I've always said that Reagan got elected by telling Americans the lies we like to believe of ourselves - that we're the best, the most, the superlative of your choice, in everything. A fine acting job, I'd say.
I need to read this one again, but it looks like there are nuggets of hope in here for our present age. Helps me to think that what comes after this might be different. 🤞
I spent a summer in San Francisco probably a year or after the flower power days died. It was pretty ugly. I was 20 at the time and the truth I got to see was that the 60s weren’t pretty at all.
Jerry, I’m with you, we are very near in age. It’s hard to look back, for me, with people (and even pets) now gone. Your piece of course summarized so many political events then. Those times were kind of in the background for me, I was aware but did not focus on them. Thank you for writing and enjoy those handsome lads while Sharon and Josh are away.
Sometimes you remind me much on Tom Engelhardt, he was fully in the sixties. When it come to Bader-Meinhof and “Red-Army”, they were really not the solution, they have had the effect of e.g. IS or al Queida, security, surveillance because in Germany suddenly lots of law had been introduced under the gust of “security”, “anti-terrorism” etc pp. I studied in Munich during the 1970s and early 80’s and witnessed changes rapidly. While seventies are often viewed as a time of counterculture and social change, with movements focused on “love", peace, and personal expression, which can appear more romantic compared to the more conservative and economically driven 1980s under Thatcher and Reagan. The 1980s economic policies leading to “privatisation” and a strong anti-communist stances (remember “the Red Flood” movie), which shifted the focus away from the romantic ideals of the previous decade. I don’t think the 70’s had been much “better” rather bit different. Today, IMHO, the problem will arise from the LLM’s, AI who will change minds, given the fact humans can be lazy and just let all this slip through without any judicial checking… Because once the “Newspeak” ist integrated in daily life, call costumer-services etc, we are really on the road into mercantilism and neo-feudalism. Plus the un-payable mountains of debts as burden for coming generation is really worth then the 70’s/80’s.
I’ve always felt it odd to look at the 60s and the 70s as decades unto themselves when, to me, it has always felt like the early 60s were so radically different from the late 60s and the same can be said for the 70s that a 10 year/decade designation does not seem to fit. I will be 70 years old later this year so I span all that time and more as well. I think that sense of nostalgia comes from, in part, not having realized some of the horrific events as we were living through them or just being very self-focused as young people tend to be regardless of what period they grew up in. The older we get, the more the tendency to look through rosy glasses at much of our past. If those of us of our age bracket survive another 10 or even 20 years, I wonder how we will look at this time we are in now?
Yes, despite the poor logic of dividing time into decades that's what we do. We compartmentalize and compare. I remember teaching my students about the 60s and 70s and finding them saying how horrible it was. I didn't remember it that way, but, as a historian, I find that it was. I do hope, however, that we will never be nostalgic about the last ten years.
Definitely horrible stuff in every time period, but with the perspective of time and relative memory, I can barely drag through a day without thinking humans are the most stupid of species. The past ten years has been an utter nightmare, and it only takes half a brain to project on our collective existential fate. Yeats probably had it right, though his context was different.
Marcy, I’m the same age as you. I thought the 80’s were full of problems because we were living in West Berlin at the time - and I was an adult, whereas I graduated university in 1978 so for me, like I think for you maybe, the events of the 60’s and 70’s were background music in my life, other than startling events that broke through (JFK’s assassination, RFK’s assisination, MLK’s assasssination, Lunar Landing, Iranian Revolution and so forth), but from the 1980’s and on I was much more involved in the political and business world and I see it as if we have governments now that just want to roll it all back. I enjoyed reading this, because it gives me a completely other perspective to how I saw the 60’s and 70’s and it is all interesting. I think if I was to start life over again, I’d study cultural anthropology.
Thanks for the thorough trip down memory lane. To me, the sixties presented an inevitable trip to a war zone while the seventies represented recovery from that experience and eventually a pathway to a better
“That Seventies Show” never even registered on my screen. I stopped watching television completely for a very long time. Now, I depend upon my husband to navigate the remote. I don’t even know how. I would miss him. I don’t know if I would miss the remote.
I've always said that Reagan got elected by telling Americans the lies we like to believe of ourselves - that we're the best, the most, the superlative of your choice, in everything. A fine acting job, I'd say.
Yes, exactly. The same thing Trump does but with greater vulgarity.
I need to read this one again, but it looks like there are nuggets of hope in here for our present age. Helps me to think that what comes after this might be different. 🤞
I spent a summer in San Francisco probably a year or after the flower power days died. It was pretty ugly. I was 20 at the time and the truth I got to see was that the 60s weren’t pretty at all.
Yes. I wrote something about that. I'll post it someday.
Jerry, I’m with you, we are very near in age. It’s hard to look back, for me, with people (and even pets) now gone. Your piece of course summarized so many political events then. Those times were kind of in the background for me, I was aware but did not focus on them. Thank you for writing and enjoy those handsome lads while Sharon and Josh are away.
Thanks Emily; it's always nice to receive kind words from you.
Sometimes you remind me much on Tom Engelhardt, he was fully in the sixties. When it come to Bader-Meinhof and “Red-Army”, they were really not the solution, they have had the effect of e.g. IS or al Queida, security, surveillance because in Germany suddenly lots of law had been introduced under the gust of “security”, “anti-terrorism” etc pp. I studied in Munich during the 1970s and early 80’s and witnessed changes rapidly. While seventies are often viewed as a time of counterculture and social change, with movements focused on “love", peace, and personal expression, which can appear more romantic compared to the more conservative and economically driven 1980s under Thatcher and Reagan. The 1980s economic policies leading to “privatisation” and a strong anti-communist stances (remember “the Red Flood” movie), which shifted the focus away from the romantic ideals of the previous decade. I don’t think the 70’s had been much “better” rather bit different. Today, IMHO, the problem will arise from the LLM’s, AI who will change minds, given the fact humans can be lazy and just let all this slip through without any judicial checking… Because once the “Newspeak” ist integrated in daily life, call costumer-services etc, we are really on the road into mercantilism and neo-feudalism. Plus the un-payable mountains of debts as burden for coming generation is really worth then the 70’s/80’s.
I’ve always felt it odd to look at the 60s and the 70s as decades unto themselves when, to me, it has always felt like the early 60s were so radically different from the late 60s and the same can be said for the 70s that a 10 year/decade designation does not seem to fit. I will be 70 years old later this year so I span all that time and more as well. I think that sense of nostalgia comes from, in part, not having realized some of the horrific events as we were living through them or just being very self-focused as young people tend to be regardless of what period they grew up in. The older we get, the more the tendency to look through rosy glasses at much of our past. If those of us of our age bracket survive another 10 or even 20 years, I wonder how we will look at this time we are in now?
Yes, despite the poor logic of dividing time into decades that's what we do. We compartmentalize and compare. I remember teaching my students about the 60s and 70s and finding them saying how horrible it was. I didn't remember it that way, but, as a historian, I find that it was. I do hope, however, that we will never be nostalgic about the last ten years.
Definitely horrible stuff in every time period, but with the perspective of time and relative memory, I can barely drag through a day without thinking humans are the most stupid of species. The past ten years has been an utter nightmare, and it only takes half a brain to project on our collective existential fate. Yeats probably had it right, though his context was different.
Marcy, I’m the same age as you. I thought the 80’s were full of problems because we were living in West Berlin at the time - and I was an adult, whereas I graduated university in 1978 so for me, like I think for you maybe, the events of the 60’s and 70’s were background music in my life, other than startling events that broke through (JFK’s assassination, RFK’s assisination, MLK’s assasssination, Lunar Landing, Iranian Revolution and so forth), but from the 1980’s and on I was much more involved in the political and business world and I see it as if we have governments now that just want to roll it all back. I enjoyed reading this, because it gives me a completely other perspective to how I saw the 60’s and 70’s and it is all interesting. I think if I was to start life over again, I’d study cultural anthropology.
Thanks for the thorough trip down memory lane. To me, the sixties presented an inevitable trip to a war zone while the seventies represented recovery from that experience and eventually a pathway to a better
Life. However, I remember the fifties as a pleasant, quiet time while I was trying to figure out where I was going.
Yes, Jimmy, it was so much more precarious for those who were even slightly older than me. I can't even imagine.
“That Seventies Show” never even registered on my screen. I stopped watching television completely for a very long time. Now, I depend upon my husband to navigate the remote. I don’t even know how. I would miss him. I don’t know if I would miss the remote.
Yes, we all have our decades.