Topic: How the hell did it happen?

[oldcoastie6468]

Surrender in the Culture Wars
It All Over, Don´t it?
September, 5, 2013

Note: While I try to read all email and answer what I can, and find almost all of it interesting and thoughtful, I get swamped. Nobody likes being ignored, and I don't like doing it, but sometimes it isn't avoidable. Apologies.
 

How the hell did it happen?

I lived, 1951 to 1956, aged six to eleven, in the Arlington suburbs of Washington and, ´56 to´57, in smalltown Athens, Alabama, and eighth grade through high school in rural King George County, Virginia, graduating in 1964. Another country. Another world. What happened?

The Arlington of then was entirely white, peopled largely by men several years back from World War Two, enjoying the fantastic surge in prosperity following the war. The dominant culture, the only culture, was that of Reader´s Digest, clean cut, honest, and confident. We watched the Mousketeers, all soap and good manners. We joined the Boy Scouts, and were told to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. We were, at least sorta, most of those. Pornography meant monitoring the advance of Annette Funicello´s bustline.

At age eight I walked every morning the perhaps six blocks to Robert E. Lee Elementary School, alone. Why not? There was nothing to be afraid of. My friends and I rode to Westover, the shopping center on Washington Boulevard, and left our bikes on the sidewalk for hours while we read comic books in the drug store. Why not? Nobody stole bikes.  My family never locked the doors of the house. Why should we? There weren´t any burglars.

And in summer evenings thirty kids, girls and boys, played hide-and-seek across several blocks, and parents didn´t give it a thought. Why should they? It was safe. We were the dominant culture, the only culture, and we didn´t do pederasty, engage in gang attacks, or muggings, or drive fast on kid-littered streets. It wasn´t our way. If we had suffered a natural disaster, no one would have looted. It wasn´t what we did.

I´m not sure what would have happened if a gang of high-schoolers had robbed a candy store. It was impossible, because we didn´t do such things. A child molester? I don´t know. It would have one way or another been a case of God help him and he never would have been seen again. The culture didn´t tolerate child molesters.

And now, and now….

And now I read daily of armed police patrolling the halls of schools, of parents walking their kids to school because children aren´t safe by themselves, of metal detectors at the doors, of flash mobs of, er, teens robbing stores. Instead of homogeneity we have diversity, which means you have to buy a new bicycle twice a year. Leave oneº unattended for ten minutes, and it disappears.

How did we get here? Why do we put up with it? Bastardy in this white, once civilized society is now said to be at thirty percent: A middle class with a slum morality. You have to be crazy to leave your keys in an open car, which we once regularly did. There was no reason not to.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Surrender.shtml

[AlanS]

And don't look for any improvement soon.

[whimsicalmamapig]

I am from that same time era, maybe a few years your junior, but I do remember the time you are talking about.
That time was a rare confluence of a vast swath of men, all brought together through the brotherhood of war reentering a workforce that they last saw at the end of the great depression.
after WWII  most of the globe was a smoking pile of ruin with just the US left as a viable manufacturing base and a workforce, bolstered by the benefits of the GI bill and a willing population of women ready to return from the war factories to their own new homes in "suburbia."

of course everything was idyllic, it was a perfect storm of economic factors and a homogeneous white culture. then things began to change, Europe and japan got their economic life in order and we started to feel some competition, with the advances in education, our minorities began to  ask for more equalities and to tell the truth, the parents of the baby boomers raised a whole lot of spoiled brats who went on to become our hippies.

the idyllic time is gone, won't be replicated and we have a new mess to fix. It will take new solutions, not the ideas that worked in 1950.

short of a total revolution and the elimination of much of the inhabitants of this country, I don't see the sense in mourning something that was great but is now gone. we must try and eliminate the ruinous culture of the hippie/socialists and we can start by eliminating the communist-utopian nutjobs that inhabit our universities and the socialist promoting groups like LaRaza and Acorn and put an end to the minority grievance industry.

but first we need to stop allowing ourselves to be intimidated into silently nursing our grievances and waiting for the Apocalypse to cleans the world, that just makes us like the takes waiting for a separate force to deliver their check every month

[oldcoastie6468]

My wife and I were born before the baby boomers. Our kids turned out fine.

[warpmine]

My wife and I were born before the baby boomers. Our kids turned out fine.

Mom and Dad were born early to mid 30's both turned out to be liberals deep down simply by not embracing economical facts. Step father was with it when it came to finance. My father was a republican guy particularly after Carter. He didn't embrace liberalism but like so many bought into the Social security/ medicare fraud.

I was exposed to liberalism before I knew what it was and though early on I questioned it, it still took many years to come out from it's grips. 

Though I hate this country at present, I still love the very concept our Founders put into motion. The prospect of having a retirement isn't good. I can work until I'm dead or I quit working and begin to shoot progressives(can't wait forever you know.)

I agree that the communists at the universities should be flushed out but we could just begin the boycott of them until they do it themselves. All this liberal nonsense about higher education being affordable to all is a joke as you don't learn anything useful anyway. The left only uses them to pad their pockets and indoctrinate our young so screw them. They know just how difficult it is to find a job doing real work so they infest colleges instead.

[oldcoastie6468]

All this liberal nonsense about higher education being affordable to all is a joke as you don't learn anything useful anyway. The left only uses them to pad their pockets and indoctrinate our young so screw them. They know just how difficult it is to find a job doing real work so they infest colleges instead.

More importantly, a college education is not necessary to succeed in life. Auto mechanics, millwrights, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC - there is lots of money to be made in those fields.

[warpmine]

All this liberal nonsense about higher education being affordable to all is a joke as you don't learn anything useful anyway. The left only uses them to pad their pockets and indoctrinate our young so screw them. They know just how difficult it is to find a job doing real work so they infest colleges instead.

More importantly, a college education is not necessary to succeed in life. Auto mechanics, millwrights, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC - there is lots of money to be made in those fields.

Exactly right, if you have a functioning brain, you can achieve much.

[AlanS]

All this liberal nonsense about higher education being affordable to all is a joke as you don't learn anything useful anyway. The left only uses them to pad their pockets and indoctrinate our young so screw them. They know just how difficult it is to find a job doing real work so they infest colleges instead.

More importantly, a college education is not necessary to succeed in life. Auto mechanics, millwrights, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC - there is lots of money to be made in those fields.

Exactly right, if you have a functioning brain, you can achieve much.

Plus if you have the cajones, you can open your own biz.

[Septugenarian]

While my degree's are not in engineering, one of my engineers conceded that I was a better engineer than he because I was a better mechanic.  I approached design reviews from the perspective of repairability, having suffered from, and coped with, the lack thereof.

[Pandora]

While my degree's are not in engineering, one of my engineers conceded that I was a better engineer than he because I was a better mechanic.  I approached design reviews from the perspective of repairability, having suffered from, and coped with, the lack thereof.

Boy, would my father ever love you!  As an auto-mechanic his whole life, his main btch was about the engineering and how difficult it made repairing what was broken, like having to dismantle the dashboard to get to the heater core.  Really?

I've been telling him for years that the engineers have the jobs for which they're paid -- which is to create the auto engine blivet (ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag) and mechanics have theirs -- which is to disassemble/repair/re-stuff the blivet -- and ne'er the twain would meet.

[Septugenarian]

Pan, I ended up making a career of that sort of thing.  Sort of being the customers representative between senior management and the rest of the organization.  Often times being between a rock and a hard place, but prevailing and enjoying that aspect.  In the end I didn't irrigate too many, and helped a whole lot more.  A very unique position in which to find oneself in a world wide organization, with no real way to prepare for it.  Always making up the rules as we went along.

[Pandora]

Glad to know you at least had some enjoyment, prevailed some, and didn't have to irrigate anybody.  Messy business; janitors hate it when that happens.   

Always making up the rules as we went along.

Yah, called thinking outside the box, requiring ingenuity, resulting in innovation.  People like you we need.