The 1950s were before my time but it looks like a golden age to me. I understand that problems existed in the 1950s, like every other time, but it seems to me that life was generally good back then.
All around us we see our culture being degenerated. Crime is condoned, immorality is promoted, whites are discriminated against, education is dumbed down......the list goes on and on.
In this thread I invite everyone to list beliefs, attitudes, conditions and events that would not have existed or taken place in the 1950s.
For example, in recent years a song glorifying pimps won an Oscar. This would not have happened in the 1950s.
Here's another example. The Jena 6 attacked a white man who was doing nothing but walking. The criminals were treated as victims and heroes. This attack would not have taken place in the 1950s. There would not have been widespread support for the criminals in the 1950s.
List any examples you think of, great or small.
Perhaps some unaware white person who reads this thread will realize that things don't have to be the way they are. The world was better once and it can be that way again.
17 comments
Black people can walk the streets safely. That would never have happened in the 1950s.
If a man beats his wife until she ends up in the hospital, he'll be arrested, and socially (as well as legally) condemned. That would never have happened in the 1950s.
Priests that rape children are sometimes arrested. That would never have happened in the 1950s.
A black man got to be POTUS. That would never have happened in the 1950s.
In the Fifties, Emmet Till was murdered. In the Fifties, songs like "Party Doll" were around. In the Fifties, at least until Sputnik shook us up, Americans were being conscientiously dumbed down, so they'd "adjust". In the Fifties, lots of white Christian "youpeople" were living out a very dull American Dream in little boxes on the hillside and the others couldn't even get that and in the South everyplace had two fountains and two sets of bathrooms and waiting rooms and about the only choices a girl had was to be a wifeandmommy or an old maid (pick one) schoolteacher secretary cashier teller nurse, though some secretaries wound up being Back Street Women, and some nurses and all stewardesses were Bad Ladies, whom men satisfied biological urges with but never married. And if you were dissatisfied wth any part of this, you were called a Communist and died on a bread line. Oh, I remember the Fifties.
Ugh.
The 1950s was an age of rampant violence and corruption.
-Wife beating was accepted, and even respected.
-Drunk driving was excused, and the carnage on our grandparents roads was quite considerable.
-Female employees were expected to render sexual favours to male supervizors... even if they were married.
-Prostitution was rampant, and pimps made a fortune off of it. And yes, Frank Sinatra sang about it.
-Irish, Italian, and Anglo gangsters terrorized the citys, while town bosses ruled smaller communitys with impunity.
The social ills of the 1950s didnt get mentioned in Leave it to Beaver... but they were there.
In the Fifties, the top tax rate was 91%, black and gay people basically had no rights (which you probably think was a good thing) and life was only a conservative utopia on the surface.
Oh, why do I bother? You're a blight on society.
There is a great moment of reflection by Drizzt Do'Urden in one of the R.A Salvatore books. I'd have to do some digging to find which one. But anyway, Drizzt contemplates how desperate Bruenor is to find the homeland he was forced to leave as a young dwarf. The moment of reflection is quite long and winding but it boils down to the question: Is the time of our childhood better in our memories because it truly was more simple and an easier era to live in, or is it because at the time *we* were more simple without the pressure of our adult life?
Every time someone says something like this I think back to that and I have to say: I don't think there has ever been a true 'golden age' in all of human history.
The 50's were also dorky. Thank Aquarius-In-A-VW-Bus for the 60's!
The only stuff cool about the fifties was all that fun "sock-hop/rock & roll/chrome-plated/neon/poodle-skirt/Elvis/neon-light/cool Daddy-O" stuff...but even that's kinda "quaint" compared to later stuff....except for Beatniks, sorta quasi-proto hippie Bohemian hipster types who liked pot, espresso, Jazz & guys like Jack Kerouac.
Then again, the "cool" 50's stuff would be as "repugnant" to this guy as a vision of John "Bonzo" Bonham wearing hip-hop clothes while having gay sex at a flowerkid love-in with Marilyn Manson while eating ecstasy-laced bat heads!
@Percy Q. Shunn
You know, not that this is on topic or anything, but I can't help but look at the Obama girls and think they are so adorable, how can these people look at them and just automatically hate them because of their skin?
On some level, I think I fundamentally do not understand racism. And I'm glad of that.
The Jena 6 pled guilty to battery, and were sentenced to 18 months in juvenile detention. The protests and advocacy for them was because they were initially charged for attempted second-degree murder, when there was no evidence to support such a charge and similar incidents involving white youths beating people were handled far more leniently. Learn to Google
Some other things that happened in the 1950s:
-Smallpox
-Polio was still widespread.
-Thousands of times as many cases and deaths from measles, mumps, rubella, typhoid, pertussis, diphtheria, and other diseases that are now very rare in the US.
-Many areas were on the brink of famine because the Green Revolution had not yet happened.
-Ten thousand people per year were dying from fallout cancers due to all of the atomic bomb tests.
You Fail History Forever
Also - how does somebody saying something like that have such a username? I'd be tempted to say it is a Poe, but it seems too obvious ...
The Jena 6 weren't regarded as heroes. Most people (including most black people) viewed their actions as inexcusable but a some people had sympathy of what led to them to their actions - frustrations at allegations of lynching nooses being hung and no one doing anything about it.
Except for anti-black bigots. Racists were HAPPY that the Jena 6 acted in the manner they did so they could have more "blacks are savages/apes" cannon fodder. They probably also did straight-arm salutes and grinned like mules eating briars at the thought of black kids being threatened with nooses.
Aha, another "Because Blacks!!!1!!11" post. Since we're having an Off Kilter Logic Day:
Purple people suck too because they're all dead and shit.
Ah, yes. The Fifties. More specifically, the Fifties as idolized by American right-wingers, meaning ditzy, whiter-than-white suburban families (plus golden retriever) practicing Nuclear Family Values in black and white, all set to the tune of "Happy Go Lively".
That never actually happened in reality.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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