If a reasonably informed American adult living in the 1960's had been plucked from their

[Atticus]

daily life and transported by Time Machine to 2022, I think that after looking around, listening to what now passes for political discussion and reading a couple of days worth of MAGA/Q-anon social media posts, they just might totally melt down and wind up staring into space while mumbling "In America? In America? In America?"

We elders have made the journey from then to now in comparatively small slides and lurches. Each moved the body politic a little further away from what we had been taught was our small "d" democratic birthright, but few had any immediate adverse impact on our personal lives and we had mortgages to pay and kids to clothe and feed. We "moved on".

But, the totality of changes in our national "character" amounts to a disastrous loss---forfeiture, actually--- of what we had been led to believe---no, what we KNEW---made America special. We were never perfect, but our intent was always to be fairer, kinder, more just, more tolerant---better. Today, this determination to leave our children a more moral world is increasingly viewed as quaint foolishness that only "suckers" pursue.

I did not get here via Time Machine, but I do occasionally find myself mumbling "In America?"

Sorry about the tone of this. It's just been "one of those days".

[dchill]

1. You're probably right.

I melt down mumbling regularly.

[brush]

2. Good post for thought. I at first thought the transported person...

if left of center would ask to go back and vow to work hard to not let the unimaginably horrid developments that we arrived at in 2022 ever happen. And I think that would be the right course of action.

When I think about it IMO, the nation reached the high water mark with LBJ's Great Society and civil rights legislation, and the women's rights achievement in the '70s.

It's been downhill since then with Reagan and his campaigning on states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and later Newt Gingrich and the repugs Contract with America.

Clinton and Obama's admins were respites from the madness but the downward slide continued on the whole with W Bush, the horrid trump and the threat of trump again.

Joe Biden is going a great job in holding back the maga herds, and I will help, but the downhill trend is obvious.

Again, America reached it's high water mark as far as positive societal rights benefits in the late '60-mid '70s.

[Torchlight]

3. I've been reading editorials by left and right authors from the late seventies/early eighties.

A real contrast to the format-over-content glitz of modern, for-profit, click-oriented media. It certainly was a different world of letters when these guys weren't expected to entertain the lowest common denominators and instead, write a fully reasoned opinion, supported with data/evidence, and finished up with a comprehensive conclusion. All in the standard seven paragraph format of the day.

Many of these same writers are today, simply churning out verbal swill to better keep their audience righteously outraged, topping off the sanctimony with a few choice cuts of who, how, where, and why to hate the enemy-of-the-day for the additional clicks.

Even the rw authors of that neon generation attempted a semblance of balance and thought -- not usually successfully, but still -- good on them for even the attempt. These days, a well-crafted bit of writing is more a surprise to me than it is a standard anymore.

[Budi]

5. K & R

[WarGamer]

4. Not really. Remember Barry Goldwater?

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” declared Goldwater in his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination at its 1964 convention. “And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

[Atticus]

13. How did that work for him? nt

[WarGamer]

14. He spawned Nixon, Reagan and Trump... so you tell me.

[Atticus]

15. He lost overwhelmingly and even he would be appalled at the rise of the evangelicals and their

support of the three men you mentioned.

[WarGamer]

16. Of course.

But he spawned a brand of "Republicanism" that leads directly to the Tea Party and MAGAT's.

[Volaris]

18. I tend to agree with this (depending on the person 'plucked').

Even in the 60s, there were bigoted assholes who thought JFK was a dirty communist because he had been installed by the pope. The Archie Bunkers of the world have always been with to one extent or another; they used to be isolated and outnumbered at their local watering holes, but the internet has created the same 'safe space' for them as it has for the rest of us (that's why their so very very pissed at social media for shutting them down or kicking them off, they know they're back to being outnumbered at their new watering hole).

[keep_left]

19. Regarding social media (an excerpt from another post)...

https://democraticunderground.com/100216677624#post17

...So they have their extremist Reddit groups, and before that, their websites. Social media really turned things up to 11, because you don't have to drive traffic to a website like you did in the late '90s; there's now millions, maybe more, browsing social media and looking for the latest way to be extreme. It acts like an extremism amplifier.

That's why chuds get so angry about being deplatformed for their TOS violations. It's so much easier to blast your ill-informed opinions all over social media, which you did nothing to build, than to do the actual work of creating your own site. That is probably the key to the appeal of social media for the "wreckers": minimum effort, maximum chaos.

[Volaris]

20. It has the added benefit of being posted to everyone, which generates

Responses to their idiocy, which in turn FEEDS their victim complex.

I chose to DISENGAGE on Facebook.
Fuck them.

[Beautiful Disaster]

6. Na. They'd feel right at home.

Most of America was racist and sexist as fuck in the 1960s. Before Trump, there was George Wallace, who maybe even becomes president if he isn't paralyzed by a would-be assassin.

Oh and let's talk about that too: the 60s were filled with political assassinations: JFK, MLK and RFK over the span of a few years.

Don't forget all that racist backlash gave rise to Nixon, who privately advocated for abortion for mixed-race children (specifically black and white).

Most people in the 60s would fit right at home with the social conservatism of today's Republican Party and their strong-arm ideology (another reason Nixon won was the turbulence out of the 60s, and Nixon was the law and order guy).

[Celerity]

7. +10000000000000000

Welcome to DU!

[Beautiful Disaster]

8. Thanks!

[niyad]

17. Welcome to our DU family.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. Disagree. They'd definitely recognize this country.

[keep_left]

11. I think what the OP is getting at is correct, but they are seeing it with rose-colored glasses.

There was terrible racism and sexism back then. Of course, one need not even mention the treatment of LGBT people--doctors considered homosexuality a "disease". But one thing that was different was that the pronouns "we" and "us" still existed. The country hadn't gone down the road of the Thatcher aphorism "there is no such thing as society". And the US was able to accomplish great things like the Apollo Program. There was a great deal of hope because of everything from the Great Society to the JFK mental health initiatives. Of course, by the early '70s, most of that had fallen apart.

There is a totally-overlooked book that discusses a lot of these issues in its first chapters: Is The American Dream Killing You? by Paul Stiles. It's almost certainly out of print, but it should be available at most libraries. It's worth a read.

[Zeitghost]

10. This comes off as a bit tone deaf

Things are far from perfect. But for many, including almost all PoC and the entire LGBT community, things are much better than they were 50 years ago.

[Atticus]

12. Except for "tone deaf", I agree with your response. Short of writing a tome, it isn't really

possible to cover all the bases.

Certainly, some demographics have made great progress since the Sixties, but there were no "alternative facts" claimed out loud back then. There were not many public figures who criticized democracy, praised Russia and were willing to say that what the TV audience just saw take place did not happen.

It would be difficult to list all of the things Trump has done or said that would have been career-enders then but which now rarely merit more than one or two news cycles.

That is just a sampling of the type of change that my OP was intended to reference. Apparently, I did not make that clear enough.

Thanks for your response.

[DavidDvorkin]

21. I am that person

Rather, I often feel that way. I went to college in the 1960s, and I felt optimistic about continued, even accelerating, social and political progress. This has become a strange, alien country to me.

(To be fair, old people have probably always felt that way.)

[Skittles]

22. I see America disappearing before my eyes

it's just crazy, very upsetting

[DavidDvorkin]

23. Yes.

[Progressive dog]

24. You might be right

but looking back, we have made a lot of moral and democratic progress since the sixties. We are rapidly moving backwards, but we still have time to stop the slide. IMO