Posted on 04/02/2016 7:24:52 AM PDT by Macoozie
. . . what's most striking to the chart above isn't the spread between Trumpists and Clintonistas (though it is stunning, to be sure), it's that only a bare majority of the latter feel things are better now than they were 50 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
And of course we have lots more free time “to pursue our dreams” because we have Obamacare...
Gillespie is 52 years old. He doesn’t know shit about 50 years ago. Only what some dip wad journalist or professor has told him. Meaningless.
It’s weird that Ron Paul and Reason Magazine just despises Trump, but then we see Alex Jones and all these other libertarian folks all in for Trump.
“Cultural lives and work lives are better”....????? He’s an elite, obviously
This is from a 90 year young person. Life was better 50 years ago.
When times are hard, it makes people better. Prosperity makes people lazy, complacent and self-centered, and good character and work ethic are less important. It takes strong character to endure good times.
Exactly. It’s all skin deep Potemkin villages. The people are unrestrained, materialistic, and debauched.
It’s all good for the anti God left.
I’m not 90, but getting up there. 1966 was better. And no, this isn’t a generic statement. I would say that 1916 (which I don’t remember, of course) would be worse.
Music was better, anyway.
He's not.
Life was better then.
While I have no problem with the technological and medical advances we've made, society and the moral character of people in general 50 years ago was way better than it is today.
Life was simpler and less busy and less complicated.
I’m 67 and life was MUCH better 50 years ago...
Kids could play all over the neighborhood and you didn’t have to worry about some pervert grabbing them...We used to hitch hike to the mountains, even though we had licenses and cars...We did it for the fun...We could carry our rifles in the truck to school and deer hunt as soon as football practice was over...
We knew ALL our neighbors and cooked out with a crowd quite often...
Yeah...Things were MUCH better...
We may be vain as a society now but we have better technology, health care, etc.
Antibiotics still worked in 1966.
We’re fifty years closer to when we can evacuate Earth in advance of a planetary collision. So there is that.
But we do, don't we?
Born in the 1930s and early 40s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the “last ones.” We are the last, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the war itself with fathers and uncles going off. We are the last to remember ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans. We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available. My mother delivered milk in a horse-drawn cart.
We are the last to hear Roosevelt’s radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbors. We can also remember the parades on August 15, 1945, VJ Day.
We saw the "boys" home from the war build their Cape Cod-style houses, pouring the cellar, tar papering it over and living there until they could afford the time and money to build it out.
We are the last who spent childhood without television; instead, imagining what we heard on the radio. As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood “playing outside until the street lights came on.” We did play outside and we did play on our own. There was no little league.
The lack of television in our early years meant, for most of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world was like. Our Saturday afternoons, if at the movies, gave us newsreels of the war and the holocaust sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons.
Newspapers and magazines were written for adults. We are the last who had to find out for ourselves.
As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth. The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an education and spurred colleges to grow. V.A. loans fanned a housing boom. Pent-up demand coupled with new installment payment plans put factories to work. New highways would bring jobs and mobility. The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics. In the late 40s and early 50s, the country seemed to lie in the embrace of brisk but quiet order as it gave birth to its new middle class. Our parents understandably became absorbed with their own new lives. They were free from the confines of the depression and the war. They threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.
We weren’t neglected but we weren’t today’s all-consuming family focus. They were glad we played by ourselves until the street lights came on. They were busy discovering the post war world.
Most of us had no life plan, but with the unexpected virtue of ignorance and an economic rising tide we simply stepped into the world and went to find out. We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed. Based on our naïve belief that there was more where this came from, we shaped life as we went.
We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future. Of course, just as today, not all Americans shared in this experience. Depression poverty was deep rooted. Polio was still a crippler. The Korean War was a dark presage in the early 50s and by mid-decade school children were ducking under desks. China became Red China. Eisenhower sent the first "advisors" to Vietnam. Castro set up camp in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power.
We are the last to experience an interlude when there were no existential threats to our homeland. We came of age in the late 40s and early 50s. The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, climate change, technological upheaval and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with insistent unease.
Only we can remember both a time of apocalyptic war and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We experienced both.
We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better, not worse.
We are the "last ones."
And then they went on welfare and haven’t worked since.
We have healthcare and drones but we don’t have our freedom anymore and we don’t have a homogenous citizenry with shared values.
Our country has been diluted with unfettered immigration and socialism.
We're still at one per, aren't we? Or did someone change that?
In terms of lifestyle and speech, we are freer to express ourselves; we are objectively less racist, homophobic, sexist, and generally uptight.
Unless you want to express a non-PC opinion about something. Then you are likely to be charged with a *hate* crime.
If he thinks we are freer, he's far more deluded than he has a clue about.
There are many serious problems in today's world and this country: We document those several times an hour at Reason.com, in fact, and offer ways to remedy many of them.
Does that include islamic terrorism and jihad? And illegal immigration and the associated problems that is bringing into our country?
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