The Summer of Our Discontent

In my best memory it is always the summer of 1955, when I was just 16 and the sun-filled days were held in an aspic of innocent ennui; when the unmarred moon was much fuller and counted Indian months; when the air was clear, the river clean for swimming and my girlfriend a gentle soul who slow-danced with me to Sinatra tunes.

The author, a bit younger than I, apparently has reached that point in life where most things aren't half as consequential as they once seemed. But at the same time, on most days there persists that gnawing feeling that the country is on a down hill slide. I speak only from my own personal experience and won't attempt to analyze the writer's longing for the pre-sixties days of his youth.

C.S. Lewis wrote of the pull of the past and how we view it through a prism that filters out much of the bad. And that the past we remember probably differs greatly from what really was back there. However, he goes on to say that the fact that mountains look purple in the distance when we know from experience that up close they are not, doesn't diminish the value of our view from afar.

Those of us who were around in the late forties and early fifties know from experience what it was like to live in a country where door locks were few and the rare bank robbery, front page news. When one could watch a movie with Grandma or grandkids without fear of embarrassment. The same held true of the old black and white TV programs. One wonders if the pendulum will ever swing back from the direction we are now headed, with all those once-prohibited four-letter words coarsening our culture, scatalogy tinged language becoming commonplace. First in the movies and now in our living rooms through the good graces of Television.

Some time in the future there may be a public revulsion over these excesses but I have my doubts. In economics there is a term for describing how price accretions accumulate over time. It is called the "ratchet effect", where the price of goods increase and then retreat slightly - but never back to where they were. I think that is the best we can hope for the future.

the old america from 40-50 years ago really had a lot of very good things that we are missing now. This includes not just very low crime stats, but also an economy that allowed people to support a family nicely with just one job and that type of a job was a lot easier to find than such jobs today. Young people growing up today just wouldn't believe it, but it's true, america used to be a much much better place in many ways. The education system for grades 1-12 was the best in the world, etc. etc. etc.

No, it didn't ! In the '50s, there were books like " THE UGLY AMERICAN ", France couldn't forgive us, for saving them a second time, and so much more, that I shan't attempt to type it all.

For most of this country's history, Europeans sneered at us, looked down their collective noses at us, to such an extent, that there was a concerted effort, in the early part of the 20th century to promote our " arts " ; to prove to the rest of the world, that we weren't, as they though, unlettered, uncultured, unsophisticated, and a bunch of rustics ! Revisionistic history may make you " feel " better ; however, it wrecks havoc with truth. :-)

Well, I grew up in the UK in the 60's. I live there again now.

From this side of the pond the difference is very clear to me without any outside help, revisionist or otherwise.

I'll grant that things may look different from where you're sitting though. Just don't try to tell me that I can't see something that I can see.

This view is not something I'm leaning on any experts for, it's based on what I can see and hear myself. I've always thought that was a far better way to form an opinion.

Then you don't REALLY know what the '40s and '50s , in America ( and how e were viewed by the rest of the world ) really was like. I lived here, in the States, through most of the '40s and all of the '50s. My parents and grandparents had friends and relatives living in Eurupe and England, during this time period, so I KNOW ; unlike you, how it really was ; unfiltered by bias, books, or any other thing.Trust me, my memory is quite good ; above average. :-)

BTW, I am a life long, rabid Anglophile, and have been to England many times. My oldest and best friend lives there.

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