The Good Old Days
Larry Caldwell
In article <jsneadEK...@netcom.com>,
jsn...@netcom.com (John R. Snead) wrote:
> : Well, since we have way too many disfunctional families, and way too little
> : morals in our schoolchildren, maybe we SHOULD all go back to the 1950s!
> Ah, such a lovely vision, massive sexism, institutionalized racism,
> anti-communist paranoia, and strictly enforced conformity. Ohh, sign me
> up... You would be advised to take a closer look at the actual morals
> of the era rather than the rose-colored glasses version portrayed by
> ultra-conservatives.
Ah, somebody who was actually alive then! The good old days, when
you would be refused service in restaurants if you didn't cut your
hair or wear clothes just like anybody else, when Orientals couldn't
own property within the city limits, and school children were given
a failing grade for turning in a book report on a science fiction
novel because children shouldn't read such things.
The whole social revolution of the 60's happened because a LOT of people
really hated the 50's. It's hard to explain what it was like to live
under an oppressive, regimented society like that.
In 1954, one of my schoolmates came to school with half the skin flayed
off his back from a whipping his dad gave him. He couldn't get his
shirt off for Gym class because the blood had dried and stuck to his
skin. Nobody called the cops. There weren't just disfunctional
families, there was a whole disfunctional society. The thought of
going back to that makes me feel like I need to puke.
Hmmm. Sort of explains why I so thoroughly despise the Starry-eyed
Troopers brigade that thinks a regimented society would be such a
wonderful utopia. Damn them all to a hell of their own making,
they'll get no approval from me.
-- Larry
Nyrath the nearly wise
Thus spoke Larry Caldwell (lar...@teleport.com):
> In article <jsneadEK...@netcom.com>,
> jsn...@netcom.com (John R. Snead) wrote:
>
> > : Well, since we have way too many disfunctional families, and way too little
> > : morals in our schoolchildren, maybe we SHOULD all go back to the 1950s!
>
> > Ah, such a lovely vision, massive sexism, institutionalized racism,
> > anti-communist paranoia, and strictly enforced conformity. Ohh, sign me
> > up... You would be advised to take a closer look at the actual morals
> > of the era rather than the rose-colored glasses version portrayed by
> > ultra-conservatives.
>
> Ah, somebody who was actually alive then! The good old days, when
> you would be refused service in restaurants if you didn't cut your
> hair or wear clothes just like anybody else, when Orientals couldn't
> own property within the city limits, and school children were given
> a failing grade for turning in a book report on a science fiction
> novel because children shouldn't read such things.
Ah, those were the days!
My mother is caucasian, my father is oriental.
They had to get married outside of my mother's
home state of Virginia, since at the time,
mixed marriages were illegal.
João Luis
On 25 Nov 1997 00:13:22 -0800, lar...@teleport.com (Larry Caldwell)
wrote:
>In 1954, one of my schoolmates came to school with half the skin flayed
>off his back from a whipping his dad gave him. He couldn't get his
>shirt off for Gym class because the blood had dried and stuck to his
>skin. Nobody called the cops. There weren't just disfunctional
>families, there was a whole disfunctional society. The thought of
>going back to that makes me feel like I need to puke.
>
>Hmmm. Sort of explains why I so thoroughly despise the Starry-eyed
>Troopers brigade that thinks a regimented society would be such a
>wonderful utopia. Damn them all to a hell of their own making,
>they'll get no approval from me.
>
>-- Larry
>
Ah. "The good old days"
In my country (Portugal) the good old days mean the longest
dictatorship in modern history, colonial wars and an isolated
society...
"The good old days" really mean "when I was 20 and could run around"
BTW, what is the name of this newsgroup?
---- /// ----
I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm fresh out of bubblegum.
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis
Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
Hell, let's go back to the 1850s. Those Victorians had their crap
together.
--
Fly Me to the Moon,
B-chan
Anime Lover Since 1969
Thanks to all who came out to
Anime Weekend Atlanta 3! It was
great seeing all of you!
****************************************************
KURO NEKO: The Online Journal of
Super Dimension Family Henderson-Lewis
http://home.pacbell.net/bchan/
****************************************************
Andrea Lynn Leistra
In article <65gchn$881$1...@nnrp3.snfc21.pbi.net>,
Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis <spam...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
>(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
>honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
>better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
Or female. Or gay. Or non-white. Or any combination of those and
others.
--
Andrea Leistra http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~aleistra
-----
Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
Erik Max Francis
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was
> born
> (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
Let me guess. You're a middle-aged, white male.
> Hell, let's go back to the 1850s. Those Victorians had their crap
> together.
I've never understood this fascination with the Way Things Used To Be.
Everyone points to a Golden Age. Face it, there were no golden ages.
At any given time, people pointed to a past that was simpler and hoped
for a future that was better. Rest assured that in the 1850s people
wished they could go back to the 1750s because that was the life!
--
Erik Max Francis, &tSftDotIotE / mailto:m...@alcyone.com
Alcyone Systems / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, California, United States / icbm://+37.20.07/-121.53.38
\
"Since when can wounded eyes see / If we weren't who we were"
/ Joi
Michael S. Schiffer
In article <347BE6DE...@alcyone.com>,
>> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was
>> born
>> (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
>> honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
>> better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>Let me guess. You're a middle-aged, white male.
32 is middle-aged?
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS "I decline utterly to be impartial
ms...@tezcat.com as between the fire brigade and
ms...@midway.uchicago.edu the fire."
-- Winston Churchill, July 7, 1926
Steve Henderson
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
>
> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
> (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
Well, I'm honest (I think). I was in college in 1965 and I wouldn't
trade the social conditions of that year for this for practically
anything. Political correctness gets no points from me, but I lived in
those times and they weren't that great.
> Hell, let's go back to the 1850s. Those Victorians had their crap
> together.
Perhaps you should study something about how the real Victorians lived.
:-)
> --
> Fly Me to the Moon,
>
> B-chan
> Anime Lover Since 1969
>
> Thanks to all who came out to
> Anime Weekend Atlanta 3! It was
> great seeing all of you!
>
> ****************************************************
> KURO NEKO: The Online Journal of
> Super Dimension Family Henderson-Lewis
> http://home.pacbell.net/bchan/
> ****************************************************
--
To email me use ashland.ccxnet.com, adding an @ sign
in place of the '.' after ashland and removing the x in ccxnet.
Spinner
Michael S. Schiffer <ms...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in article
<EK9J5...@midway.uchicago.edu>...
> In article <347BE6DE...@alcyone.com>,
> Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> wrote:
> >Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
>
> >> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was
> >> born
> >> (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> >> honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> >> better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>
> >Let me guess. You're a middle-aged, white male.
>
> 32 is middle-aged?
>
> Mike
1965 was no fun. It was the beginning of the period when a great many
young women who thought they had NO choice but marriage began looking
desperately for a way out. It was the beginning of the period of the
highest incidence of 'clinically diagnosed' depression in young people EVER
known in this country. It was a time of riots and violence. Ever heard of
Watts? Things are no worse now and some things are much better.
"Teach that sissy, commie, long hair boy a lesson he won't forget. Give
him the beating he deserves and shave his head."
"You're fired. Several men have complained. Proper attire for a woman in
the work place is a skirt, stockings and high heels."
Spinner
Elizabeth Moon
> >Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
> >(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> >honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> >better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>
> others.
>
> --
> Andrea Leistra http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~aleistra
> -----
> Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
Well put. Speaking as someone out of high school by '65, that wasn't a
golden trouble-free world for most people (realizing that if you count
the numbers in your groupins, you have "most people" locked in.)
If he was born in 1965, he didn't actually *experience* 1965...he was
lying in a crib getting cared for 100% by someone else. The thing that
makes the years of childhood "good" (if they were) is that the individual
isn't having to cope with everything. Someone else gets the food and
prepares it; someone else takes care of housing and clothing and so on.
So if the kid comes from a moderately affluent family, he can enjoy his
cocoon. He doesn't start noticing much until he's older--and if he's in
an affluent suburb, it may taken him 20-odd years to realize the rest of
the world isn't in that lovely little bubble.
Elizabeth
--
"A little raised number at the end of a statement is not an icon of
inerrancy." _British Medical Journal_
Michael Ikeda
In article <65gi2h$5...@elaine17.Stanford.EDU>, alei...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Andrea Lynn Leistra) wrote:
>In article <65gchn$881$1...@nnrp3.snfc21.pbi.net>,
>Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis <spam...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
>>(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
>>honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
>>better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>
>Or female. Or gay. Or non-white. Or any combination of those and
>others.
>
Or a non-gay white male who prefers a better standard of living and longer
life expectancy to the ability to safely treat non-whites, gays, and women
as inferiors.
Michael Ikeda mmi...@erols.com
Opinions expressed are my own
Charles Mark Bee
Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
>
> Thus spoke Larry Caldwell (lar...@teleport.com):
> > In article <jsneadEK...@netcom.com>,
> > jsn...@netcom.com (John R. Snead) wrote:
> >
> > > : Well, since we have way too many disfunctional families, and way too little
> > > : morals in our schoolchildren, maybe we SHOULD all go back to the 1950s!
>snip<
Personally, I wanna go to the ATOMIC 50's, where my whole family wears
knee-length satin tunics and wrist-o-visors, my job is looking at a big
oval screen sitting on my butt, and there's a nuclear reactor in my car.
Beeism # 2358
Alter S. Reiss
> >Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
> >(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> >honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> >better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>
> Or female. Or gay. Or non-white. Or any combination of those and
> others.
Or just capable of telling the difference between reality, and
reality as seen through glasses so thoroughly rose tinted that they are
functionaly opaque. Better quality of living, more real wealth across
almost the entire economic spectrum, longer life expectancy, and no
very real, very immediate threat of nuclear holocaust looming on the
horizon... But I suppose it's PC to look at things like that, instead of
glorying in the sheer manly power that a man had in the good old days.
Twenty years from now, there will be people who will be looking at
the nineties as some sort of golden age regardless of any improvements
made in the interim, and you know what, they are. Live it up folks, the
bill may come due eventualy, but now is just a great time to be alive.
-- Alter S. Reiss - www.geocities.com/Area51/2129 - asr...@ymail.yu.edu
"Nonsense, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist"
Avram Grumer
In article <347CEFFB...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, Charles Mark Bee
<c-b...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> Personally, I wanna go to the ATOMIC 50's, where my whole
> family wears knee-length satin tunics and wrist-o-visors,
> my job is looking at a big oval screen sitting on my butt,
> and there's a nuclear reactor in my car.
We could use more big oval screens in the world, true, but I for one don't
want to share the roads with a nuclear Pinto.
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
"The Internet is not a separate 'cyberspace' reality. It is a new nervous
system for the physical world." -- Phil Agre
Keith Morrison
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
>
> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
> (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
You bet! I was only born 6 years later but those were the days!
Cocaine, heroin and PCP starting to make the rounds, a war in
Vietnam that was ripping the US apart, the Troubles begin in
Ireland, terrorists start doing their thing, the OPEC Oil crisis
wassn't far in the future, racial trouble was threatening to
rip the US apart and that new kind of evil, the serial killer,
was getting off the ground.
Those were the days my friend
I thought they'd never end
We were stoned forever and a day
Went and fought a war
Never saw some friends no more
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days!
--
Keith Morrison
lone...@nbnet.nb.ca
Keith Morrison
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
> Hell, let's go back to the 1850s. Those Victorians had their crap
> together.
Except if you were poor and had to send you kids to go work in a
sweat shop or, being a woman, having to sell yourself on the street
for the few pence you need to get food to survive the week. Or,
in the US, having the slight problem of not having the right to
vote, get an education or, in half the country, even be free because
of a slightly higher level of melanin than other members of the
society. Or if you happened to be one of the wogs that had the
audacity to stand in the way of the Victorians taking over your
land. Or if you were Irish and starving to death.
In short, it was a good time if you were a white, upper class
male. For everyone else, it was the shits.
--
Keith Morrison
lone...@nbnet.nb.ca
Jan @ Jerry Bryson
> 32 is middle-aged?
Yeah, you betcha. Remember Jerry Rubin? "Don't trust anybody over 30?"
I was SO glad when that twit turned 30...
Michael S. Schiffer <ms...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> In article <347BE6DE...@alcyone.com>,
> Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> wrote:
> >Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
>
> >> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was
> >> born
> >> (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> >> honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> >> better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>
> >Let me guess. You're a middle-aged, white male.
>
> 32 is middle-aged?
>
> Mike
--
Nescio ne sum, ergo penso sum.
Pat Powers
In article <tlle00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
Caldwell) wrote:
> In article <jsneadEK...@netcom.com>,
> jsn...@netcom.com (John R. Snead) wrote:
>
> > : Well, since we have way too many disfunctional families, and way too
little
> > : morals in our schoolchildren, maybe we SHOULD all go back to the 1950s!
>
> > Ah, such a lovely vision, massive sexism, institutionalized racism,
> > anti-communist paranoia, and strictly enforced conformity. Ohh, sign me
> > up... You would be advised to take a closer look at the actual morals
> > of the era rather than the rose-colored glasses version portrayed by
> > ultra-conservatives.
>
> Ah, somebody who was actually alive then! The good old days, when
> you would be refused service in restaurants if you didn't cut your
> hair or wear clothes just like anybody else, when Orientals couldn't
> own property within the city limits, and school children were given
> a failing grade for turning in a book report on a science fiction
> novel because children shouldn't read such things.
>
> The whole social revolution of the 60's happened because a LOT of people
> really hated the 50's. It's hard to explain what it was like to live
> under an oppressive, regimented society like that.
>
> In 1954, one of my schoolmates came to school with half the skin flayed
> off his back from a whipping his dad gave him. He couldn't get his
> shirt off for Gym class because the blood had dried and stuck to his
> skin. Nobody called the cops. There weren't just disfunctional
> families, there was a whole disfunctional society. The thought of
> going back to that makes me feel like I need to puke.
>
> Hmmm. Sort of explains why I so thoroughly despise the Starry-eyed
> Troopers brigade that thinks a regimented society would be such a
> wonderful utopia. Damn them all to a hell of their own making,
> they'll get no approval from me.
>
> -- Larry
Hey, you left out the OTHER good stuff. The nearly complete censorship of
sexual information so that ignorance about sex was pretty nearly
universalwith disastrous results for many a young teen.
Don't forget lynchings! they were illegal but still done in a lot of
places. And what happened to black people didn't matter because they were
invisible to white people.
Abortions were illegal, period, in those days. Ask some women who were
young back then about what THAT entailed for some of their friends and
classmates.
The only things the 50s had going for them is that World War II was over by
then and we were beginning to recover from its aftermath. Other than that,
it very nearly totally sucked.
--
Visit www.islandford.w1.com and know the beauty and terror of Karg, enjoy
the Fauxtoons and the Celebrity Clones, and generally have a good time --
mostly for free.
Stan Engel
Pat Powers wrote in message ...
>Hey, you left out the OTHER good stuff. The nearly complete censorship of
>sexual information so that ignorance about sex was pretty nearly
>universalwith disastrous results for many a young teen.
Yes, but there was a bright side as well. The downtown areas of all cities
were full of prostitutes which is not the case today. In that sense the good
old days were more liberal than at present.
>
>Don't forget lynchings! they were illegal but still done in a lot of
>places. And what happened to black people didn't matter because they were
>invisible to white people.
Lynchings still occur, perhaps better phrased as extra-judicial executions.
I was watching the Maury Povich show when they showed tape of an accused
child molester (in police custody) being gunned down by the molested boy's
father. The father got a suspended sentence. That's justice. Does anybody
remember the Elly Nessler case in California? Same thing except she was
sentenced ro 8 years.
>
>Abortions were illegal, period, in those days. Ask some women who were
>young back then about what THAT entailed for some of their friends and
>classmates.
Abortions were however performed. Nurses, veterinarians and people with a
natural medical knack (though no formal training) were the usual
practitioners. In one case that I know of, the girl's mother instructed the
daughter to do violent exercises. It didn't work.
Ir was also very common for a girl in highschool to suddenly withdraw to
live with her aunt in Wisconsin.
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis
A few generalizations about Then and Now:
1950s: Segregated but thriving black community in every town, with
black-owned businesses the norm in black neighborhoods.
Now: Black neighborhoods in ruins thanks to forced integration; most
neighborhood businesses closed, moved, or owned by outsiders.
1950s: Out-of-wedlock births a tiny fraction of total black births; most
black families have mother and father at home.
Now: 70%+ of births out of wedlock in black community; most black
children raised in single-parent households.
1950s: Pervading sense of optimism, faith in a better tomorrow.
Today: Widespread pessimism, anti-progress attitudes pervasive.
1950s: U.S. public education regarded as "best in the world."
Today: U.S. public education a sad, sick joke.
1950s: Patriotism, belief in rightness of Western values widespread.
Today: Patriotism smirked at; Western values questioned.
1950s: Racial relations bad, but getting better slowly.
Today: Racial relations disintegrating as body politic splinters into
Yugoslav-style ethinic and racial special interest groups.
1950s: U.S. aggressively resists the spread of tyranny worldwide.
Today: U.S. allows dictatorships to pursue their interests unhindered.
1950s: African peoples poor but slowly improving; law and order
maintained by force; European colonial governments aka "bwana".
Today: Bwana gone; most African nations racked by poverty and squalor;
law and order almost forgotten as native-born dictatorships rape and
pillage entire nations; entire continent disintegrating into a nightmare
of disease and ethnic warfare.
1950s: Men and women follow traditional sexual roles, which are seen as
being "natural"; home-making honored; more opportunities gradually
opening for women in careers.
Today: Men and women still follow traditional sexual roles, but feel
guilty about it. Home-making regarded as old-fashioned or "limiting";
Career opportunities for motivated, skilled women effectively unlimited.
1950s: Murderers apprehended, tried, hanged.
Today: Murderers apprehended, held in jail while trial is moved to a
politically correct neighborhood and a politically correct jury is
assembled; writes best-selling book in meantime; tried on live
television by showbiz lawyers, judges; found not guilty because jurors
cannot understand complicated scientific evidence; released onto streets
to prevent race riot from burning down town.
1950s: Rioters, looters shot on sight.
Today: Rioters, looters enshrined as "revolutionary heroes".
1950s: Violent teenage drug gangs considered a public menace.
Today: Violent teenage drug gangs considered "cool", serve as basis of
multibillion dollar recording industry.
1950s: Colleges dominated by hard sciences, taught by expert
academicians, attended by serious-minded students eager for an
education.
Today: Colleges dominated by non-scientific fields of study (social
"sciences"), taught by tenured Marxist agitatators, attended by
political activists, slackers, and a small minority of serious-minded
students eager for an education.
1950s: People sleep securely behind unlocked doors.
Today: Houses are miniature fortresses.
1950s: Cultural icons like Elvis and Nat Cole.
Today: Culture sneered at; pop icons like Marilyn Manson and Puff Daddy
rule.
I could go on, but why? Ask your parents; ask anyone who lived back
then. Sure, there were bad things going on -- what historical era didn't
have them? -- but OVERALL, society was better for everyone. Why do you
think movies like BACK TO THE FUTURE and PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED depict
the '50s with nostalgia and fondness? It's not because they were
horrible! What I and others in the nascent Retroculture movement support
is to go back to the future, back to those GOOD aspects (optimism,
order, commitment to human values) that the '50s represented, without
resuming the obviously stupid ones (like limiting the opportunities of
skilled, motivated people on the basis of race or sex).
I grew up in the late '60s and 1970s. The '60s counterculture didn't
really "take" in Dallas, Texas like it did elsewhere, with the result
that life there remained pretty fifties-like for most of my early years.
I remember them fondly. Unfortunately, the nighborhood I grew up in is
now a decaying hellhole, a tribute to a society that gave up and quit
caring. It's sad.
But that life still exists, in small towns and suburbs, because REAL
people have NEVER given in to the hip cynicism and toleration of evil
and disorder that pervades the media and academe today. Real People WANT
that '50s lifestyle, no matter how "unhip" or un-PC it might be. Real
People don't give a damn if they get called a racist or an Uncle Tom or
a gringo-lover, and they don't care what Barbra or Ted Turner thinks,
and they laugh at people who worship rocks and think that Gorillas Are
People Too. Real People are on my side.
And we will win, because there will come a time when Real People of all
colors are going to say "enough." It will happen because Real People are
tired of seeing their cities turned into third-world hellholes of
poverty and crime, their schools into political indoctrination centers,
and the culture of Cervantes and Goethe into trash. My children are
going to grow up in a world where people have come back to their senses,
a world a lot like the Good Old Days, instead of in a nightmarish world
of chaos and hatred and "anything goes."
And, since this subject is off-topic, that's the last I'll have to say
about it.
Dan Goodman
Anyone who says "other people would agree with me, if they were being
honest" does not deserve to be taken seriously. That applies to Bruce
Lewis -- and to, among others, John Norman.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Andrew Plotkin
Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis ("bchan"@pacbell.net) wrote:
> But that life still exists, in small towns and suburbs, because REAL
> people have NEVER given in to the hip cynicism and toleration of evil
> and disorder that pervades the media and academe today. Real People WANT
> that '50s lifestyle, no matter how "unhip" or un-PC it might be. Real
> People don't give a damn if they get called a racist or an Uncle Tom or
> a gringo-lover, and they don't care what Barbra or Ted Turner thinks,
> and they laugh at people who worship rocks and think that Gorillas Are
> People Too. Real People are on my side.
Real People hate me.
You hate me. Please think about that.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Avram Grumer
> 1950s: Segregated but thriving black community in every town, with
> black-owned businesses the norm in black neighborhoods.
> Now: Black neighborhoods in ruins thanks to forced integration; most
> neighborhood businesses closed, moved, or owned by outsiders.
I live in a black neighborhood. It's not in ruins (in fact, it's less
ruined now than it was when I moved in), and at least half the businesses
are black-owned. The same is true of many black neighborhoods in my
city.
> 1950s: Out-of-wedlock births a tiny fraction of total black births; most
> black families have mother and father at home.
Citation, please.
> 1950s: Pervading sense of optimism, faith in a better tomorrow.
> Today: Widespread pessimism, anti-progress attitudes pervasive.
Citation based on objective evidence, please. Oh, and you forgot:
1950s: Near-universal assumption that a nuclear war with the USSR was
imminent.
> 1950s: Patriotism, belief in rightness of Western values widespread.
> Today: Patriotism smirked at; Western values questioned.
You misspelled:
1950s: Questioning of Western values smirked at, sometimes punished by
unemployment, ostracism.
> 1950s: Racial relations bad, but getting better slowly.
> Today: Racial relations disintegrating as body politic splinters into
> Yugoslav-style ethinic and racial special interest groups.
Again, some sort of citation of an objective source of infomarion would be
helpful here.
> 1950s: U.S. aggressively resists the spread of tyranny worldwide.
You misspelled:
1950s: U.S. happily supports any tyrant who's willing to call himself
anti-Communist.
> 1950s: Men and women follow traditional sexual roles, which are seen as
> being "natural"; home-making honored; more opportunities gradually
> opening for women in careers.
> Today: Men and women still follow traditional sexual roles, but feel
> guilty about it. Home-making regarded as old-fashioned or "limiting";
> Career opportunities for motivated, skilled women effectively unlimited.
1950s (and early '60s): Educated middle class housewives suffering from
"housewives' syndrome": depression, drug abuse. (See Betty Friedan's _The
Feminine Mystique_.)
> 1950s: Murderers apprehended, tried, hanged.
...even if they were really innocent.
> Today: Murderers apprehended, held in jail while trial is moved to a
> politically correct neighborhood and a politically correct jury is
> assembled; writes best-selling book in meantime; tried on live
> television by showbiz lawyers, judges; found not guilty because jurors
> cannot understand complicated scientific evidence; released onto streets
> to prevent race riot from burning down town.
Not sure what you're talking about here. I know of one case that
resembles what you describe, except that in the case I'm thinking of, the
jury aquitted not because they didn't understand the evidence, but because
they didn't trust the people who had gathered the evidence. But if you're
willing to cite examples of trials from the 1950s in which DNA evidence
played a major part in the conviction, feel free.
> 1950s: Rioters, looters shot on sight.
> Today: Rioters, looters enshrined as "revolutionary heroes".
Cite examples, please.
> 1950s: Violent teenage drug gangs considered a public menace.
> Today: Violent teenage drug gangs considered "cool", serve as basis of
> multibillion dollar recording industry.
Are "violent teenage drug gangs" really not illegal in Dallas? Amazing.
They're illegal here, in New York.
> 1950s: Colleges dominated by hard sciences, taught by expert
> academicians, attended by serious-minded students eager for an
> education.
> Today: Colleges dominated by non-scientific fields of study (social
> "sciences"), taught by tenured Marxist agitatators, attended by
> political activists, slackers, and a small minority of serious-minded
> students eager for an education.
Have you actually been to college? I was just a decade ago, and I don't
recall any Marxist agitation on the parts of any of my professors. Most
of the students had the long-term goal of getting good (read: high-income)
jobs, and the short-term goal of getting lots of booze and sex. My
girlfriend, who's currently in college, vouches for things being the same
way now. I suspect that things were much the same 40 years ago.
> 1950s: Cultural icons like Elvis and Nat Cole.
> Today: Culture sneered at; pop icons like Marilyn Manson and Puff Daddy
> rule.
Since when are Elvis and Nat King Cole not pop icons? What weird
definition of "pop icon" are you using?
> I could go on, but why? Ask your parents; ask anyone who
> lived back then.
I have. Without exception, those who really think about it for a while
instead of giving a flip, off-the-cuff answer say things are better
today.
> Why do you think movies like BACK TO THE FUTURE and PEGGY SUE
> GOT MARRIED depict the '50s with nostalgia and fondness?
Because people are nostalgic for the era in which they grew up.
> What I and others in the nascent Retroculture movement support
> is to go back to the future, back to those GOOD aspects (optimism,
> order, commitment to human values) that the '50s represented, without
> resuming the obviously stupid ones (like limiting the opportunities of
> skilled, motivated people on the basis of race or sex).
Sounds a bit like the SCA.
> Real People don't give a damn if they get called a racist or
> an Uncle Tom or a gringo-lover...
They sound like the kind of people I don't want to have anything to do with.
> It will happen because Real People are
> tired of seeing ... their schools into political
> indoctrination centers,
Have you ever spoken to someone who actually went to school in the 1950s?
> ...and the culture of Cervantes and Goethe into trash.
17th century Spain and 18th century Germany?
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
When crimes are outlawed, only outlaws will commit crimes.
Elizabeth Moon
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
>
> A few generalizations about Then and Now:
>
> 1950s: Segregated but thriving black community in every town, with
> black-owned businesses the norm in black neighborhoods.
1950s: Not "thriving" in every town, not if "thriving" means what I
mean by the word...with families in decent housing, with enough to eat,
with the means to protect themselves against the world's cruelty. Black
children attended segregated schools which were every bit as bad as slum
schools now. Higher education so segregated that there are next to no
black scientists, engineers, technical workers, outside the narrow
confines of black colleges. No black doctors outside black communities;
no black teachers in schools attended by white children. No black
airline pilots for major airlines; no black flight attendants either.
Professional sports dominated by white athletes. Infant and maternal
mortality twice as high for blacks as whites; childhood immunization
rates much lower for black children.
>
> Now: Black neighborhoods in ruins thanks to forced integration; most
> neighborhood businesses closed, moved, or owned by outsiders.
Now: Black lawyers, doctors, scientists, engineers, technical workers,
teachers, secretaries, sales personnel all working in the "mainstream"
and doing fine. The ruin of inner-city black neighborhoods is indeed a
bad thing, but it should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the
civil rights movement did a great deal of good. It foundered, but it was
not wrong-headed from the beginning.
> 1950s: Out-of-wedlock births a tiny fraction of total black births; > most black families have mother and father at home.
> Now: 70%+ of births out of wedlock in black community; most black
> children raised in single-parent households.
Given the dubious statistics on even white births at the time (later on I
give one example of why the statistics were, to put it mildly,
incomplete), I would be wary of statistics on black births. Moreover,
the two-parent vs. one-parent household assumes (erroneously) that
two-parent households are always desirable and trouble-free.
> 1950s: Pervading sense of optimism, faith in a better tomorrow.
Wrong. *Some* people had a pervading sense of optimism, and the rest
were convinced that the world would end in a nuclear holocaust, a third
world war against the Soviet Union. Alongside material optimism was a
very strong strain of fear and despair. It was in the 1950s that people
built backyard bomb shelters and discussed whether or not they would let
their unsheltered neighbors in if trouble came. It was in the 1950s that
the militia movements began, with the intent of fighting off the expected
invasion. (How do I know? Because I knew some people active in one of
them back then.)
> Today: Widespread pessimism, anti-progress attitudes pervasive.
Today: Widespread determination not to pretend the past was perfect.
Widespread realization that the kind of progress touted in the 1950s
(with slapdash disregard for warnings that existed at the time) led to
serious problems two or three decades later. Moreover, if you think
everyone is pessimistic, you're hanging around with pessimists. (And
you're forgetting that bad news sells more papers than good news--always
has--so more bad news gets on the media.)
> 1950s: U.S. public education regarded as "best in the world."
Not by anyone who knew anything about European education! The 1950s
were the era of the infamous "Dick and Jane" readers (which children
were punished for reading too expressively, as I found out.) In the
1950s, in fact, it became apparent (in part because of student exchange
programs, and in part because of Sputnik) that American students were far
behind their European counterparts of the same age. Most U.S. students
did not study a foreign language until high school, and then took only a
year or so--most European students took two, and learned them well enough
to speak them. In math, science, literature, and languages, the U.S.
public schools were behind, and known to be behind (the big education
debates of the late '50s and early '60s were about how to catch up.)
You might want to read some of the books and articles written at the
time, or take a look at Geerat Vermeij's _Privileged Hands: A Scientific
Life_. Vermeij came to this country at age 9, in 1955, and attended
public schools in New Jersey. He is scathing in his comparison of the
education given a blind boy in Holland with that available to sighted
children in the United States. He contrasts "the quiet respectful
atmosphere" in Holland with "a permissive chaos, a frenzy of talking,
walking, giggling, and outright disobedience." He says "the academic
pace was painfully slow." Since he was a blind child mainstreamed into
third grade taught in a foreign language, you can take it that "painfully
slow" means less than academically demanding.
> Today: U.S. public education a sad, sick joke.
Today public education is, as it has been since at least 1920, highly
variable in quality from place to place. U.S. public schools have never
been able to produce graduates who understood what education was, and
what it was for--it has always done well with the children of recent
immigrants from work-oriented cultures, but has not sustained the gain in
later generations. This fault has existed for almost a century.
> 1950s: Patriotism, belief in rightness of Western values widespread.
How much of the expressed patriotism in the 1950s was genuine, and how
much was an attempt to escape criticism (and the McCarthy sort of attack)
we will probably never know. It depends in part on how you define
patriotism. In my experience (which spans the period in question) there
was as much (and no more) *real* patriotism around in the 1950s as in the
1990s. As for "western values"--there are a lot of "western values"
around, from Plato on up--and not all were widely admired then (and some
are more admired now.)
> Today: Patriotism smirked at; Western values questioned.
I personally do not know anyone who smirks at patriotism, though I know
people who want to carefully *define* patriotism, and ensure that they
are not supporting stupid behaviors by rowdy louts with a god complex.
> 1950s: Racial relations bad, but getting better slowly.
> Today: Racial relations disintegrating as body politic splinters into
> Yugoslav-style ethinic and racial special interest groups.
Your history is seriously out of whack. The abysmal state of racial
relations began to be recognized in the 1950s, when blacks quit
pretending that they liked how they were treated, and disintegrated as
outraged whites attempted to prevent change.
> 1950s: U.S. aggressively resists the spread of tyranny worldwide.
> Today: U.S. allows dictatorships to pursue their interests unhindered.
Your history is out of whack here, too, and seems to depend on a peculiar
definition of "tyranny." People alive in Eastern Europe in the 1950s
remember with anger that the U.S. seemed to support their revolt from the
Soviet hegemony, and then left them hanging out to dry...we would not
risk a war to help the Czechs, Poles, or Hungarians.
Moreover, you seem to have forgotten the Gulf War...just to cite one
overt military action against a dictatorship...or a number of covert or
semi-covert operations justified as being "against tyranny" in some guise
or other.
> 1950s: African peoples poor but slowly improving; law and order
> maintained by force; European colonial governments aka "bwana".
> Today: Bwana gone; most African nations racked by poverty and squalor;
> law and order almost forgotten as native-born dictatorships rape and
> pillage entire nations; entire continent disintegrating into a
> nightmare of disease and ethnic warfare.
Ah yes, the Gingrich interpretation of African history. A few facts for
stumbling blocks...prior to European colonization, Africa was rich in
resources the Europeans wanted, and poor only by definition (gee, you are
happy herding cattle--we will have to make you unhappy as a farm worker
ona white plantation, so that you can later--if you qualify--become happy
as a worker in a white factory, or a low-level administrator for a
white government, convincing other happy cattle-herders to give it up and
go pick sugarcane or cotton or coffee or something...because we wise
white people know what is good for you, and that is...what is profitable
for us.) The "law and order" maintained by force existed to serve the
investors, not the Africans. Native resistance to this had existed all
along, and exploded in the 1950s in the Mau Mau attacks. It was in the
1950s that the colonial powers began to realize they could not hold
on--but arms dealers, among others, found plenty of profit in fomenting
wars. They still do.
Do Africans, as you imply, need white rule? They didn't *before*
colonization (do you even realize how late that came to most of Africa?
Do you have any idea what Africa was like before that?)
> 1950s: Men and women follow traditional sexual roles, which are seen as
> being "natural"; home-making honored; more opportunities gradually
> opening for women in careers.
1950s: Men returning from the war eliminated all the professional gains
women had made in the 1930s and 1940s; home-making was not so much
honored as simply required...housewives were treated (in magazine
articles, political speeches, etc.) as brainless twits. Homemaking in
the new suburbs isolated women and made them more dependent on commuting
husbands than women had been in previous situations. Moreover, even the
meagre amount of "honor" given home-making did not extend to anything
tangible--like, for instance, the kind of pay, job security, insurance,
and so on which male workers were demanding in their work.
Opportunities for women in careers did not "increase slowly" in the
1950s--it *decreased* rapidly after WWII, again at the end of the Korean
War, and stayed low thereafter; opportunity began to increase slowly in
the late 1960s only. My mother, trained as an engineer and employed as
one during WWII, could not get regular work in her field after the war.
Women engineers became, at best, draftsmen (and lower paid than male
draftsmen.) Get a copy of the career guidance booklets routinely handed
to graduating seniors in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and note how
many careers were automatically ruled out for women. Girls were steered
away from math and science courses, and anything technical. Gender
quotas in both undergraduate and graduate programs ensured that few women
could become scientists, physicians, lawyers, veterinarians, etc.
Unequal pay meant that even women who qualified for a better job were not
paid at that rate. (How do I know? I grew up in a one-parent home,
supported by a working mother. The highest paid woman where she worked
made less than half what the lowest-paid man did.)
> Today: Men and women still follow traditional sexual roles, but feel
> guilty about it. Home-making regarded as old-fashioned or "limiting";
> Career opportunities for motivated, skilled women effectively
> unlimited.
Today: Home-making is regarded as limiting by anyone who has done it--one
may accept the limits (as one accepts other limits) but it is, in fact, a
full-time occupation which limits one's other opportunities. It has no
advancement potential (unless you're Martha Stewart), puts nothing in
your SSI account for retirement, and is essentially unpaid with no
benefits. I personally do not know any woman who has *chosen* to be a
full-time homemaker who feels guilty about it; I do know women who have
chosen not to be a full-time homemaker who feel guilty (having been told
they're being selfish and bad.) I personally do not know any man who has
chosen "a traditional sexual role" who feels guilty either--most of them
seem pretty smug about it.
> 1950s: Murderers apprehended, tried, hanged.
Unless they murdered someone that society didn't mind them murdering. In
Texas, for instance, men who murdered wives they suspected of adultery,
or the men they suspected of being their wives' lovers, were not
executed--in fact, they were routinely let off completely (or served a
minimal term followed by a pardon from the governor; a man with whom I
served on a city council was a convicted murderer who had been pardoned
and had his rights restored.) White men could murder black men on
suspicion of just about anything; Anglos could murder "Mexicans" ditto.
I personally know of "suicides" where the gunshot wound was to the back
of the head--with a rifle--or similarly impossible occurrence...those
murderers were not caught, tried, or hung. Since you say you're from
Dallas in the 60s and 70s, you should remember some of these yourself.
> Today: Murderers apprehended, held in jail while trial is moved to a
> politically correct neighborhood and a politically correct jury is
> assembled; writes best-selling book in meantime; tried on live
> television by showbiz lawyers, judges; found not guilty because jurors
> cannot understand complicated scientific evidence; released onto
> streets
> to prevent race riot from burning down town.
O.J. is not your ordinary murder suspect. Many murderers are
apprehended, tried, and jailed. The legal system does have
loopholes--both directions--which I'm not happy with, but so did that of
the 1950s.
> 1950s: Rioters, looters shot on sight.
No. It all depended on where you were, and when you were, and how you
defined things. In the 1950s, as now, people who were not rioting were
sometimes treated as rioters; people who were not looting (were in fact
on their own property) were arrested as looters...and others, who were
rioting and looting, were neither shot on sight nor apprehended. (A
gathering of black persons, however orderly, was often defined as a riot
simply because it was a gathering of black persons; a gathering of white
persons in sheets, however destructive, was not. Lynch mobs were not
shot on sight by white law officers.)
> Today: Rioters, looters enshrined as "revolutionary heroes".
Even today, some distinction is made between the *kinds* of riots and
looting, and the interpretation given.
> 1950s: Violent teenage drug gangs considered a public menace.
> Today: Violent teenage drug gangs considered "cool", serve as basis of
> multibillion dollar recording industry.
1950s: violent teenage drug gangs *became* "cool" in the 1950s, and
served as the basis for a smaller, but nonetheless profitable,
entertainment industry. Go take a look at some of those movies, and for
that matter at "West Side Story."
> 1950s: Colleges dominated by hard sciences, taught by expert
> academicians, attended by serious-minded students eager for an
> education.
What a hoot! Wherever did you get this myth? Colleges were dominated by
hard-drinking fraternities, partying with their hard-drinking sister
sororities, and the rapid growth of "business administration" degrees.
Most kids went to college to "meet the right people" (to get married to,
and/or to go into business with later.) A few universities did in fact
have good science departments, but not all--the liberal arts (which you
seem to equate with "social sciences") dominated, and "a gentleman's C"
was still the goal of many. Some sober and dedicated students wanted a
real education--we were called squares (or other derogatory terms.)
> Today: Colleges dominated by non-scientific fields of study (social
> "sciences"), taught by tenured Marxist agitatators, attended by
> political activists, slackers, and a small minority of serious-minded
> students eager for an education.
Colleges have *always* been dominated by non-scientific fields except in
the halcyon post-Sputnik days of big federal research grants. College
students have *always* contained a large number of young people who go
because it's expected (the family insists) and who party too much, get
into trouble, goof off, get involved in politics their parents don't
approve of. The minority of serious students have always been there, and
have always been a minority. There are fewer tenured faculty now than in
the 1950s, and more insistence that the faculty actually know something
and teach it.
> 1950s: People sleep securely behind unlocked doors.
It is to weep at such innocence. We locked our doors every night. Many
people kept watchdogs and quite a few (in our part of Texas) kept guns in
the house. Breakins occurred by night and day (I remember clearly our
collie dog chasing off two potential burglars; later, when I was in
college, the house was broken into repeatedly.)
Moreover, domestic violence occurred with startling frequency--inside the
whited sepulchres of the "good old days" two-parent homes were too many
stinking bones of wife-beating, rape, and child abuse. No one talked
about it; there was no help for the victims. Instead, children were
labelled "accident prone" if they had repeated fractures, bruises, and
burns. They were "incorrigible" if they came to school with bleeding
welts. Wives were "clumsy" if they had black eyes, bruises, fainting
spells. (At one parochial school in Texas in the late 50s, over one
third of the 8th grade girls were pregnant, all by male relatives. This
was of course hushed up--the girls sent off in disgrace to a nunnery, the
babies put into orphanages. The statistic of unwed motherhood never
arose, "No, Luisa had a vocation...remember how she was praying and
praying that last six months?")
> Today: Houses are miniature fortresses.
You hang around with the wrong people. No one I know lives in a
"miniature fortress." This includes people in Massachusetts, California,
Colorado, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, and even
New York City.
> 1950s: Cultural icons like Elvis and Nat Cole.
> Today: Culture sneered at; pop icons like Marilyn Manson and Puff Daddy
> rule.
Elvis and Nat "King" Cole were pop icons, not "cultural icons." In the
1950s, "culture" was certainly sneered at, and parents found Elvis as
repulsive an "icon" as you find Puff Daddy. (I found Elvis repulsive
too, but my preference for classical music was a distinct minority.)
> I could go on, but why? Ask your parents; ask anyone who lived back
> then.
*I* lived back then; I'm telling you--you have a highly skewed idea of
what life in the 1950s was like. You have bought into a myth.
Sure, there were bad things going on -- what historical era didn't
> have them? -- but OVERALL, society was better for everyone.
It wasn't better for me, my mother, my husband, my husband's mother,
black people, brown people, and most women (a lucky few, who managed to
grab an upward bound husband who wasn't abusive, were *materially* better
in the 1950s...but not, as the feminist movement showed, better off
spiritually or intellectually.) When society is not better for over half
the people, it is not better "for everyone."
> Why do you
> think movies like BACK TO THE FUTURE and PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED depict
> the '50s with nostalgia and fondness? It's not because they were
> horrible!
Nostalgia is salable. Movies have depicted the romance of the wild west
(which anyone who's ever spent a hot morning, let alone day, trailing a
bunch of smelly cattle knows is a myth), the romance of the Old South
(try picking cotton some day and see if *you* want to burst into song
praising the Massa...), etc., etc. Movies, in case you hadn't noticed,
are not about reality.
> What I and others in the nascent Retroculture movement support
> is to go back to the future, back to those GOOD aspects (optimism,
> order, commitment to human values) that the '50s represented, without
> resuming the obviously stupid ones (like limiting the opportunities of
> skilled, motivated people on the basis of race or sex).
But since you are so obviously angry at "PCness", how are you planning to
ensure that the obviously stupid ones (obvious now, not in the '50s, not
to those perpetuating those things) will go away? How are you going to
support strong families without making possible the level of domestic
violence that then existed with no recourse for the victims? Why do you
think you can pick and choose the cultural bits you want, and dump the
ones you don't want...what evidence do you have that you can do this?
> I grew up in the late '60s and 1970s. The '60s counterculture didn't
> really "take" in Dallas, Texas like it did elsewhere, with the result
> that life there remained pretty fifties-like for most of my early
> years. I remember them fondly.
You had a happy childhood, which is nice. Society treated you well,
which is nice too. It's natural to remember fondly those things which
benefitted *you*. But to assume that what was good for you was equally
good for everyone else is a leap of projection not justified by history.
> Unfortunately, the nighborhood I grew up in is
> now a decaying hellhole, a tribute to a society that gave up and quit
> caring. It's sad.
It is sad when any neighborhood fades; it is even sadder that you grew up
unaware of the "decaying hellholes" of the 1950s (and 1940s, and
1930s...), and that you blame "society" rather than your part in it, for
what happened.
> But that life still exists, in small towns and suburbs, because REAL
> people have NEVER given in to the hip cynicism and toleration of evil
> and disorder that pervades the media and academe today. Real People
> WANT
> that '50s lifestyle, no matter how "unhip" or un-PC it might be. Real
> People don't give a damn if they get called a racist or an Uncle Tom or
> a gringo-lover, and they don't care what Barbra or Ted Turner thinks,
> and they laugh at people who worship rocks and think that Gorillas Are
> People Too. Real People are on my side.
Ahem. In other words, if I disagree with you, and am not on your side,
you define me as something other than a "Real People"? That, sir, is the
oldest and nastiest trick in the book. It is what got the English in
trouble with their colonists in this country (you are aware, by the way,
that this country began with riots, looting, and rebellion, are you not?)
It is what has made one dictator after another define some subgroup as
evil and nasty and worth killing.
It is no part of the thinking of a person who is an American patriot, who
respects the traditions and philosophies on which this nation was
founded. I will not bother to call you any of the names you say you
don't care about being called--because those names are just labelled.
The evil that says "I am Real; that other person is Not Real" goes far
deeper than any label.
> And we will win, because there will come a time when Real People of all
> colors are going to say "enough." It will happen because Real People are
> tired of seeing their cities turned into third-world hellholes of
> poverty and crime, their schools into political indoctrination centers,
> and the culture of Cervantes and Goethe into trash. My children are
> going to grow up in a world where people have come back to their senses,
> a world a lot like the Good Old Days, instead of in a nightmarish world
> of chaos and hatred and "anything goes."
In other words, you're going to wipe out everyone who disagrees, on the
grounds that they are not "Real People." Uh...huh. Well, you better
just stay away from my house, when you start on your rampage to
"victory." Let me put this plainly: I am a Christian, a military veteran
who has served this country in a time of great unrest, a wife of almost
30 years, a mother. I have lived through the years you would
mythologize. I know part of the truth of those years (no one knows all),
and I will do my utmost to prevent you and people like you from defining
me out of existence.
If you want to keep neighborhoods from turning into "third world
hellholes", you can do much better than by defining over half your
fellow-citizens as nonpeople. You can, for example, work...you can
personally put your time and your sweat and your money where your mouth
is, and demonstrate your love of this country by helping to restore what
has been destroyed. But that, of course, is harder than reciting stupid
myths and making threats.
> And, since this subject is off-topic, that's the last I'll have to say
> about it.
We can thank God for small favors, on this Thanksgiving Day, and in the
meantime I will pray that you do a little reading up on the history of
this country, including some close attention to the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution.
>
> Fly Me to the Moon,
Not *this* Moon, thank you very much.
> B-chan
Elizabeth Moon
Patrick Di Justo
>
>Pat Powers wrote in message ...
>
>>
>>Abortions were illegal, period, in those days. Ask some women who were
>>young back then about what THAT entailed for some of their friends and
>>classmates.
>
>Abortions were however performed. Nurses, veterinarians and people with a
>natural medical knack (though no formal training) were the usual
>practitioners. In one case that I know of, the girl's mother instructed the
>daughter to do violent exercises. It didn't work.
If you could get two doctors to swear that the woman's life was
endangered by the pregnancy, a theraputic abortion was permissible.
The "upper crust" of society almost always knew the right doctors to
visit. Other people, without the right connections, would "vacation"
in Puerto Rico. Throughout much of the late 50s, the Pan Am Friday
night flight from NYC to San Juan was filled with frightened pregnant
women, off to get an abortion in the one part of American soil where
it was not illegal.
Dennis L. McKiernan
Elizabeth Moon wrote:
A spot on response to someone who waxed nostalgically about the
fifties.
I turned 18 in 1950 and remember them well (Korea [I was in the USAF],
race relations, men and women's "roles," and all).
Nice response, Elizabeth, and on the whole accurate.
---Dennis
--
Dennis L. McKiernan
Just released: Into the Forge
Forthcoming ('98): Into the Fire
Recent Books: The Dragonstone; Caverns of Socrates
Phil Fraering
"Alter S. Reiss" <asr...@ymail.yu.edu> writes:
> Or just capable of telling the difference between reality, and
>reality as seen through glasses so thoroughly rose tinted that they are
>functionaly opaque. Better quality of living, more real wealth across
>almost the entire economic spectrum, longer life expectancy, and no
>very real, very immediate threat of nuclear holocaust looming on the
>horizon...
Uh, I don't mean to burst anyone's bubbles, but as long as you're talking
about rose-colored glasses... the last time I checked nuclear disarmament
had not taken place, and proliferation of that (and other equally dangerous
weapons) was still a problem in the present.
Maybe you're posting from 2007?
--
Phil Fraering "Just because the code is intended to cause flaming
p...@globalreach.net death is no reason to get sloppy and leave off
/Will work for *tape*/ the casts." - Tim Smith, regarding sample (F0 0F
C7 C8) Pentium Death code on comp.os.linux.advocacy
Joseph Hertzlinger
Why would supposed conservatives want to go back to the 1950s?
That was the heyday of collectivism, with labor unions at their
strongest and tax rates of 90% in the highest brackets. (BTW,
racism is simply a crude form of collectivism.)
Joseph Hertzlinger
In <347CEFFB...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Charles Mark Bee
<c-b...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> writes:
>Personally, I wanna go to the ATOMIC 50's, where my whole family wears
>knee-length satin tunics and wrist-o-visors, my job is looking at a
>big oval screen sitting on my butt, and there's a nuclear reactor in
>my car.
At least we have the jobs with screens. I'm sure oval ones can be
arranged.
Graydon
In article <347E63...@sff.net>,
Elizabeth Moon <elizabe...@sff.net> wrote:
[stacks of Good Stuff]
>> going to grow up in a world where people have come back to their senses,
>> a world a lot like the Good Old Days, instead of in a nightmarish world
>> of chaos and hatred and "anything goes."
>
>In other words, you're going to wipe out everyone who disagrees, on the
>grounds that they are not "Real People." Uh...huh.
Not with the sort of tactical ability that does that kind of insecurity
managment.
Anyone want to explain to me _why_ people think the change they don't like
can be severed from the contemperous change they _do_ like?
Or why anyone with the least understanding of evolution (and anyone
claiming a scientific world view without that understanding is mistaken)
thinks a uniform _anything_ for 250+ million people is a good thing?
Diversity is strength, even if it means odd seeming people on the subway.
>hellholes", you can do much better than by defining over half your
>fellow-citizens as nonpeople. You can, for example, work...you can
>personally put your time and your sweat and your money where your mouth
>is, and demonstrate your love of this country by helping to restore what
>has been destroyed. But that, of course, is harder than reciting stupid
>myths and making threats.
He could just start by reading Jane Jacobs, and getting some understanding
of the processes involved.
Hope is a fine thing, but, well, it helps to hope _for_ something,
something defined in concrete terms, and not be _against_.
That's the great failure of every twentieth century political movement
right there - they were, or became, defined by what they were _against_,
and had nothing to work for. Not a good situation.
--
goo...@interlog.com | "However many ways there may be of being alive, it
--> mail to Graydon | is certain that there are vastly more ways of being
dead." - Richard Dawkins, :The Blind Watchmaker:
Brandon Ray
In note <65gchn$881$1...@nnrp3.snfc21.pbi.net>, "Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis" writes:
>Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
>(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
>honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
>better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
>
>Hell, let's go back to the 1850s. Those Victorians had their crap
>together.
>
>--
>Fly Me to the Moon,
>
>B-chan
>Anime Lover Since 1969
>
>Thanks to all who came out to
>Anime Weekend Atlanta 3! It was
>great seeing all of you!
>
>****************************************************
>KURO NEKO: The Online Journal of
>Super Dimension Family Henderson-Lewis
>http://home.pacbell.net/bchan/
>****************************************************
---
******************************************************************************
"The message is clear: on THE X-FILES, a woman who is co-opted by the
patriarchal order gets turned into a puddle of goo."
--Rhonda Wilcox & J.P. Williams
"'What Do You Think?': The X-Files,
Liminality, and Gender Pleasure"
******************************************************************************
Jan @ Jerry Bryson
They aren't really conservatives, would be my guess.
It was also the heyday of Mcarthyism(sp) though. Real fun for the Faux
Right
Joseph Hertzlinger <jher...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
Dave Griffith
: 32 is middle-aged?
For some of us, 32 is just barely young. You're past the storms
of adolesence (which seem to have been extended to age 25 or so when I
wasn't looking), starting to get secure in your powers, and making
lasting connections in family, community, and career. The "I can do
anything" braggadacio of your teens starts to be replaced by the
warm glow of actual accomplishments. As long as you can manage to
stay suitably wierd and creative in spite of growing security and
responsibility, at 32 the world is your mollusc.
For others, evidently, 32 is just one step from Alzheimer's and
incontinence.
--
--Dave Griffith, grif...@crl.com
Official Sycophancy Page: http://www.seattleu.edu/~escharf/griffith/
Spinner
snipped a lot of GOOD, reasoned, rebuttal (and titles. Oops.)
> 1950s: Men returning from the war eliminated all the professional gains
> women had made in the 1930s and 1940s; home-making was not so much
> honored as simply required...housewives were treated (in magazine
> articles, political speeches, etc.) as brainless twits.
little snip
The American Dream for women circa late 50's'early 60's:
Wall to wall carpeting, two car garage, central air conditioning, your
husband makes more than your father did and after five years of marriage
his underwear are still snowy white.
> Opportunities for women in careers did not "increase slowly" in the
> 1950s--it *decreased* rapidly after WWII
The "Rosie the Riveter"vpropaganda campaign to get women out of the
factories so the boys would have jobs when they came home is one of the
most successful in the history of human civilization.
Snip more good rebuttal. And I hated to do it. All those facts were
"straight."
> Moreover, domestic violence occurred with startling frequency--inside the
> whited sepulchres of the "good old days" two-parent homes were too many
> stinking bones of wife-beating, rape, and child abuse. No one talked
> about it; there was no help for the victims. Instead, children were
> labelled "accident prone" if they had repeated fractures, bruises, and
> burns. They were "incorrigible" if they came to school with bleeding
> welts. Wives were "clumsy" if they had black eyes, bruises, fainting
> spells. (At one parochial school in Texas in the late 50s, over one
> third of the 8th grade girls were pregnant, all by male relatives. This
> was of course hushed up--the girls sent off in disgrace to a nunnery, the
> babies put into orphanages. The statistic of unwed motherhood never
> arose, "No, Luisa had a vocation...remember how she was praying and
> praying that last six months?")
One doesn't talk about such things, don't you know? After all, the poor
parents/man shouldn't have to endure gossip about the fact their/his family
is so unruly such strong discipline is necessary. (Practiacally a quote.)
> *I* lived back then; I'm telling you--you have a highly skewed idea of
> what life in the 1950s was like. You have bought into a myth.
Actually he's bought a raft of... and is still trying to believe it was a
good investment.
More snipping that made me wince. I saved this BTW
> If you want to keep neighborhoods from turning into "third world
> hellholes", you can do much better than by defining over half your
> fellow-citizens as nonpeople. You can, for example, work...you can
> personally put your time and your sweat and your money where your mouth
> is, and demonstrate your love of this country by helping to restore what
> has been destroyed. But that, of course, is harder than reciting stupid
> myths and making threats.
The growth of human civilization can be traced in the widening definition
of person. Hmmm....
> Elizabeth Moon
I repeat, excellent and reasoned rebuttal, Elizabeth. Thank you for
investing the time to do it well.
Spinner
David Fetter
In rec.arts.sf.written Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis <"bchan"@pacbell. net> wrote:
You've missed some things here.
> 1950s: U.S. public education regarded as "best in the world."
At least until 1961, when the whole US realized that those backward-ass
Rooskees had a better one.
> 1950s: U.S. aggressively resists the spread of tyranny worldwide.
^^^^^^^
Strangely, you've misspelled "abets." Take Chile for one example.
There are many others.
> 1950s: Murderers apprehended, tried, hanged.
^^^^^^^^^
You've misspelled "Negroes and Mexicans." And there's this horrible
thing called "evidence" that got left out, too.
> 1950s: Cultural icons like Elvis and Nat Cole.
Ah, yes...Elvis, a guy who managed, somehow, to give "poor white trash"
a bad name. A guy whose favorite sexual conquests were pubescent girls,
and whose "generosity" was in helping someone who could already afford one
buy a Cadillac. Anybody for delusions of grandeur? Or is there some other
name for somebody who believes he has a "healing touch?" The guy who said
that the only thing a black man was good for was to shine his shoes.
What a hero! Oops. The punctuation was off there.
What? A hero?
--
David Fetter 888 O'Farrell Street Apt E1205
sha...@ren.glaci.com San Francisco, CA 94109-7089 USA
http://www.best.com/~dfetter +1 415 567 2690 (voice)
print unpack ("u*",q+92G5S="!!;F]T:&5R(%!E<FP@2&%C:V5R"@``+)
"I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want
to be liked by all the people around them. I don't care if people
hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question
is: 'What are they in a position to do about it?'"
William S. Burroughs
Lori Coulson
So the "50's" were the "Promised Land" --- WHAT the HELL are *You* SMOKING?
I was born in 1955. My father was in the Air Force. I remember being
taught what to do if there was a nuclear attack. I remember how tense
things were at the base during the Cuban Missle Crisis. I grew up
discussing what to do/where to go when the Atomic War starts--and
believing that it was likely to happen before I reached age 21.
I remember a society where the guy could play around, but his wife had
better be home taking care of the kids/house.
I remember being vacinated for every disease under the sun (sure seemed
that way) and how worried my folks were that I might actually get polio....
And the things my Mom could tell you about the 50s would curl your hair.
Sometime get my ex-husband's mother (Juanita) to tell you what being a
teacher was like during the 50s....
Lori Coulson
--
*****************************************************
...Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver...
Just around the riverbend? Pocahontas
*****************************************************
Jim Mann
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis <"bchan"@pacbell. net> > wrote in message
<65kgbd$daf$1...@nnrp4.snfc21.pbi.net>...
>
>I could go on, but why? Ask your parents; ask anyone who lived
back
>then. Sure, there were bad things going on -- what historical
era didn't
>have them? -- but OVERALL, society was better for everyone. Why
do you
>think movies like BACK TO THE FUTURE and PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED
depict
>the '50s with nostalgia and fondness?
Why did the Greeks of Golden Age Greece look back and lament the
lost times when men were men, women were women, etc. ? Why has
almost every society looked back to the lost golden age? Why have
so many talked about the times when things were better, when they
were younger?
*****************************************************************
*
Jim Mann jma...@REMOVETHIStransarc.com
Transarc Corporation
Technical Writer -- Encina Programming Documentation
http://www.transarc.com/~jmann/
Marriage should be a balanced stalemate between equal
adversaries. -- Amelia Peabody
Scott Colvin Beeler
ph...@lungold.globalreach.net (Phil Fraering) writes:
>"Alter S. Reiss" <asr...@ymail.yu.edu> writes:
>
>> Or just capable of telling the difference between reality, and
>>reality as seen through glasses so thoroughly rose tinted that they are
>>functionaly opaque. Better quality of living, more real wealth across
>>almost the entire economic spectrum, longer life expectancy, and no
>>very real, very immediate threat of nuclear holocaust looming on the
>>horizon...
>
>Uh, I don't mean to burst anyone's bubbles, but as long as you're talking
>about rose-colored glasses... the last time I checked nuclear disarmament
>had not taken place, and proliferation of that (and other equally dangerous
>weapons) was still a problem in the present.
>
>Maybe you're posting from 2007?
Well, yes, nuclear weapons still exist, but the threat of them being
used is considerably lower than in the 1950s or 1960s (or 70s or 80s
for that matter). Think of something like, say, the Cuban Missile
Crisis, and then try to think of the last time any nations were *near*
that close to starting a nuclear war.
Scott
--
Larry Caldwell
In article <65gi2h$5...@elaine17.Stanford.EDU>,
alei...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Andrea Lynn Leistra) wrote:
> Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis <spam...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
> >(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> >honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> >better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
> Or female. Or gay. Or non-white. Or any combination of those and
> others.
Hey! I'm a middle aged middle class white guy. The difference is that
I was an adult when this guy was born.
1965. I remember it well. Watts riots. Dead freedom marchers.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, for which a senator from my state
cast the ONLY dissenting vote, then lost the next election to Bob
Packwood.
I also remember a girl I knew using surgical tubing to fill her
sister's uterus with pHisohex to induce an abortion. Of course, they
didn't really know if she was pregnant, since she never went to a
doctor. The anti-abortion crowd needs to remember that making abortions
illegal doesn't stop abortions, it just makes them more dangerous.
My own fiance went to a doctor for birth control, and was refused on
the grounds that she wasn't married. I suppose there were female
gynecologists around, but none were available in a town with only
25,000 people.
That's why, when you're reading sanitized Randian polemics like
_ST_ that a perceptive reader sees them as oppressive and evil,
designed to perpetuate the power structure of a narrow little
fraternity, while disenfranchising and exploiting everyone else.
That is exactly the milleu that Heinlein was writing from. From
a disabled veteran in the 1950's, it was understandable. From a
reader in the 1990's, it is contemptible.
-- Larry
Avram Grumer
> In note <65gchn$881$1...@nnrp3.snfc21.pbi.net>, "Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis"
writes:
>
>> Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year
>> I was born (1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone,
>> if they were being honest. Even with all the faults of society
>> back then, it was still better. Anyone who says different is
>> lying or being PC.
>
> ...or, perhaps, not a middle class white American male.
Hey, I'm a middle class white American male, and I wouldn't want to wind
society back to the year of my birth (1966). Guess I must be lying or a
personal computer (or is it a player character?), just like everyone else
who disagrees with Mr. Lewis.
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
"Homer, the sea isn't wine-colored." "D'oh!"
Alistair Neil
On 28 Nov 1997 14:33:30 -0500, lcou...@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Lori
Coulson) wrote:
>
. I remember being
>taught what to do if there was a nuclear attack.
Duck and cover!
Dryad
Dan Goodman
What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
decades from now?
Paul Dietz
Jim Mann wrote:
> Why have
> so many talked about the times when things were better, when they
> were younger?
Projection, or the pathetic fallacy, or something like that.
Paul
Pat Powers
In article <65kbkn$i...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>, "Stan Engel"
<thori...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Pat Powers wrote in message ...
>
> >Hey, you left out the OTHER good stuff. The nearly complete censorship of
> >sexual information so that ignorance about sex was pretty nearly
> >universalwith disastrous results for many a young teen.
>
> Yes, but there was a bright side as well. The downtown areas of all cities
> were full of prostitutes which is not the case today. In that sense the good
> old days were more liberal than at present.
>
The prostitutes may have been there, but they weren't LEGAL, so they were
still as liable to persecution as they are now, but much more thoroughly
ostracized than they are now. You're talking hypocrisy (talking morality
but tolerating prostitutes) not liberalism, which Rush Limbaugh and fans
notwithstanding, are not the same thing.
> >
> >Don't forget lynchings! they were illegal but still done in a lot of
> >places. And what happened to black people didn't matter because they were
> >invisible to white people.
>
> Lynchings still occur, perhaps better phrased as extra-judicial executions.
> I was watching the Maury Povich show when they showed tape of an accused
> child molester (in police custody) being gunned down by the molested boy's
> father. The father got a suspended sentence. That's justice. Does anybody
> remember the Elly Nessler case in California? Same thing except she was
> sentenced ro 8 years.
>
I think it's fair to make a distinction between people who are murdered by
the parents of those whose children they molested, and people who are
murdered by mobs of strangers because they were in the wrong place at the
wrong time, with skins of the wrong color.
> >Abortions were illegal, period, in those days. Ask some women who were
> >young back then about what THAT entailed for some of their friends and
> >classmates.
>
> Abortions were however performed. Nurses, veterinarians and people with a
> natural medical knack (though no formal training) were the usual
> practitioners. In one case that I know of, the girl's mother instructed the
> daughter to do violent exercises. It didn't work.
>
> Ir was also very common for a girl in highschool to suddenly withdraw to
> live with her aunt in Wisconsin.
True, it was a real lottery. Maybe you came out OK, maybe you died. It was
the price of morality, y'know.
--
Visit www.islandford.w1.com and know the beauty and terror of Karg, enjoy
the Fauxtoons and the Celebrity Clones, and generally have a good time --
mostly for free.
Pat Powers
::Rush Limbaugh-style summary of U.S. history snipped::
>
> But that life still exists, in small towns and suburbs, because REAL
> people have NEVER given in to the hip cynicism and toleration of evil
> and disorder that pervades the media and academe today. Real People WANT
> that '50s lifestyle, no matter how "unhip" or un-PC it might be. Real
> People don't give a damn if they get called a racist or an Uncle Tom or
> a gringo-lover, and they don't care what Barbra or Ted Turner thinks,
> and they laugh at people who worship rocks and think that Gorillas Are
> People Too. Real People are on my side.
So, everybody who disagrees with you is an Unreal Person. Why not just
shorten it to Unperson?
Pat Powers
> Bruce "B-chan" Lewis wrote:
> >
Long and very well reasoned response to Mr. Lewis' post snipped.
I have often heard it said that the proper response to bad information and
ideas is good information and ideas, not censorship. Your post is an
excellent demonstration of that statement.
>
> Not *this* Moon, thank you very much.
>
> > B-chan
>
> Elizabeth Moon
> --
--
Pat Powers
There was one thing about the late 50s and the early 60s that was really
great, that no one can deny -- the graphic design. It was the era of
beanpole and woggle patterns, of Sputnik sculpture, of spaced out recliner
chairs and atomic wall clocks. It was a time when even relatively humble
structures like dry cleaners and burger joints and even banks were willing
to spring for architectural details that really made them stand out --
woggle roofs, glasbrick walls, sputnik towers and atomic symbols. Drive-ins
were a whole new kind of building, and cars with huge fins and weird chrome
were big, too, though cars were just a PART of it.
Anybody here ever read "Populuxe?"
You might claim that liking that stuff is boomer nostalgia, but I say
that the 50s and 60s were the one time when the science fiction mentality
somehow made its way into the world of graphic design, art direction and
architecture, much to their great benefit. Now we're in a time of boring
glass boxes (though I really like the look of the kiddie gyms they're
putting up in burger doodles nowadays, especially the glass-enclosed ones
and I would have LOVED them when I was a kid).
Phil Fraering
Elizabeth Moon <elizabe...@sff.net> writes:
[...]
>> Fly Me to the Moon,
>Not *this* Moon, thank you very much.
ROTFL
Seriously, while you're at it, you might want to try tieing this into
the Starship Troopers thread... if the 50's were so perfect, how come
people such as Heinlein (and others) were using their writings to float
ideas about massive social changes?
What got Heinlein so aggravated that the idealized military in ST
_doesn't have_ service academies?
BTW, you mentioned Louisiana in your post. Are you ever passing through
Lafayette?
Phil
Phil Fraering
dsg...@visi.com (Dan Goodman) writes:
>What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
>decades from now?
That's the neat thing about the nineties. You can read _that_ right now
in WIRED.
>--
>Dan Goodman
>dsg...@visi.com
>http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
>Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Leonard Erickson
lar...@teleport.com (Larry Caldwell) writes:
> 1965. I remember it well. Watts riots. Dead freedom marchers.
> The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, for which a senator from my state
> cast the ONLY dissenting vote, then lost the next election to Bob
> Packwood.
Heck, I was only in the 5th grade in 65. But I recall that about then,
or maybe a very few years later, I saw a *very* bright flas light up
the horizon from the direction of the local Air Force base. And
wondering if the next thing I'd see was a mushroom cloud...
A few years *before* 65, I remember being sent home from school with
all the other kids at avery *specific time, with instructions to go
straight home and have my mother note how long it took. This was so
they could decide which kids would have to use the school shelter and
which would be sent home.
Friends who were a bit older tell of being afraid of a nuclear exchange
with the Soviets (Cuban Missile Crisis).
And child & spousal abuse weren't any more (or less!) prevalent than
now. It just took something *really* extreme to get folks to do
anything about it.
Yeah, the 60s were really wonderful, weren't they?
--
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
sha...@krypton.rain.com <--preferred
leo...@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort
Justin Fang
In article <65nkml$vl$1...@darla.visi.com>, Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
>decades from now?
How, back in the '90s, the Net was *the* source of accurate information and
a haven for polite and reasoned conversation.
--
Justin Fang (jus...@ugcs.caltech.edu)
This space intentionally left blank.
Joshua Jasper
In article <65n7qa$3ba$1...@uni00nw.unity.ncsu.edu>,
getting better, but a real full fledged exchange is less. Lot's of
weapons grade plutonium is floating around these days.
Sinboy
Eohmar
The grass is always greener in the past.
Andrew Plotkin
Doppler effect! We can therefore conclude that the expansion of the
universe is slowing down. Very nice.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Avram Grumer
> What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's,
> a couple decades from now?
Ah, remember back in the early '90s, when Usenet wasn't filled with trolls
and spam, and the Web wasn't all crapped up with frames and animated
GIFs? Those were good days.
You could watch old-fashioned broadcast TV back then in perfect anonymity,
without having to worry about the set sending your IP2 address back to the
server.
Remember mass market paperback books? They don't make those any more.
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted."
-- Esther Dyson
Stan Engel
Pat Powers wrote in message ...
executions.
>> I was watching the Maury Povich show when they showed tape of an accused
>> child molester (in police custody) being gunned down by the molested
boy's
>> father. The father got a suspended sentence. That's justice. Does anybody
>> remember the Elly Nessler case in California? Same thing except she was
>> sentenced ro 8 years.
>
>I think it's fair to make a distinction between people who are murdered by
who are
>murdered by mobs of strangers because they were in the wrong place at the
>wrong time, with skins of the wrong color.
You will notice that I inserted the word "ALLEGEDLY" into the statement by
Pat Powers. An allegation of guilt or even a formal indictment is not the
same as a conviction. In fact, many ALLEGED child molesters have been
acquitted. Remember the McMartin preschool case in California? How about the
Satanic cult operating in Austin, Minnesota. More than 20 parents were
accused of participating in a child sex ring and the prosecutors had plenty
of statements from the children but tragically nothing that could be called
evidence.
But what about those who are in fact guilty of rape and child molestation?
There is no death penalty for such people but it seems to be acceptable to
murder them. There are those today who like to excuse the actions of these
murderers. Not me though. There is in fact no distinction between a black
rapist being lynched in the 1920s and a white rapist shot down in the 1990s.
There are statistics available on the number of men lynched in the 19th and
20th centuries. These murders were one reason for organizing the NAACP.
There are no statistics on how many lynch law victims were in fact guilty of
something heinous. Probably the majority had done something very bad but it
doesn't matter. Courts of law are supposed to mete out justice and not mobs
or irate parents.
Andrew Plotkin
Avram Grumer (av...@interport.net) wrote:
> In article <65nkml$vl$1...@darla.visi.com>, dsg...@visi.com (Dan Goodman) wrote:
> > What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's,
> > a couple decades from now?
> Ah, remember back in the early '90s, when Usenet wasn't filled with trolls
> and spam, and the Web wasn't all crapped up with frames and animated
> GIFs? Those were good days.
> You could watch old-fashioned broadcast TV back then in perfect anonymity,
> without having to worry about the set sending your IP2 address back to the
> server.
> Remember mass market paperback books? They don't make those any more.
No, no, no. The question is, what *nonsense* will be spouted about the
1990's? What will people be saying in 2030 which *we* will know is pure
rose-colored glass? This is a much more interesting question.
"1990s: There weren't any advertisements on TV."
"1990s: No prejudice against atheism."
"1990s: The US public school system still worked." (This one is eternal.)
And don't forget the obvious ones:
"1990s: Sex was free of risk; kids could experiment without worrying
about the Alphabet Soup of Sudden Death."
"1990s: Marijuana and nicotine were legal; you could smoke anything you
wanted on the street without being arrested."
As you can tell, I'm a bit cynical about the future. But that's just the
flip side of nostalgia, isn't it? And this is an exercise debunking
nostalgia. Let's see, I should be able to come up with a *few* from an
optimistic point of view...
"1990s: Sexual morals were kept high by dangerous diseases, like AIDS.
People had a reason to stay monogamous and in traditional straight
marriages, so they were happier."
"1990s: Public schools weren't exposed to the constant flow of bullshit
from the Net. So teachers could teach kids the *facts* -- none of this
modern nonsense of critical evaluation of the data and source. Back then,
a teacher didn't have to defend the reliability of his textbooks and
explain any biases in them."
How's a-that?
Larry Caldwell
In article <avram-27119...@avram.port.net>,
av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) wrote:
> spam...@pacbell.net wrote:
> > It will happen because Real People are
> > tired of seeing ... their schools into political
> > indoctrination centers,
> Have you ever spoken to someone who actually went to school in the 1950s?
I was in the 2nd grade when they made the Pledge of Allegiance a daily
mandatory ritual for school children. I can't remember anyone
questioning the change.
I also remember when they added "under God" to the wording of the
Pledge of Allegiance, and they started requiring a written Oath of
Allegiance from all teachers. They sort of kicked that one under the
rug when Joe McCarthy bit it.
The Free Speech movement in Berkeley started because there WASN'T any
free speech. Lenny Bruce was being jailed for saying "fuck" in a
stand-up comedy routine in a night club, when what they really didn't
like was his content. The language was just an excuse.
And of course we all remember children giving political testimony against
their parents before the House Committee on Unamerican Affairs. Family
values, dontcha know.
"If your mommie is a commie,
Then you gotta turn her in."
- Chad Mitchell
-- Larry
Pat Powers
In article <z5Fg00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
Caldwell) wrote:
> In article <avram-27119...@avram.port.net>,
> av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) wrote:
> > spam...@pacbell.net wrote:
>
> I was in the 2nd grade when they made the Pledge of Allegiance a daily
> mandatory ritual for school children. I can't remember anyone
> questioning the change.
IIRC, atheists and some religious groups challenged it, with the sterling
success you might expect (the Founding Fathers would be SOOO disappointed
in us, in many respects).
Pat Powers
In article <65ouvc$j...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>, "Stan Engel"
<thori...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Pat Powers wrote in message ...
> >In article <65kbkn$i...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>, "Stan Engel"
> >> Lynchings still occur, perhaps better phrased as extra-judicial
> executions.
> >> I was watching the Maury Povich show when they showed tape of an accused
> >> child molester (in police custody) being gunned down by the molested
> boy's
> >> father. The father got a suspended sentence. That's justice. Does anybody
> >> remember the Elly Nessler case in California? Same thing except she was
> >> sentenced ro 8 years.
> >
> >I think it's fair to make a distinction between people who are murdered by
> >the parents of those whose children they (ALLEGEDLY) molested, and people
> who are
> >murdered by mobs of strangers because they were in the wrong place at the
> >wrong time, with skins of the wrong color.
>
> You will notice that I inserted the word "ALLEGEDLY" into the statement by
> Pat Powers. An allegation of guilt or even a formal indictment is not the
> same as a conviction. In fact, many ALLEGED child molesters have been
> acquitted. Remember the McMartin preschool case in California? How about the
> Satanic cult operating in Austin, Minnesota. More than 20 parents were
> accused of participating in a child sex ring and the prosecutors had plenty
> of statements from the children but tragically nothing that could be called
> evidence.
Point taken. If the guy wasn't found guilty, he cannot be considered
guilty. I really can't be bothered, however, to get TOO exercised over the
rights of convicted child molesters, or any other variety of rapist.
But I wasn't saying it was OK to murder child molesters. I was saying
there's a considerable difference between someone whose child has been
molested killing the murderer, and an angry crowd killing someone they ran
across in the street because their skin is the wrong color. And I'll stand
by that.
> But what about those who are in fact guilty of rape and child molestation?
> There is no death penalty for such people but it seems to be acceptable to
> murder them. There are those today who like to excuse the actions of these
> murderers. Not me though. There is in fact no distinction between a black
> rapist being lynched in the 1920s and a white rapist shot down in the 1990s.
I think it matters who killed him, and why. If the parents had say, caught
the rapist in the act, but not killed him on the spot, and they later kill
him, they might still be killing someone THEY know to be a rapist, even if
the judicial proceedings necessary for the rest of us to know he's a rapist
haven't occurred. You can say we still can't tolerate it, but we can
understand it.
> There are statistics available on the number of men lynched in the 19th and
> 20th centuries. These murders were one reason for organizing the NAACP.
> There are no statistics on how many lynch law victims were in fact guilty of
> something heinous. Probably the majority had done something very bad but it
> doesn't matter.
The accounts of lynchings make it very clear that many lynching victims
were guilty of no crime more heinous than not being white. Some were
accused of heinous crimes, but were innocent. Some were guilty. But some
were just ... there, when people were ready to lynch.
Courts of law are supposed to mete out justice and not mobs
> or irate parents.
Granted, but courts of law make reasonable distinctions between someone who
kills because their child has been molested and someone who kills because
they don't like niggers. Nowadays. In the 50s, they didn't always do that.
Alter S. Reiss
On 28 Nov 1997, Dan Goodman wrote:
> What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
> decades from now?
The grass was greener?
-- Alter S. Reiss - www.geocities.com/Area51/2129 - asr...@ymail.yu.edu
"Nonsense, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist"
David G. Bell
In article <347f4f30...@news.demon.co.uk>
la...@blahmajikthise.demon.co.uk "Alistair Neil" writes:
Nuclear weapons in the fifties were a lot less of a killer than they
might seem. You could stop a lot of the bombers with a good air defence
system. And, even with the early H-bombs, they were still pretty small
bangs. Nuclear war would be horrific, and it would kill millions, and
the fallout would be a big problem, but if you lived more than a couple
of miles from a target, the attack was survivable.
So things like "Duck and Cover" were not as dumb as they seem now. And
it is worth remembering that the civil defence planning in 1939 was
based on the idea that conventional bombing would cause death and
destruction on the scale of a nuclear attack.
It was only the emergence of the long-range missile that made defence
against nuclear attack too difficult.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, Furry, and Punslinger..
Samuel S. Paik
In article <65nkml$vl$1...@darla.visi.com>, Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
>decades from now?
Family Values. Alternative Lifestyles. Lots of domestic jobs.
Lots of foreign investment. Strong economy. Low Inflation. Free
Trade. Protection from cheap foreign labor. Cheap energy. Low
pollution. [Suburban] Streets safe. Small Government. Government
protected citizens from dangers. Good monetary policy. Easy credit.
Low levels of bankruptcy. Bill of Rights important. Obscenity
controlled/prayer in schools/guns controlled/Civil RICO/Miranda/
capital punishment/capital punishment banned. Abortions allowed.
Abortions controlled.
I hope I was equal opportunnity, but I'm sure my biases blinded me
to many good ideas.
In article <65nuks$3...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, jus...@ugcs.caltech.edu
(Justin Fang) wrote:
>How, back in the '90s, the Net was *the* source of accurate information and
>a haven for polite and reasoned conversation.
I recall being able to read Usenet. All of it (well, that's really the
80s).
--
Necessity is the Mother of Improvisation. | Samuel S. Paik
Laziness and Greed are the Parents of Innovation| pa...@webnexus.com
An Agent of the Small World Order Speak only for self
PARTcris.com
In article <347f4f30...@news.demon.co.uk>,
la...@blahmajikthise.demon.co.uk says...
>
>On 28 Nov 1997 14:33:30 -0500, lcou...@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Lori
>Coulson) wrote:
>
>>
>>I remember being taught what to do if there was a nuclear attack.
>
>Duck and cover!
Stop, drop, and roll!
--
"So weary, this straightjacket dreamer
So resigned to continue to suffer
But you've learnt that as you grow weaker
There's less hurt because there's much less to hurt"
- Siouxsie & The Banshees, "Stargazer"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The White Crow's Nest - http://www.cris.com/~scottjp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John & Linda VanSickle
Dave Griffith wrote:
> The "I can do anything" braggadacio of your teens starts to be replaced
> by the warm glow of actual accomplishments.
It is also supplanted by proof that you really weren't so *#$! smart
after all.
--
"It wasn't my fault--in a way I haven't totally figured out yet."
http://www.erols.com/vansickl
Andrew Plotkin
Scott Promish (sco...@REMOVETHISPARTcris.com) wrote:
> >
> >>I remember being taught what to do if there was a nuclear attack.
> >
> >Duck and cover!
>
> Stop, drop, and roll!
Turn on, tune in, drop out?
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, dsg...@visi.com (Dan Goodman) wrote:
>What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
>decades from now?
"It was so wonderful when politicians knew enough about the Net to leave
well alone."
"Back then, the sitcoms didn't all look like clones of each other, and
the actors *weren't* clones of each other."
"The public schools actually taught kids to read."
"Ordinary mortals could figure out what their computers were up to."
- Richard
------
A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic.
What is (and isn't) ScF? ==> http://www.wco.com/~treitel/sf.html
Mail from hotmail.com is ignored due to spamming.
I use PGP 2.6.2.
bla...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
Pat Powers (sir...@mindspring.com) wrote:
: In article <z5Fg00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
: Caldwell) wrote:
: > In article <avram-27119...@avram.port.net>,
: > av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) wrote:
: >
: > I was in the 2nd grade when they made the Pledge of Allegiance a daily
: > mandatory ritual for school children. I can't remember anyone
: > questioning the change.
: IIRC, atheists and some religious groups challenged it, with the sterling
: success you might expect (the Founding Fathers would be SOOO disappointed
: in us, in many respects).
Would they? Would the founder of the Hell-Fire Club be disappointed?
===================== ====================================
BLAINE GORDON MANYLUK email: bla...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
EDMONTON, AB
Jeff Suzuki
Scott Colvin Beeler (scbe...@unity.ncsu.edu) wrote:
: Well, yes, nuclear weapons still exist, but the threat of them being
: used is considerably lower than in the 1950s or 1960s (or 70s or 80s
: for that matter). Think of something like, say, the Cuban Missile
: Crisis, and then try to think of the last time any nations were *near*
: that close to starting a nuclear war.
I agree with the statement, but not necessarily with the sentiment: true,
_nations_ are much less likely to use nuclear weapons now than they were
during the 60s.
Unfortunately, one thing that the Soviet Union did do was to keep a large
number of nuclear physicists employed and nuclear material stockpiled.
I make a prediction: sometime within the next twenty years, a major nation
(probably the U.S.) will be the victim of a weapon of mass destruction of a
Hiroshima level or greater.
I'm _hoping_ it will be "only" nuclear. The biologicals are the really scary
ones, though: a couple orders of magnitude easier to manufacture, and
unpleasantly difficult to trace.
Jeffs
David Joseph Greenbaum
In a fit of divine composition, David G. Bell (db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk)
inscribed in fleeting electrons:
: Nuclear weapons in the fifties were a lot less of a killer than they
: might seem.
Actually, that's only true until the introduction of the Mk4 composite
"levitated" core weapons. The yield increased markedly then, up to about
100 kilotons. In the later '50s, standards were introduced for the
allowance of tritium boost, which improved yields by another 100 to 200
kilotons for the bigger pure-fission devices. The real differences
between 450 kilotons and one megaton are really almost academic.
: You could stop a lot of the bombers with a good air defence
: system.
But there wasn't even that. There were vectored F-100s with unguided
nuclear rockets. And before that there were Sabres. Whoopdie-do.
: And, even with the early H-bombs, they were still pretty small
: bangs.
The first weaponized fusion bomb, the Mk17, was fifteen megatons, bigger
than any deployed after. Bombs have gotton smaller since the fifties,
not the reverse.
: Nuclear war would be horrific, and it would kill millions, and
: the fallout would be a big problem, but if you lived more than a couple
: of miles from a target, the attack was survivable.
Only if filtered air, sealed bomb and blast shelters were available.
No-one remembers this now, but it wasn't the poorer middle-class and
working class families that built bomb shelters in the suburbs. Survival
was strictly an upper-middle class phenomenon.
: So things like "Duck and Cover" were not as dumb as they seem now. And
: it is worth remembering that the civil defence planning in 1939 was
: based on the idea that conventional bombing would cause death and
: destruction on the scale of a nuclear attack.
Thanks to the hysteria of Guilio Douhet and the rest of the airpower
maniacs who spoke of the deployment of gas bombs. If you really think
about what the civil defense measures were for, they were to counteract a
mustard or phosgene gas attack against cities. Because gases were never
really that effective to begin with, the response was rather overdone.
Duck and cover for students in urban elementary and secondary schools
*was* really dumb. The RAND warfighters agreed that it was dumb (see
Herman Kahn et al, and push for $100 billion civil defense program).
: It was only the emergence of the long-range missile that made defence
: against nuclear attack too difficult.
Japan in 1945 had high altitude interceptors (copied from German Me-262),
and radar. Didn't stop Enola Gay or Bock's Car.
In the numbers bandied about at the time, real defense against high
flying piston or gas bombers was extremely difficult, especially since
either guns, undirected rockets, or long-distance nuclear interceptors
had never been tested in combat. Long distance suborbital ballistic
rockets allowed the military to ignore the problem of nuclear defense for
twenty years (and Spartan-Sprint was pushed on the military by congress)
Dave G.
--
Such fragrance -
from where,
which tree?
Pat Powers
In article <65sfui$j9o$1...@news.sas.ab.ca>, bla...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
wrote:
> Pat Powers (sir...@mindspring.com) wrote:
> : In article <z5Fg00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
> : Caldwell) wrote:
>
> : > In article <avram-27119...@avram.port.net>,
> : > av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) wrote:
> : >
> : > I was in the 2nd grade when they made the Pledge of Allegiance a daily
> : > mandatory ritual for school children. I can't remember anyone
> : > questioning the change.
>
> : IIRC, atheists and some religious groups challenged it, with the sterling
> : success you might expect (the Founding Fathers would be SOOO disappointed
> : in us, in many respects).
>
> Would they? Would the founder of the Hell-Fire Club be disappointed?
>
Yeah, they would. They proposed freedom of religion, and freedom FROM
religion, in a time that was not so distant from the Salem witch trials.
Now everybody HAS to say "In God We Trust" even those of us who in God we
don't believe. Sad.
Joshua Jasper
In article <siren7-ya02408000...@news.mindspring.com>,
Pat Powers <sir...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <65sfui$j9o$1...@news.sas.ab.ca>, bla...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
>wrote:
>
>> Pat Powers (sir...@mindspring.com) wrote:
>> : In article <z5Fg00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
>> : Caldwell) wrote:
>>
>> : > In article <avram-27119...@avram.port.net>,
>> : > av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) wrote:
>> : >
>> : > I was in the 2nd grade when they made the Pledge of Allegiance a daily
>> : > mandatory ritual for school children. I can't remember anyone
>> : > questioning the change.
>>
>> : IIRC, atheists and some religious groups challenged it, with the sterling
>> : success you might expect (the Founding Fathers would be SOOO disappointed
>> : in us, in many respects).
>>
>> Would they? Would the founder of the Hell-Fire Club be disappointed?
>>
>Yeah, they would. They proposed freedom of religion, and freedom FROM
>religion, in a time that was not so distant from the Salem witch trials.
>Now everybody HAS to say "In God We Trust" even those of us who in God we
>don't believe. Sad.
>
The founder of the Hell-Fire club was disappointed with America
back then anyhow, what's the diff?
Sinboy
Bob Goudreau
David Fetter (dfe...@shell4.ba.best.com) wrote:
: In rec.arts.sf.written Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis <"bchan"@pacbell. net> wrote:
: > 1950s: U.S. aggressively resists the spread of tyranny worldwide.
: ^^^^^^^
: Strangely, you've misspelled "abets." Take Chile for one example.
: There are many others.
You're probably thinking of Guatemala. Chile was democratic until
Pinochet's (US-abetted) coup overthrew the Allenda regime in the
early 1970s or thereabouts.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation
goud...@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive
+1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA
anonymous
> [1950s] was the heyday of McCarthyism]
Josepth McCarthy pointed out the supporters of mass murderers
for what they were, using himself completely nonviolent methods.
In fact, his methods were less violent than those of Ghandi.
He had one simple but powerful weapon: the truth. For telling the
truth with nonviolence, he was pilloried by those who sympathized
with the coercive, murderous ideology of socialism. Joseph McCarthy is
one greatest heroes of our otherwise rather pathetic century, and those
who demonized him were complicit in the murders of millions.
Those who continue to demonize this hero of nonviolence must
examine their conscience. Please do not continue to
encourage theft, violence, and murder by propagating the
the pathetically lame smears that have been made against this
great hero and role model for nonviolence.
Followups to talk.politics.libertarian.
zylof
Samuel S. Paik
On 28 Nov 1997, Dan Goodman wrote:
> What kind of nostalgic nonsense will be spouted about the 1990's, a couple
> decades from now?
In article <Pine.A41.3.95.971129...@acis.mc.yu.edu>,
"Alter S. Reiss" <asr...@ymail.yu.edu> wrote:
> The grass was greener?
Yeah!
The grass was greener, because back then, we were allowed to spray
RoundUp on weeds and fertilizer on the lawn [substitute "carcinogenic
chemicals to be deprecating"].
And we could use grass because we had these machines we called mowers,
before we had to give them up because of global warming.
Sam
Nyrath the nearly wise
Thus spoke Paul Dietz (di...@interaccess.com):
> Jim Mann wrote:
>
> > Why have
> > so many talked about the times when things were better, when they
> > were younger?
>
> Projection, or the pathetic fallacy, or something like that.
There's an old brominde that states:
"Memories embellish life.
But forgetfulness alone makes it bearable...."
Steve Brewster
Alistair Neil (la...@blahmajikthise.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: On 28 Nov 1997 14:33:30 -0500, lcou...@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Lori
: Coulson) wrote:
:
: >
: . I remember being
: >taught what to do if there was a nuclear attack.
:
: Duck and cover!
That's only in America. In Britain we Protect and Survive [1].
[1] Protect and Survive - deadpan, unintentionally funny what-to-do-if-
the-Bomb-goes-off leaflet published in the late 70s by the UK government
--
"I've got a friend over there in the government block |zeus.bris.ac.uk/~masjb
And he knows the situation and he's taking stock..." | * My opinions only *
Matt Austern
av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) writes:
> Have you actually been to college? I was just a decade ago, and I don't
> recall any Marxist agitation on the parts of any of my professors. Most
> of the students had the long-term goal of getting good (read: high-income)
> jobs, and the short-term goal of getting lots of booze and sex. My
> girlfriend, who's currently in college, vouches for things being the same
> way now. I suspect that things were much the same 40 years ago.
Oh, I remember two leftist professors at my college. Dunno if either
of them called themselves marxists, but one of them was a left
anarchist and the other was an organizer for one of the left-of-the-
Democrats parties. (Don't remember which one. I'd like to say the
New Party, but I don't think that it was around yet when I was in
college. This was the mid 80s.)
But then, that's just two professors. There were, by contrast, entire
departments that were devoted almost entirely to training students to
be part of managerial capitalism or military-related industry.
So I'd say that the marxist professors aren't completely imaginary,
but they're also pretty negligible. Universities, like all other
powerful institutions, have a lot invested in the status quo.
Matt Austern
Elizabeth Moon <elizabe...@sff.net> writes:
> Andrea Lynn Leistra wrote:
> >
> > In article <65gchn$881$1...@nnrp3.snfc21.pbi.net>,
> > Bruce \"B-chan\" Lewis <spam...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > >Would I trade today's social conditions for those of the year I was born
> > >(1965)? Yes, In a heartbeat. And so would anyone, if they were being
> > >honest. Even with all the faults of society back then, it was still
> > >better. Anyone who says different is lying or being PC.
> >
> > Or female. Or gay. Or non-white. Or any combination of those and
> > others.
...
> Well put. Speaking as someone out of high school by '65, that wasn't a
> golden trouble-free world for most people (realizing that if you count
> the numbers in your groupins, you have "most people" locked in.)
Yes, but you're cheating: you were actually there, and you remember
what it was like. Nostalgia is much easier when you don't have all
those icky memories getting in the way.
Roger Christie
Followups to alt.nuthatch.
Stan Engel
Pat Powers wrote in message ...
>Point taken. If the guy wasn't found guilty, he cannot be considered
>guilty. I really can't be bothered, however, to get TOO exercised over the
>rights of convicted child molesters, or any other variety of rapist.
>
> But I wasn't saying it was OK to murder child molesters.
Actually, in an indirect way, that's precisely what you are saying.
> I was saying there's a considerable difference between someone whose child
has been
>molested killing the murderer, and an angry crowd killing someone they ran
>across in the street because their skin is the wrong color. And I'll stand
>by that.
I see. There's a considerable difference between a parent killing a child
molester with a gun and a mob killind a child molester with a rope. Is it
acceptable if the child's parents are part of the mob? I've never studied
the composition of lynching groups but it seems that the members would
include aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors etc. of the child. Don't they have
an interest in making sure the rapist never harms another child?
Keep in mind that there are and were in the past Black men who raped White
women. Even in the racist South (as opposed to tne progressive North) women
truthfully claimed to be raped, although there were those cases where the
women lied. Again, I don't have statistics to support my contention but it's
my belief that the majority if lynchings were conducted by people truly
believing that a serious crime had occurred.
>
>I think it matters who killed him, and why. If the parents had say, caught
>the rapist in the act, but not killed him on the spot, and they later kill
>him, they might still be killing someone THEY know to be a rapist, even if
>the judicial proceedings necessary for the rest of us to know he's a rapist
>haven't occurred. You can say we still can't tolerate it, but we can
>understand it.
Yes I can understand it. The best way to be sure there is no tacit
toleration is to execute in a manner prescribed by law such parents after a
fair trial.
In this senses at least the 1950s were more moral than the 1990s. I remember
an episode of "The Defenders" where EGMarshal defends a policeman who
murdered a boy implicated in the rape of the officer's young daughter. EG
gets the client off but admits to the prosecutor (JDCannon) that if he had
been on the jury he would have voted guilty. Recently there have been many
shows on TV where the aggrieved parent gets acquitted or serves a minimum
sentence.
>
>Granted, but courts of law make reasonable distinctions between someone who
>kills because their child has been molested and someone who kills because
>they don't like niggers. Nowadays. In the 50s, they didn't always do that.
Well if I'm the nigger in question's friend shouldn't I shoot down the
person who murdered him and beat the rap. I have a right to be outraged
also.
John Lorentz
Leonard Erickson <sha...@krypton.rain.com> wrote in article
<971128.220952...@krypton.rain.com>...
> Friends who were a bit older tell of being afraid of a nuclear exchange
> with the Soviets (Cuban Missile Crisis).
I remember very well our whole class (I was in, what, 4th grade) being
seriously worried--and seriously certain--that a nuclear war was going to
start at any time during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was no reason to
doubt it--we'd been told for years that the Russians (it was never "the
Soviets" back then) would start a war eventually. But the Americans, being
on the side of Good, would survive somehow, although many casualties...
--John Lorentz
Avram Grumer
In article <01bcfeaf$7abd75e0$cbac...@LORENTZ1.PLANAR.COM>, "John
Lorentz" <john_l...@planar.com> wrote:
> I remember very well our whole class (I was in, what, 4th grade)
> being seriously worried--and seriously certain--that a nuclear war
> was going to start at any time during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I remember reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis in history books, and
being amazed that it _hadn't_ started the nukes a'flying.
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
"The Internet is not a separate 'cyberspace' reality. It is a new nervous
system for the physical world." -- Phil Agre
Stan Engel
Stan Engel wrote in message <660377$g...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>...
>In this senses at least the 1950s were more moral than the 1990s. I
remember
>an episode of "The Defenders" where EGMarshal defends a policeman
The TV show "The Defenders" was broadcast in either the late 50s or early
60s but my recollection is for the 60s. No real difference.
Larry Caldwell
In article <EKIFq...@fsa.bris.ac.uk>,
ma...@zeus.bris.ac.uk (Steve Brewster) wrote:
> That's only in America. In Britain we Protect and Survive [1].
> [1] Protect and Survive - deadpan, unintentionally funny what-to-do-if-
> the-Bomb-goes-off leaflet published in the late 70s by the UK government
For sheer stand-up comedy, nobody ever beat Ronald Rayguns. The Reagan
administration actually had the post office draw up contingency plans for
delivering the mail in case of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Form 1984-4-F, Forwarding Address in case of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Just tuck it where the sun don't shine, Prez.
-- Larry
Avram Grumer
In article <1lFh00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
Caldwell) wrote:
> For sheer stand-up comedy, nobody ever beat Ronald Rayguns.
> The Reagan administration actually had the post office draw
> up contingency plans for delivering the mail in case of
> nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
ObSF: Maybe he'd read Brin's _The Postman_.
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
When crimes are outlawed, only outlaws will commit crimes.
Robert A. Woodward
In article <avram-02129...@avram.port.net>, av...@interport.net
(Avram Grumer) wrote:
> In article <1lFh00O5...@teleport.com>, lar...@teleport.com (Larry
> Caldwell) wrote:
>
> > For sheer stand-up comedy, nobody ever beat Ronald Rayguns.
> > The Reagan administration actually had the post office draw
> > up contingency plans for delivering the mail in case of
> > nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
>
> ObSF: Maybe he'd read Brin's _The Postman_.
>
The inspiration would have to have been in the opposite direction (though
if David Brin denies that he was so influenced, I will believe him).
Del Cotter
On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, in rec.arts.sf.written
Larry Caldwell <lar...@teleport.com> wrote
>For sheer stand-up comedy, nobody ever beat Ronald Rayguns. The Reagan
>administration actually had the post office draw up contingency plans for
>delivering the mail in case of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Let me guess. They hired Kevin Costner.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
'"Where would conversation be, if we were not allowed to exchange our minds
freely and to abuse our neighbours from time to time?" said Stephen.'
-- Patrick O'Brian on Usenet, in "The Fortune of War"
Thomas Petersen
John & Linda VanSickle <vans...@erols.com> wrote:
>Beth and Richard Treitel wrote:
>>
>> "Ordinary mortals could figure out what their computers were up to."
>
>Oh heck I can do that. My computer is running WIndows 95. Therefore it
>is using about eight times the resources that a well-designed and well-
>written operating system would need for the exact same functionality.
That's a good one!
"Back in the 90s we didn't need any T3 Net feeds to write a memo. We
just fired up Word, wrote the document and printed it out. Simple,
fast and robust."
"Politics weren't corrupt back then. I read that president Clinton
ran his campaign on 1bn$. He just ran a couple of television ads and
went out to talk to real people on the street -- nobody had to beg
business hotshots for large sums of money in return for dubious favors
in those days."
--
Thomas Petersen http://www.temp.dk/
Just read: _The Face_, Jack Vance
Now reading: _The Book of Dreams_, Jack Vance
Dennis Pear
More than anything else, the dozens of hysterical responses, full of
over-reactions, irrelevant horror stories, ad hominems, nit-picking,
strawmen, and every other desperate trick tend to convince me the
original poster of "The Good Old Days" was basically right.
He said something like "most people will agree unless they're lying or
being PC" and what I'm hearing sounds exactly like a guilty conscience
on that question.
If there's anything actually wrong with what he said, it's gotten lost
beneath the noise of the PC attempt to shout him down.
Andrea Lynn Leistra
In article <896eli$n2g0sk9...@qz.little-neck.ny.us>,
Dennis Pear <Denni...@poboxes.com> wrote:
>
>More than anything else, the dozens of hysterical responses, full of
>over-reactions, irrelevant horror stories, ad hominems, nit-picking,
>strawmen, and every other desperate trick tend to convince me the
>original poster of "The Good Old Days" was basically right.
Well, there's not much we can do to change your mind, then.
Perhaps you consider people pointing out that "The Good Old Days" were
not such for various segments of the population to be nitpicking. Or
perhaps you don't believe them. Not having lived through the time
period in question, I can't speak from personal experience, but from
what other people have said and from a simple knowledge of history I
know that *I*, as a lesbian, would not want to trade the social situation
today for that in 1950.
--
Andrea Leistra http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~aleistra
-----
Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
Geoffrey C Marshall
There is also the myth about being able to make biologicals
"racially selective".......
This increases the tendency for use.
Geoff...
Geoffrey C Marshall
John & Linda VanSickle wrote:
>
> Beth and Richard Treitel wrote:
> >
> > "Ordinary mortals could figure out what their computers were up to."
>
> Oh heck I can do that. My computer is running WIndows 95. Therefore it
> is using about eight times the resources that a well-designed and well-
> written operating system would need for the exact same functionality.
>
Geoff....
Geoffrey C Marshall
Graydon wrote:
>
> That's the great failure of every twentieth century political movement
> right there - they were, or became, defined by what they were _against_,
> and had nothing to work for. Not a good situation.
Isn't that what is "wrong" with most "democracies" ?
People seldom vote FOR anything, more AGAINST the
other. How can we expect it to work if it is based
on a fundamental negativity ?
[This may be partly local - voting compulsory here].
How do we make democracy a "positive" involvement
rather than negative ?
How does this apply to the system you are designing ?
Geoff...
Geoffrey C Marshall
Elizabeth Moon wrote:
> benefits. I personally do not know any woman who has *chosen* to be a
> full-time homemaker who feels guilty about it; I do know women who have
> chosen not to be a full-time homemaker who feel guilty (having been told
> they're being selfish and bad.) I personally do not know any man who has
> chosen "a traditional sexual role" who feels guilty either--most of them
> seem pretty smug about it.
>
Having been in BOTH situations, I see absolutely no reason for any
man to feel *guilty* over this. Victimised yes, guilty, no. Haveing
been in BOTH situations, let me assure you that the "male traditional
sexual role" is far harder and more stressful than being a full-time
homemaker.
In fact being a "homemaker" is FAR less stressful, as one of the
hardest things to cope with is other peoples projections that you
should be "out there earning a living". Coping with the 3yr old
boy and 6,8 and 13 yr old girls is no problem.
Why should someone feel guilty when they have "NO" choice ?
Why should someone feel guilty when they cant even percieve a choice ?
They are to be pityed, not envied.
> > 1950s: Murderers apprehended, tried, hanged.
>
> Unless they murdered someone that society didn't mind them murdering. In
> Texas, for instance, men who murdered wives they suspected of adultery,
> or the men they suspected of being their wives' lovers, were not
> executed--in fact, they were routinely let off completely (or served a
> minimal term followed by a pardon from the governor; a man with whom I
> served on a city council was a convicted murderer who had been pardoned
> and had his rights restored.) White men could murder black men on
> suspicion of just about anything; Anglos could murder "Mexicans" ditto.
> I personally know of "suicides" where the gunshot wound was to the back
> of the head--with a rifle--or similarly impossible occurrence...those
> murderers were not caught, tried, or hung. Since you say you're from
> Dallas in the 60s and 70s, you should remember some of these yourself.
>
And now women can murder men because they are "frightened" ? This is
better ?
> > I could go on, but why? Ask your parents; ask anyone who lived back
> > then.
>
> *I* lived back then; I'm telling you--you have a highly skewed idea of
> what life in the 1950s was like. You have bought into a myth.
>
So have you.... The myth of male advantage and supremacy....
> Sure, there were bad things going on -- what historical era didn't
> > have them? -- but OVERALL, society was better for everyone.
>
> It wasn't better for me, my mother, my husband, my husband's mother,
> black people, brown people, and most women (a lucky few, who managed to
> grab an upward bound husband who wasn't abusive, were *materially* better
> in the 1950s...but not, as the feminist movement showed, better off
> spiritually or intellectually.) When society is not better for over half
> the people, it is not better "for everyone."
>
Right. Dead on. Pity males are less than 50%.
> You had a happy childhood, which is nice. Society treated you well,
> which is nice too. It's natural to remember fondly those things which
> benefitted *you*. But to assume that what was good for you was equally
> good for everyone else is a leap of projection not justified by history.
>
Apply that reasoning to current times....
> > that '50s lifestyle, no matter how "unhip" or un-PC it might be. Real
> > People don't give a damn if they get called a racist or an Uncle Tom or
> > a gringo-lover, and they don't care what Barbra or Ted Turner thinks,
> > and they laugh at people who worship rocks and think that Gorillas Are
> > People Too. Real People are on my side.
>
> Ahem. In other words, if I disagree with you, and am not on your side,
> you define me as something other than a "Real People"? That, sir, is the
> oldest and nastiest trick in the book. It is what got the English in
> trouble with their colonists in this country (you are aware, by the way,
> that this country began with riots, looting, and rebellion, are you not?)
> It is what has made one dictator after another define some subgroup as
> evil and nasty and worth killing.
>
I totally and unreservedly support you in this.He has done the "real
people" thing twice in one para... With gorillas and with humans...
> It is no part of the thinking of a person who is an American patriot, who
> respects the traditions and philosophies on which this nation was
> founded. I will not bother to call you any of the names you say you
> don't care about being called--because those names are just labelled.
> The evil that says "I am Real; that other person is Not Real" goes far
> deeper than any label.
>
Yes. Yes. Yes. Why cannot everyone realise the danger in these
"subtlties" ?
> > And we will win, because there will come a time when Real People of all
> > colors are going to say "enough." It will happen because Real People are
> > tired of seeing their cities turned into third-world hellholes of
> > poverty and crime, their schools into political indoctrination centers,
> > and the culture of Cervantes and Goethe into trash. My children are
> > going to grow up in a world where people have come back to their senses,
> > a world a lot like the Good Old Days, instead of in a nightmarish world
> > of chaos and hatred and "anything goes."
>
> In other words, you're going to wipe out everyone who disagrees, on the
> grounds that they are not "Real People." Uh...huh. Well, you better
> just stay away from my house, when you start on your rampage to
> "victory." Let me put this plainly: I am a Christian, a military veteran
> who has served this country in a time of great unrest, a wife of almost
> 30 years, a mother. I have lived through the years you would
> mythologize. I know part of the truth of those years (no one knows all),
> and I will do my utmost to prevent you and people like you from defining
> me out of existence.
>
And, despite our disagreements, when that time come, please call on
me for assistance. YEveryone has to sleep sometime.
Geoff....
Avram Grumer
In article <robertaw-021...@blv-pm111-ip3.halcyon.com>,
It was a joke, but I see in the front matter of my copy of _The Postman_
that Part 1 was originally published in the Nov. '82 issue of _Isaac
Asimov's SF Magazine_. Given publishing turnaround, it couldn't have been
written much later than early '82, about a year after Reagan entered
office. When were those contingency plans drawn up?
--
Avram Grumer av...@interport.net
http://www.users.interport.net/~avram/
"...it is significant that we are called the 'information society' --
not the thinking society, not the deliberative society, not the society
of reason and rationality." -- Lloyd Morrisett
Steven R. Sloan
On 2 Dec 1997, Larry Caldwell wrote:
> For sheer stand-up comedy, nobody ever beat Ronald Rayguns. The Reagan
> administration actually had the post office draw up contingency plans for
> delivering the mail in case of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Did this plan involve Kevin Costner in some way?
_____________________________________________________________________
Steve Sloan E-mail: ssl...@cs.uah.edu
Computer Science graduate at the University of Alabama in Huntsville
Science fiction and raytracing pictures and links:
http://mars.cs.uah.edu/cs/students/ssloan/
C++: a language that allows your friends to access your private parts
"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" Homer J. Simpson
Dave Griffith
Larry Caldwell (lar...@teleport.com) wrote:
: Another thing that was nice about the 1950's was a world population of
: only 1.9 billion people. Of course, nobody had ever heard of pollution
: control, so the air stunk and the rivers were sewers, but there was more
: space and natural resources were cheaper.
Land may have been cheaper, depending on location. Pretty much every
other natural resource is cheaper today. Food and energy in
particular are much cheaper today (constant dollars, of course).
It's nice that someone else noted that the air and water were considerably
more polluted in the 50's than we would stomach nowadays. I'd forgotten
that bit.
--
--Dave Griffith, grif...@crl.com
Official Sycophancy Page: http://www.seattleu.edu/~escharf/griffith/
Bruce "B-chan" Lewis
Dennis Pear wrote:
>
> More than anything else, the dozens of hysterical responses, full of
> over-reactions, irrelevant horror stories, ad hominems, nit-picking,
> strawmen, and every other desperate trick tend to convince me the
> original poster of "The Good Old Days" was basically right.
>
> being PC" and what I'm hearing sounds exactly like a guilty conscience
> on that question.
>
> If there's anything actually wrong with what he said, it's gotten lost
> beneath the noise of the PC attempt to shout him down.
Thank you. (From the poster in question).
The truth is this: that despite the many bad things that existed in the
period 1947-1967, most people who remember those days would agree
(off-the-record) that life was sweeter and saner back then.
My point was not that the Good Old Days were perfect. My point was that
things were good then and getting better, and that in the social
upheaval and madnesses of the late '60s a way of life was destroyed that
was basically sweet and good. Can you imagine what life would be like if
the hippies and race riots and Charles Mansons of this world had
remained on the fringes, unknown and unnoticed? Racial equality would
have come anyway; it was already well along by 1960. We probably would
have either invaded Vietnam and installed a democratic regime or dropped
the Bomb on Hanoi and gotten it over with; either way, the people of
Vietnam would have been spared 25+ years of Communist misery. And we'd
have stuck with traditional sexual morality and spared ourselves from
three decades of disease, divorce, and destruction of families that
resulted from the idea that "if it feels good, do it."
We also probably would have missed out on grunge and disco. Boo hoo.
The furor generated by my post has been highly instructive. Responses
ranged from childish name-calling to accusations of (yawn) racism,
sexism, and fill-in-the-blankism. It's obvious to me that a lot of the
people responding to my post have no idea what life was like back then
-- they're too young to remember a time when men wore hats outdoors and
being a wife and mother was every girl's ultimate dream, when the best
cars were all made in Detroit, and when blacks and other groups were
engaged in a just struggle for legal equality and not a campaign of
racial and ethnic Balkanization. They live in a world where a gigantic
race riot is referred to as a "revolutionary uprising" and seven out of
ten black kids don't know who Daddy is. They think high-school shooters
and lesbians having children are normal, and that a cross in a jar of
pee is "art". Madness, madness, sheer madness, all of it.
But the tide is turning, my friend. I suspect the 21st Century is going
to be more like the 19th Century, only with computers and nuclear power.
The Real People are beginning to wake up, and when they do, there's
going to be some changes made -- changes that will make the world better
for everyone.
Imagine it! A world that makes sense!
In my view, the Good Old Days never died; they just went to sleep for a
while while we as a civilization had a long, adolescent nightmare. But
the nightmare is almost over now, and the Good Old Days are coming back,
better and brighter than ever.
The real Good Old Days are yet to come.
Fly Me to the Moon,
B-chan
Anime Lover Since 1969
NEWLY UPDATED! ISSUE #2 NOW ONLINE!
************************************
KURO NEKO : THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF
SUPER DIMENSION FAMILY HENDERSON-LEWIS
Babylon 5: The Anime * Anastasia Review
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AND MORE! Visit us today at
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************************************
Dan Goodman
In article <896eli$n2g0sk9...@qz.little-neck.ny.us>,
Dennis Pear <Denni...@poboxes.com> wrote:
>
>More than anything else, the dozens of hysterical responses, full of
>over-reactions, irrelevant horror stories, ad hominems, nit-picking,
>strawmen, and every other desperate trick tend to convince me the
>original poster of "The Good Old Days" was basically right.
Have you also decided that Bill Clinton is a living saint who has never
made a wrong decision in his life? That Newt Gingrich has never said
anything which could possibly offend anyone?
If someone said that the US was more prosperous during the 1930's than it
is now, would stories about people who were out of work and couldn't find
work be irrelevant?
>He said something like "most people will agree unless they're lying or
>being PC" and what I'm hearing sounds exactly like a guilty conscience
>on that question.
My opinion is that anyone who says "most peole will agree unless they're
lying or...." is not worth listening to -- whether it's John Norman
claiming that most people really share his sexual tastes and won't admit
it, or some idiot claiming to know more about the 1950's and early 1960's
than people old enough to remember those times.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.