America 1950 vs. America 2012

The Economic Collapse ^ | 03/01/2012 | Michael Snyder

[Coldwater Creek]

For me it’s a mixed bag. Great time to be a child. Love the technology of today. Hate the politics and morals of today.

[yetidog]

You can describe the (really) “good old days” all you want, but minorities and feminists will play the civil rights card on you all day long.

[ClearCase_guy]

I'm definitely in favor of tossing aside the 21st century. We are in a bad place right now, and I would much rather go back 50 or 60 years.

Of course, some Freeper will be along in a minute and accuse me of fervently wishing for the return of slavery, segregation and/or Jim Crow.

Feelings of nostalgia often seem to be interpreted as unbridled race hatred. Don't know why.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Feelings of nostalgia often seem to be interpreted as unbridled race hatred. Don’t know why.

Maybe it has something to do with civil rights for blacks in the 1950’s.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Love the technology of today. Hate the politics and morals of today.

How about having the technology of today with the general morality of the 1950’s...

They are not mutually exclusive.

[Vaduz]

The economic collapse is not an accident it’s a plan.

[Mmogamer]

I often think how it would be to live back then. They had many of the things we have today- tv, air conditioning, movies etc. Of course no computers, but book work nicely.
It would take time to adjust but you could survive.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

And to this day they bash McCarthy. Seems he was right all along judging by how leftist commie slimebags have all but destroyed this country.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I’ve had some conversations about this with people. And they frequently say that the ‘50s were terrible, with blacks at the back of the bus, and women in the kitchen, not in the board room.

Everything like this is a mixed bag. There was greater consensus about moral behavior back in the old days. In some ways, families and family values were stronger. There was not nearly as much illegitimacy, nor was illegitimacy encouraged or subsidized. Does everyone know that there was a time in this country, when a girl who got pregnant without a husband couldn’t just go down and get on public assistance? Our social policies reflected different values then.

It seems that the liberal view of this subject is that if you liked certain things about the old days, that you want to turn back the clock in every way.

[SeekAndFind]

The irony is with so much technology and information in our fingertips today, our young kids seem to be on average, less literate, less educated and less well informed.

I would blame this to their incessant focus on the trivial.

[hillarys cankles]

My good buddy and I always talk about which era we would have rather grown up in. The 40’s, 50’s win, hands down. This country had it’s problems but we still had our morals. The values of the populace were still intact. Society today is a complete mess. My daughter will grow up in a completely different America than even I grew up in (late 70’s early 80’s).

[Responsibility2nd]

Yes, they will. But minorities and women are worse off today than they were 50 years ago.

And we have minorities and women to blame for that fact.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

The downsides of the 1950s. Boring as heck. Swamp coolers instead of a/c. About the only source of current information was via radio, with early television little more than “radio with pictures”.

Transportation was on state roads that were generally not that hot, and often downright dangerous.

Polio and any number of childhood disease were still common, and medical care was as often as not just palliative.

The Red Menace and the growing threat of nuclear war. Pollution getting worse and worse.

In much of the US there was still a lot of gratuitous racism and segregation. Until Eisenhower, the Democrats controlled everything. What happened in Washington was only known to the public when they felt like telling, which was not often.

Food was pretty bland. Flour, fat, meat, sugar, salt in endless combinations.

[napscoordinator]

I love 2012 and all that it brings. You have to accept the good with the bad. In the 1950’s many wives and kids were beat up by their dad’s when he got home from work. It is still that way today but it is more easily to press charges against him. The technology of 1950 is practically zero compared to today. 2012 is fine for me.

[ClearCase_guy]

But minorities and women are worse off today than they were 50 years ago.

I agree 100%.

[Theoria]

It was a mixed bag for different people. Gov't enforced rules where minorites couldn't marry whites, etc.

The US was partly able to prosper because of the destruction of Europe and Asia. That's alot different now.

[anonsquared]

In 1950, blacks were not enslaved on plantations.

In 2012, blacks are enslaved on the Democrat plantation.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I love that bottom picture. That’s Cripple Creek, Colorado and it hardly looks any different now. I spent the night in a hotel on the extreme right side of that picture overlooking that scene.

[FrankR]

For those of us who grew up during that period, we were lucky enough to be born in the greatest times of America. We've experienced what it is like to be without today's novelties like TV, Computers, and cell phones, and we survived.

It wasn't a sad time because we didn't have those and other marvels, we never heard of them, so we didn't miss them.

I remember my Dad coming home with a new Ford, with factory installed turn signals...THAT was a biggie then.

I remember people laughing about that "useless" radio band called "FM"...it was only good for classical or "elevator" music.

I recall "Stereo" being a new and exciting way to listen to music. Record companies put out special Stereo "demo" records so we could hear the sound of a train moving from one speaker to the other, and jet plane sounds whizzing through the living room.

We we did finally get TV, it was a 7-inch, black and white screen that took 5 minutes to warm up before you got a picture, which was usually "rolling" or skewed beyond visibility.

Beer in cans had to be opened with a "church key", the puncture type can opener, as did the early "canned" sodas.

My mother did our clothes with an old wringer-type washing machine, and hung them on the clothesline to dry. My grandmother still boiled them in a big iron kettle in the backyard.

My grandmother lived 16 miles away, yet it was "long distance" to call her on our old dial telephone...and you had to go through the operator to make the call.

In our age group we are privileged to have seen all these moments in history and watch technology change from things our kids would find ancient, to the rise of digital age.

We are the ones who should be in a place to judge America's progression, or regression. We know how it was then without seeing it through the prism provided by some 25-year-old journalism graduate.

We KNOW what life was like under Eisenhower, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan...we don't have to read it in some revised history book. The media can't tell us that Reagan wasn't great, we lived the era and we know that things were much better under his watch.

We also sat in gas lines in the carter years and paid double-digit interest on everything. That is how we know where this obama administration is coming from, and where it's headed...we've lived it.

It's been said that the concept of history for most of us begins when we were born, everything before that is just what you read and hear from elders. For those of us who came along in the 40's, our concept of history is based on being there, not reading about it or making it up to suit our current purpose.

I think the late 40's and the 50's were just a brief moment of the real America, or it could have been because we were just happy, carefree kids, safe in our world with very few responsibilites.