told me about a guy who came into his store to try to cash a welfare check. He refused. He told him to go to the bank down the street. He then told me how wrong it was for an able-bodied young man to turn to welfare just because he could. He didn’t name him or say where he lived. I understood that store owner. They were like part of my family.
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That was a disgusting act on the part of the store owner. The guy could have been unable to work due to mental illness: not all ailments are visible to the naked eye.
 
Inaccurate assumption. He knew the guy in question. I had every reason to believe the store owner since he was a trustworthy man. I personally knew someone who went on welfare because she could, and then her daughter went on welfare because she could. And the guy could still go to the bank to cash his check.
 
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I don’t know the details back in that time, but later in time, a store owner would be stuck with a welfare check as the banks would only cash it for the person it was made out to.

Jim
 
You can’t stir things up. The guy in question could ignore the store owner and go to the bank. So the mystery guy was able to cash his check.
 
They generally don’t and some try to cash the check after they took it from the mother who received it.

Jim
 
It’s relevant.

“That was a disgusting act on the part of the store owner. The guy could have been unable to work due to mental illness: not all ailments are visible to the naked eye.”
 
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