Reading that at first I felt anger. "Myth"? How dare you?
Then reality set in.
At 60 years of age, I remember an America quite different and morally stable growing up as a young boy in the 1950's.
It's an effin mess today, and I wonder how responsible is my generation?
History will look back at the flower children and the VietNam War...the Woodstock Generation and Im afraid they will be judged accordingly.
What you remember is a media that was pro-American. Sure, America was different, but it wasn't necessarily better. Racism was common. Women were second class citizens - they couldn't get professional jobs, buy houses or cars, and dared not report rapes. Discrimination against many ethnic groups was common - Italians, Poles, Chinese, etc.
Abortions still happened, but in back alleys. Addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill were locked in prisons or state hospitals.
There were Communists actively working to subvert the US gov't. And there were crooks in office.
We didn't read about all of that in the papers, or see it on tv, but it was there.
We can't solve problems without facing up to them. Of course, right now, we can't even agree on what the problems are.
Agree with you there. Growing up in southern California during the late 40's and 50's in Pasadena, we had a completely different set of ethical and moral codes to follow than we do now. In fact, I don't see any codes at all now. History is going to be our harshest critic.