As a queer person (agender) with a conservative dad, I don’t get why he says he wants to go back to the 1950s. What was so special back then besides his reasoning that times were simpler? I feel like it would be harder for me then as a queer person.
Because white guys.
You could beat your wife, she couldn’t really divorce you, and couldn’t open a bank account. That’s usually why they love the 50s.
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What? That sound whack
I want the economy of the 50s and civil rights for everyone.
Sadly, it seems like we’re moving the economy further away from the 50s and only bringing civil rights back there…
I want the economy of the 50s
so, prosperity based off of genociding and overworking brown people abroad?
We both know you know what was meant. Don’t be like a republican. Have a good day.
no, you don’t seem to know what i meant.
your comfort and booming economy is a direct result of your imperialism and owning the world’s currency. “the economy of the 50s” was fueled by blood.
don’t be an apologist for it. don’t be like a republican.
Oh I know what you meant, exactly. It’s grade school history. It’s also the same take repeated endlessly on internet forums where pedantry and needing to spell out every single facet rule supreme. So I guess I’ll spell it out. “The economy refers to the fact someone was able to pay for a home, family, and yearly vacation on an entry level, high school diploma as the only requirement job. The civil rights and liberties people are stating as the one thing they didn’t want to bring to modern times.”
I’m going to assume you know why someone would want that without the abuse of minorities, immigrants, or third world countries.
Or you can just pull the same thing everyone else does and state, “A society like that couldn’t exist without that exploitation.” like the true unique free thinker you are. To which I say prove it. We’ve always had a rich parasite class that needed exploitation, those who are fine without being far wealthier than others are perfectly capable of doing fine without the exploitation, its the leeches that require it.
Ah it’s always the same with those ideologically blinded people.
Capitalism is inherently bad blah blah
Socialism can never work blah blah
It’s all bullshit. Capitalism does not matter, socialism does not matter. How we call it does not matter. What matters is that a society is healthy, sustainable and prospering.
The main problem of all theories is the confrontation with reality - each set of values or ideology is as much worth as the people who (supposedly) follow it.
In any system we ever built, there are greedy, corrupt, powerful people, who like shit, always somehow end up swimming at the top. And then everything begins to rot.
The main problem of all theories is the confrontation with reality
heres the actual material reality: western capitalists control the world, they are fucking us over. it was only ever “prosperous” to a select few countries.
socialism is historically one of the only ways to defeat it, i get the people who like it.
Socialism was never implemented in good faith. Oh, you’re talking about the Soviet Union? Try to run a planned economy on a scale of a modern society. And tell me about equality and freedom where you gotta be in the party to have access to better stuff.
Or you are talking about China? Well, they are pragmatic and apparently learned. That’s why China is not a planned economy, but state capitalism. Sadly, it’s heavily authoritarian.
Capitalism and the idea of markets is not the problem. The problem is if it becomes an end in itself. So if you ask me, economically, the model that China is doing right now is right and obviously pretty successful. It is the rest I would rather not copy.
I neither want to live in a country run by oligarchs, nor by a self-serving elite of authoritarian bureaucrats. The rotten form of capitalism is the neoliberal dystopia we see in the west right now, the rotten form of socialism is what the Soviet Union was by the end.
You want a socialist revolution? Good luck. But please think about how to prevent just shifting the wealth and power from one group of bad people to another over the course of a few decades.
Could not agree more. I’m a democratic socialist. I firmly believe that the ideas of that ideology, properly implemented, can drastically improve the standard of living for a huge percentage of the population.
I live in a country where our democratic socialist party is fantastically corrupt, lazy and completely bereft of any motivation to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves. Consequently, I don’t support them. Results over ideology is an important mantra no matter what you believe.
All socialism is democratic, “democratic socialism” normally refers to reformist socialism. The corruption, in that case, makes sense, as reformism is usually conceding to the status quo.
This is just you replacing sound economic analysis with vibes-based idealism, ironically you’re divorcing yourself from reality while claiming others need to see it better. A quick example is that socialism has resulted in far lower inequality while maintaining stable growth than capitalism has, yet you pretend they are the same in disparity. Connect with reality.
It’s grade school history.
that you appear not to know. which is easy for you because you were not on the receiving end of the violence.
I’m going to assume you know why someone would want that without the abuse of minorities
you are arguing with a strawman. thats not what us capitalism did in the 50s.
there was literal outright colonialism in the 50s, white people don’t get this
yup. and the us was specially positioned to take advantage of it the most after ww2.
There were plenty of local jobs that paid better than jobs today do (adjusted for CoL) and needed less education etc.
in the us*
I wasn’t alive back then, so I guess you mean
in the me*
what
Bettergood wagesIf you were a straight, white man it was a good time to exist economically with a high degree of social cohesion. Oppression was worse, but it probably was much less visible to your dad’s sort of person.
And the economy was booming. My own dad went to college full time and worked 20 hours a week loading trucks in his 20s. On this salary, he was able to buy a starter house, marry his first wife, have 2 kids, and complete his degree.
It fucking sucked if you were literally anyone else though. Married women were barely better than property, and they frequently killed themselves to escape their husbands. Spousal abuse was common and not really looked down on in many communities unless you took things “too far” and sent them to the hospital. Being queer was just straight up illegal, and you’d be imprisoned and ostracized if you were caught. Racism was…worse to say the least.
While things might have been better in the past for a specific population or from a specific point of view, always remember that we have made substantial progress even in the past decade or two. Living in the past is a fool’s paradise.
He was young.
Being young, is nice. Mostly because you don’t have to deal with a lot of the issues that e.g. a house, children and maybe the marriage is not as loving as it used to be.
So he misses being young, but instead of realizing that he was just young. He thinks about what was different and as your responses imply, he blames foreigner for the change. As you expressed that he thinks of you as just a girl, he is probably also sexist and the 50s were much more sexist as it still is.
In other words, culture changed, he didn’t and he is old.
A little later, maybe, but much the same… on the upside:
- we were optimistic.
- we were going to conquer space, and it was going to be real live humans, not semi-autonomous robots
- society (in the US and W. Europe) was (very) slowly getting more progressive.
- Hitler had been killed, and fascism defeated forever. Never again would we have another dictator; never again would the watch a country commit genocide against a people.
- life was slower. TV was the bad influence rotting kids brains. We didn’t have an entire industry focused on commoditizing us.
- computers were fucking incredible. The future we imagined coming from computers was very, very different than what we ended up with. For one thing, we didn’t imaging a single-minded focus of all software and computing power on commercializing every aspect of our life.
- no Facebook, no Twitter, no TikTok
- Income disparity was far less extreme, and class mobility was a realistic dream. You could imaging buying a nice house and raising a family on a single income. If you worked hard and had a little luck you could pass on some reasonable wealth to your kids.
- shit really was - in the aggregate - getting better all around. Technology was advancing and bringing amazing products; science was being discovered that you could basically wrap your head around. Lives were improving for most people, and all this at a pace that didn’t up-end your world every day, 365 days a year.
- you could get all the news you needed for a fairly rounded world view in a single newspaper, much of which you could read over breakfast. There was no information overload.
On the downsides,
- dad beat us with a belt as punishment
- we were having Wars that were disrupting society
- we were constantly afraid that nuclear war could happen any time
- commies were hiding under our beda
- minorities of all kinds were fighting for their rights, and fighting to get them enforced. It sucked to be gay, or black, or a woman, but it was getting better.
- nobody I knew has a PC into well into the 80’s, so you had to infiltrate University computer labs.
It was a slower world, with fewer consumer goods, fewer conveniences, and worse medical care. Everybody smoked, all the time. Best of all, the world wasn’t ending.
Most people have an idyllic view of certain childhood years, usually around the ages 5 to 10 or so. It’s before you start to understand just how broken the world is, and your worldview gets more complex and nuanced.
Many people wrongly assume that the world really was simpler when they were that age. The truth is, the world was just as messed up–they were just blissfully unaware.
Next time your dad complains, remind him that we still have milkshakes and racism.
Agreed on all points, and also would like to point out most of the people who want to “go back” are not the ones who were oppressed during that time. It’s no surprise that the people who want to go back are mostly those who grew up in the white suburbs and small towns, where it was simple and easy.
The oppressed are conveniently left out of those conversations. Where were the black people, or the gay people during those times? They existed, but in a very simple worldview it’s easy to forget that.
Unless you grew up in the '80s. Jesus, what a shitshow. Though I notice a lot of nostalgia for the '80s from people who aren’t old enough to remember it.
Yeah, there’s a reason GenXers are generally known to be cynical.
They like Jello as much as they love Jim crow
White privilege.
It is because he has a mythical view of that decade.
I think it’s pretty common when you reach a certain age to want to go back to a more nostalgic time for you personally. There’s a certain level of bias and rose tinted glasses to it, no doubt.
For instance, I myself would kill for it to be 1992 again.
This is a very surface level observation. For your father there might be more nuance to the sentiment.
Hate
Because the propaganda aimed at getting women to remember their place and get back to domestic chores, still lingers today and people think that’s HOW it was, not that they had to try and shove a cat back in a bag, somehow. When women had to do all the blokey jobs while the men’s were all at war, and realised, yeah, they’re capable of this, sometimes better at it, earning a wage, something unheard of for women, as they would still need a man to have a bank account or credit card or sign anything or have a lease on a house, until the 1970s, in some places. But yeah. It wasn’t like that. Women were miserable and oppressed and drugged up just to get by. Grandma’s hydrangeas were sometimes the only way to leave a violent relationship. But yeah, probs was fine for the blokes. They got to fight in a war, pocket some trauma to take home, force themselves back into the daily grind with no recognition of that trauma and nowhere to outlet it… I’m not going to start on intergenerational trauma, I promise.
Either that or, the grass is always greener… Yk.
Because they were young then.
Yes. Nostalgia softens sharp edges, brightens sunny spots.
