What I'm really noticing while watching

[applegrove]

M*A*S*H on dvd is how much selfish behaviour in Winchester or Major Burns, or tricky moves by someone is always called out. There is a whole vocabulary for the actions that are tricky: "razzle dazzle" "caper", "gaslighting". All in common usage back in the middle 20th century. Was that collective knowledge wiped out by the right on purpose? Cause if you don't have words to describe some action, you cannot teach others to be wary of it. Like how a tidal wave requires the vacuum of water being sucked out to sea before it can come crashing down and destroy, did the neocons and others on the right require a collective lack of street smarts in Americans to ensure their politics would take hold?

[Journeyman]

1. I believe it has more to do with the increasing diversification of the people's interests. . .

Whereas there were few entertainment and educational choices in the first half of the century, there was more of a common, shared experience between people. This doesn't exist as much today, has in fact been significantly obliterated in the span of my 50 year lifespan, so that even among people of the same age the experiences and influences can be vastly different. And conformity of language has been one of the first casualties of this diversification.

In addition, among immigrants and even within regions of the nation, there's less of a push towards conformity and homogeneity. Certainly, there's still tremendous corporate pressures towards this, but unlike fin de siecle America and the nation in the first half of the 20th century, immigrant communities can remain more insulated today then before, and the perception of the "melting pot" is less pronounced (if, in fact, it ever existed -- we're more of a "crazy quilt of humanity" (in Jacob Riis' phrase) than we are a mixture).

[applegrove]

2. Could be. The internet certainly caters to whatever our particular interests are.

I wonder too if the success of policing in the latter half of the 20th century and the increasing income didn't put an end to dealings people had with hucksters and the need for street smarts as well. Still, the right took advantage of the fact that the baby boomers never had to go up against a sociopath en mass to save their country or their lives. Hitler happened before they were born, McCarthy when they were kids.