State of our Union

[Dill]

(03-01-2022, 03:01 PM)Nately120 Wrote: The social psychology of our culture is amazing to me.  I grew up on a steady diet of:

We had it hard, your generation has it too easy.  You don't know what hard times are, and that's why you're all soft.

...to go with:

Back when I grew up it was the good ol' days...the world has gone to hell in a handbasket now.

So what is it?  Do I have it too easy, or am I living in hell?  Did you have it hard or did you live in the good ol' days?  Geez, make up your mind. 

LOL I can sort this one for you.

1929-45 = very hard times for your grandparents and my parents. Even if you didn't fight in the war or lose family members, your sugar and tobacco were rationed and you couldn't buy a new car. Young men faced mass conscription for symmetrical war in massive battles against other industrial powers. People seriously feared en masse for the existence of the nation until '43 and the war in both theaters was finally going our way. 

1949-72 good old days for white people who weren't socialists and making less than 100,000 per year. Children respected parents and parents respected teachers. No one knew yet how bad the wallpaper and carpeting were in their homes. TVs appeared in many homes, displacing radio with warm family sitcoms and westerns affirming liberal values. Some homes were getting telephones both up and downstairs. Trust in government and the press was pretty high, no matter who was in office. 

Children, without cell phones, read a lot. Everyone knew why we fought WWII and the Korean War, and against whom. We never learned much about the bad in our own past, which made us feel better about ourselves, even though school was harder back then. And we had never lost a war, except for the one against Red Cloud, which was ok because he was fighting for his homeland and we didn't use our whole army. And "both sides" did whatever political wrongdoing was afoot.

So I grew up in the good old days, even though it was ok to spank children back then, I had to walk to school until my junior year, and we only had one phone in the house.