The 50s were the peak years of our republic. The USA 2012 is a very different country....
I think it's a different galaxy.
This is very true. I often feel that I no longer live in the same county I grew up in. Things have changed so much that certainly my parents and grandparent's wouldn't recognize this place as their country. But we never stand still, and the odd thing is that the '50s culture, while it was so different than today, carried the seeds of its own undoing. It was the dreams and aspirations of the '50s that gave us the '60s, and so on. I think the same is true for every age, including the present. The contradictions of a time work themselves out in a way that give rise to yet more contradictions and unforeseen results, and that's the preverse way by which history unfolds.