Not that those times were 100% perfect, but I would rather have the nation of 1976-2006 far more than the mess we have today because it actually was a better time on so many levels when you look at the good and the bad altogether.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
Screw him and his study...point me towards the Wayback Machine and launch me towards ~1960. I’ll figure out how to do without instant information from the Internet somehow...
People have gone from repeating script line from a tv or cartoon as a “thought” to simply reposting internet memes as a response in a conversation as evidence of ‘wit’.
The language is deteriorating.
Magazines have been going to shorter, easier to digest, content. “WHO has time to read?” “Why READ, are you taking a class?”
No habla engles.
“Whatever”
And think the one coming up next is going to screw it up even more.
Look at Music.
Pop is the Devil's Music and was going to Ruin this Country.
As was Rap before it.
As was Hard Rock before it.
As was Rock 'N Roll before it.
As Was Jazz before it.
As was Rag-Time before it.
The Good Old Days was when One Half of the World Fought the Other Half and Millions Died?
Or When Hitler and Stalin murdered Women and Babies because the voices in their heads told them they deserved it?
When Whole Cities were burned to the Ground?
THOSE were the "Good Ole Days!?"
Lessee. A country that is being handed over to foreign savages; a country that murders 2 million unborn children every year; a country that celebrates disgusting subhumans like bruce jenner; vs the America of the 50s and 60s?
Yeah, I can definitely do without air bags and internet.
Well, decades ago, at least I could turn on the television, or read the news, scan a magazine stand, or go about my daily business without the constant inclination to vomit at what I see. I can’t do that anymore.
That’s what America-2015 does for me. A Marxist idiot running the country and taking “selfies” of himself; a sick, depraved culture of Kardashian reality shows, Miley Cyrus slopping around with her foam-finger; a culture so grotesquely entrenched in faggotry and all-out decadence; Open borders that have turned so many once-idyllic towns into ugly, third-worldish cesspits.
America has become a sick freak-show of a nation. I loved what this country used to be. Loved beyond any words could possibly express. The culture, the people, the whole ball of wax. And it’s not through the lens of “nostalgic” rose-colored glasses. I loved each and every pothole and shotgun-shack. But that America is now gone. I can’t have any admiration, respect, or allegiance to an America that has become so sick and evil to embrace depraved insanity like homo-marriage. That’s an America that can frankly go burn in hell.
I am taking a break from cleaning out my Mom’s house. Today is the back bedroom/home office day. I just came across a big rubbermaid plastic box containing my Mom’s scrap books. My grandfather’s scrap book, and my Dad’s OCS yearbook.
I sat there looking through this stuff. I don’t know the people. The paper is falling apart. Pages are stuck together.
I am pretty sure that I am the first person to have laid eyes on this in ten years or more.
My Mom cannot remember what she did yesterday. She has forgotten these exist.
When I get home from these trips, I tell my kids, “When you are inclined to to buy storage boxes, but contractor bags instead.”
Of course that would mean that Free Republic would be a very large newsletter with tons of letters written in for responses, at least postage was much lower back then.
But then, as Yogi Berra once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” So there you go.
For music, I think the 1960s were our best period. For actual living, I think the Reagan and GWB eras were my salad days. For morals, I think the 1950s fit my feelings the best (minus all the smoking).
We tend to remember the good things about yesteryear without the pain and hardships. And we always think the world is getting worse. I think that’s just the human mindset.
It’s been a long downward slide.
What I’ve noticed is that when you read letters and such written by people in the 18th and 19th centuries - just middle-class reasonably educated people - is how great their command of the English language was in comparison to most today (including myself). They had large vocabularies and wrote in complex sentences and used a variety of literary devices. The vast majority of people today, even people with college degrees in the humanities (not computer science like me), are virtually illiterate by comparison.