Today I went on a sentinmental journey. Why?
I have no idea. I looked up Christmas in the sixties and the fifties, even the 70's and I really thought of what is wrong with America today. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty wrong back then as well, especially regarding civil rights, women's rights, and Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, and Bush heading the CIA. BUT.....
among all of these terrible things, not every wealthy person was a Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life.
There was a middle class. There were dreams and goals. There was a part of decent behavior without all of this all or nothing and MINE...attitude. I looked back on some of those
8MM on u tube and saw, even those that were very well off, financially were not buying into that
give kids everything, and there appeared to be a sense of vounteerism in people that made one feel
they belonged to community and family. I remember clearly, and from Ga. in the Bible Belt that my Aunt had a girlfried and loved her dearly and my grandparents never ordered her out of the house or damned her to Hell nor said anything about her lifestyle. She had an alternate lifestyle that was absolutely not traditionally open in those days of the 50's and 60's but was accepted.
There were muslims and no one got mad that Cassious Clay became a Muslim but did give him the devil about not going to Nam (which for him was the right thing to do). It would have been the right thing to do if all of them refused to go. Back to my stroll, I remember these things and don't remember all of this class warfare. The rich folks may have been rich but they didn't make the middle pay for their lifestyles. They basically were in their own, how should we say, aloof in their money and aristocrat lifestyle. They may have looked down on the middle and poorer class of people but it was not as obvious as the greedy people of today. They didn't pull a Madoff and laugh all the way to the banks on the backs of people and government. They felt it was socially acceptable to give to charities and charitable organizations. I remember my Aunt and Uncle working for free health clinics in the 60's and another Uncle making house calls for a dozen eggs. When did this all change? Was it our generation, the baby boomers, who screwed up so badly with the Vietnam War and fed up with the establishment and when things settled down a bit for them in their 30's went running to the Establishment and started grabbing all they could thinking they had no accountablility or was owed something or felt they were still at a Woodstock festival, thus settling down and creating Generation X
which many have thrown even parenting out the window and now the Boomers are raising grandkids, the poorer ones anyway. I really don't know what happened but it is ALL FOR ME
now and FORGET YOU and your problems all the time everyday. Forget Healthcare, if you can't afford it you don't deserve it attitude...The
Latino, Black, are even more targeted, the liberal minded are deemed as socialists and communists and this is what many of the same people were protesting in the 60's about McCarthyism?
These greedy, self righteous, are intolerant of
lifestyles that do not fit into an Evangelical mole and they stand in judgement on everyone and everything that does not measure up to their way of thinking. What happened? I really want to know !