"The American people have lost their way before and always returned to a place of decency and sanity."
I don't think we have ever lost our way so completely as we have now. And with our youngest adults, as a generation, rejecting decency and sanity as the values of "oppressors," how can we possibly hope to have a future that is sane and decent?
"The American people have lost their way before and always returned to a place of decency and sanity."
I don't think we have ever lost our way so completely as we have now. And with our youngest adults, as a generation, rejecting decency and sanity as the values of "oppressors," how can we possibly hope to have a future that is sane and decent?
I think it's a cyclical event usually preceding global change in dynamics.
1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, 2020 all experienced global events that enacted serious change, either through decolonization, war, or social upheaval. Keep going backwards....
Did the adults really stay in charge? IтАЩm a Boomer and remember that time well, although I was only a child. Look back on photos of many of the politicians from the 60тАЩs and 70тАЩs. The adults of the Biden/Pelosi generation wore flare pants, wide ties, and long-ish hair. They didnтАЩt try to lead the young, they tried to copy them. They were all-in on тАЬfinding themselvesтАЭ. Gail SheehyтАЩs тАЬPassagesтАЭ about adult navel gazing was a huge best seller. It was pathetic.
You may be correct about Congress. That may well be where Congress went off the rails. But the executive branch and the military stayed pretty adult. Even Carter was a grown-up just a misguided one. Clinton was the first of my generation and while I was embarrassed at his conduct in retrospect he looks like a genius compared to subsequent Presidents. And of course the Warren Court was in full liberal bloom.
Yes Lynn. My perspective on Clinton as President has changed greatly as I have gotten older. Hated him for a long time but now I am more like you. His conduct was horrible however he was a very smart politician. Changed course when he needed to and did some good. I'd take him over our current front runners now and that is saying something.
True. IMO the push for a federal behemoth has been underway for about a century and a half. But they still looked like Solomon compared to the current and recent crop of yahoos.
Hope was stronger then. The young protested an unjust war and fought racial discrimination. The brain dead youth of today obsess about their pronouns and vandalize posters of kidnapped children.
Without going through the entire biography that's impossible. If you're serious about the subject, you can read the paperback edition. Tweed ran the NY Democrat party, nothing happened without his approval. He was a con man and collected money from his constituents.
The first principle of argumentation is "onus probandi" - that the person making a claim is responsible for providing evidence to support that claim. If someone makes an assertion, it is their responsibility to prove or support it, rather than shifting the burden to others to disprove it.
Your assertion was, "The days of Boss Tweed in NY. If you read his biography you will see a striking resemblence [sic] to Trump."
The burden - and the ball - is in your court. I'll give you a leg up:
I was born in 1960 and I don't remember there being much chaos either - because I was so young. However, being born in the 60's and actually living through the 60's are two different things. You'd have to read about the 60's to know.
I lived through the 60тАЩs, Sam. Student riots, the SDS, Weather Underground, Black Panthers, anti-war rallies. The difference with today is that nobody back then questioned the value of America itself, and the extremist fringe was a fraction of todayтАЩs. This country today looks a lot like Russia in 1917, which collapsed due to a combination of wars, mismanagement and hubris. Sound familiar? Importantly, and contrary to what most Americans think, the people did not support the Bolsheviks - they merely took advantage of the chaos to engineer a coup and cemented their power over a few years. It could happen here.
I agree that there was no question about America's core solidity back then. Viet-Nam was seen by many as a wrong turn, but there was no wholesale demonization of America itself. Except for fringe groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, and the Weathermen who were violent and all spelled AmeriKa with a "K". Somehow, the survivors of these 60s fringe groups wormed their ways into academia, cloned themselves, and the clones begat a new generation of journalists, lawyers, administrators and politicos who went forth and "changed the system from within." And Bill Ayers became best buddies with a guy named Barack Obama...
Hi, I'm not understanding. Are you saying the hard left of the 60's didn't question the value of America? That's not correct. The 60's was the era of the demonization of capitalism / individual rights and the enshrinement of collectivism on so many major college campuses. It's clear we still have the same demonization of capitalism individual rights and the enshrinement of collectivism but this time it's coming from both the old hard left and the new authoritarian right. But you're right, it could happen here so we have to be vigilant.
Well, there was some of that, but it was almost more of a libertarian mishmash - drugs were cool, love was "free", long hair, rock and roll.... that's what most demonstrators were about, along with ending the Vietnam war. There wasn't a lot of support for the SDS, Bader Meinhoff, FALN, etc.
I was born in 1939 and lived through the 60s. It was not as chaotic or dangerous as it is now. You could participate or not and no one cared which choice you made. It's much different today.
I wasn't in the US during the DNC convention. Today we have the Jan. 6th whatever you want to call it, shootings daily, riots in cities, they aren't called riots anymore, I don't recall anyone being interested in what choices I made. We had a different experience.
How so. The difference now is that the media, and social media (including bots and foreign powers), inflate EVERY issue to make something seem more prevalent than it actually is. For example, there are 12,000 professors in the University of California System and you can count the handful who have been spouting B.S. about the Palestinians. Same with students. There are almost 300,000 students in the same system. How many participated in pro-Palestinian protests?
The vast vast vast majority of people just go about their daily lives. I mentor students at my company. Most of them just want good grades and a decent career and don't give two s****s about politics.
As you say, Scott, the media fans flames far more today, which is why it isnтАЩt trusted and why weтАЩre all here on Substack.
But, unlike the 60тАЩs, today we have a тАЬwokeтАЭ military and a FBI and CIA that clearly suppressed information they knew to be true, and did so many times. ThatтАЩs a big difference from a bunch of hippies running around Haight Ashbury.
Not much chaos?! I was born in 1968, so I missed the big show, but even a casual glance at the decade shows a mass movement of young people either checking out or becoming militant, a string of high-profile assassinations - including the murder of a front-runner for the presidency! - waves of demonstrations on campuses sometimes brutally repressed by authorities (e.g., the Kent State shootings), the rise of a more radical and violent offshoot of the civil rights movement, violence surrounding the political convention of a major party, and the ascension of one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history.
But, hey, I guess if you can drop acid in a field while listening to Jefferson Airplane, everything's just groovy, right?
I am old enough to remember 1968, a year marked by hundreds of riots, assassinations, and all of the catastrophic events that you mentioned. I do think that was the beginning of the "March through the institutions" that has been so successful. In my view, what we are seeing today is the bursting forth of a mindset that has been in the making for decades. The people dropping acid in the fields were not the problem. The problem is, and was, the extremists and their utopian plans to burn it all down. We hippies were a naive bunch, but we didn't advocate violence.
"The American people have lost their way before and always returned to a place of decency and sanity."
I don't think we have ever lost our way so completely as we have now. And with our youngest adults, as a generation, rejecting decency and sanity as the values of "oppressors," how can we possibly hope to have a future that is sane and decent?
I think it's a cyclical event usually preceding global change in dynamics.
1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, 2020 all experienced global events that enacted serious change, either through decolonization, war, or social upheaval. Keep going backwards....
IMHO
I wish I had a good answer.
Apparently you've never read about the 60's...
But the adults stayed in charge throughout the 60s. Now the Tik-Tokers are in charge.
Did the adults really stay in charge? IтАЩm a Boomer and remember that time well, although I was only a child. Look back on photos of many of the politicians from the 60тАЩs and 70тАЩs. The adults of the Biden/Pelosi generation wore flare pants, wide ties, and long-ish hair. They didnтАЩt try to lead the young, they tried to copy them. They were all-in on тАЬfinding themselvesтАЭ. Gail SheehyтАЩs тАЬPassagesтАЭ about adult navel gazing was a huge best seller. It was pathetic.
You may be correct about Congress. That may well be where Congress went off the rails. But the executive branch and the military stayed pretty adult. Even Carter was a grown-up just a misguided one. Clinton was the first of my generation and while I was embarrassed at his conduct in retrospect he looks like a genius compared to subsequent Presidents. And of course the Warren Court was in full liberal bloom.
Yes Lynn. My perspective on Clinton as President has changed greatly as I have gotten older. Hated him for a long time but now I am more like you. His conduct was horrible however he was a very smart politician. Changed course when he needed to and did some good. I'd take him over our current front runners now and that is saying something.
And he would and could work across the aisle.
True. IMO the push for a federal behemoth has been underway for about a century and a half. But they still looked like Solomon compared to the current and recent crop of yahoos.
Hope was stronger then. The young protested an unjust war and fought racial discrimination. The brain dead youth of today obsess about their pronouns and vandalize posters of kidnapped children.
Your paranoia is noted
Yes - including the eighteen-sixties.
The days of Boss Tweed in NY. If you read his biography you will see a striking resemblence to Trump.
In what way? Be SPECIFIC.
Without going through the entire biography that's impossible. If you're serious about the subject, you can read the paperback edition. Tweed ran the NY Democrat party, nothing happened without his approval. He was a con man and collected money from his constituents.
The first principle of argumentation is "onus probandi" - that the person making a claim is responsible for providing evidence to support that claim. If someone makes an assertion, it is their responsibility to prove or support it, rather than shifting the burden to others to disprove it.
Your assertion was, "The days of Boss Tweed in NY. If you read his biography you will see a striking resemblence [sic] to Trump."
The burden - and the ball - is in your court. I'll give you a leg up:
In what way? Be SPECIFIC.
It seems that you ignored my reply. Please go back and read it.
Right back at 'cha.
I'm sorry, I'm not up to mental rigors of what ever "Right back at' cha" means.
I was born in the 60s. The U.S. was not nearly as lost then as we are now.
I was born in 1960 and I don't remember there being much chaos either - because I was so young. However, being born in the 60's and actually living through the 60's are two different things. You'd have to read about the 60's to know.
I lived through the 60тАЩs, Sam. Student riots, the SDS, Weather Underground, Black Panthers, anti-war rallies. The difference with today is that nobody back then questioned the value of America itself, and the extremist fringe was a fraction of todayтАЩs. This country today looks a lot like Russia in 1917, which collapsed due to a combination of wars, mismanagement and hubris. Sound familiar? Importantly, and contrary to what most Americans think, the people did not support the Bolsheviks - they merely took advantage of the chaos to engineer a coup and cemented their power over a few years. It could happen here.
I agree that there was no question about America's core solidity back then. Viet-Nam was seen by many as a wrong turn, but there was no wholesale demonization of America itself. Except for fringe groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, and the Weathermen who were violent and all spelled AmeriKa with a "K". Somehow, the survivors of these 60s fringe groups wormed their ways into academia, cloned themselves, and the clones begat a new generation of journalists, lawyers, administrators and politicos who went forth and "changed the system from within." And Bill Ayers became best buddies with a guy named Barack Obama...
Hi, I'm not understanding. Are you saying the hard left of the 60's didn't question the value of America? That's not correct. The 60's was the era of the demonization of capitalism / individual rights and the enshrinement of collectivism on so many major college campuses. It's clear we still have the same demonization of capitalism individual rights and the enshrinement of collectivism but this time it's coming from both the old hard left and the new authoritarian right. But you're right, it could happen here so we have to be vigilant.
Well, there was some of that, but it was almost more of a libertarian mishmash - drugs were cool, love was "free", long hair, rock and roll.... that's what most demonstrators were about, along with ending the Vietnam war. There wasn't a lot of support for the SDS, Bader Meinhoff, FALN, etc.
I was born in 1939 and lived through the 60s. It was not as chaotic or dangerous as it is now. You could participate or not and no one cared which choice you made. It's much different today.
Respectfully disagree; no rash of assassinations and riots like during the entirety of the 60s.
And EVERYONE cared what choice you made, and would protest/fight against you. Do you forget "America Love It or Leave It"?
68 DNC convention comes to mind
I wasn't in the US during the DNC convention. Today we have the Jan. 6th whatever you want to call it, shootings daily, riots in cities, they aren't called riots anymore, I don't recall anyone being interested in what choices I made. We had a different experience.
How so. The difference now is that the media, and social media (including bots and foreign powers), inflate EVERY issue to make something seem more prevalent than it actually is. For example, there are 12,000 professors in the University of California System and you can count the handful who have been spouting B.S. about the Palestinians. Same with students. There are almost 300,000 students in the same system. How many participated in pro-Palestinian protests?
The vast vast vast majority of people just go about their daily lives. I mentor students at my company. Most of them just want good grades and a decent career and don't give two s****s about politics.
You should watch Citizen Kane; this is not new.
As you say, Scott, the media fans flames far more today, which is why it isnтАЩt trusted and why weтАЩre all here on Substack.
But, unlike the 60тАЩs, today we have a тАЬwokeтАЭ military and a FBI and CIA that clearly suppressed information they knew to be true, and did so many times. ThatтАЩs a big difference from a bunch of hippies running around Haight Ashbury.
Not much chaos?! I was born in 1968, so I missed the big show, but even a casual glance at the decade shows a mass movement of young people either checking out or becoming militant, a string of high-profile assassinations - including the murder of a front-runner for the presidency! - waves of demonstrations on campuses sometimes brutally repressed by authorities (e.g., the Kent State shootings), the rise of a more radical and violent offshoot of the civil rights movement, violence surrounding the political convention of a major party, and the ascension of one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history.
But, hey, I guess if you can drop acid in a field while listening to Jefferson Airplane, everything's just groovy, right?
I am old enough to remember 1968, a year marked by hundreds of riots, assassinations, and all of the catastrophic events that you mentioned. I do think that was the beginning of the "March through the institutions" that has been so successful. In my view, what we are seeing today is the bursting forth of a mindset that has been in the making for decades. The people dropping acid in the fields were not the problem. The problem is, and was, the extremists and their utopian plans to burn it all down. We hippies were a naive bunch, but we didn't advocate violence.
Lived through the 60's, "same old,same old."
My friends tell me I had a great time in the '60's, but I can't remember much of it....
:)