As a queer person (agender) with a conservative dad, I don’t get why he says he wants to go back to the 1950s. What was so special back then besides his reasoning that times were simpler? I feel like it would be harder for me then as a queer person.
It’s never about the real past for them. It’s about the fake shallow image of the past they yearn for.
The 50s, yeah, when ‘howl’ was published and every single adult was on meth qaaludes cocaine and a BAC that would today get you rushed to the ER for just about every waking moment. But thats not what they remember. They get the simplified idealized propaganda version, and like it
Same with the crusades, early america, and everything else they like.
people that wax nostalgic for the 1950s are either:
A) folks who only see how advantageous it was for a white middle class cis straight man with a GI Bill, and just forget and ignore the rest of the reality of the era, or
B) folks that actively want to roll back civil rights for minorities, and would probably prefer the 1850s, if only they had pickup trucks back then.Personally, I want to go back to the way in the 1950’s had livable wages where people could afford housing, food, and health services. I would also like to go back to an internet before corporations destroyed it with all their AI and tracking.
I feel like it would be harder for me then as a queer person.
This is why they want it
The USSR existed back then and the USSR was doing very well at the time up until 1975,
right after the petrodollar scheme was made and SWIFT was introduced.
Because of that, the US had strong labour unions.
Socialism was popular back then,
although the US was also able to propagandize that it was explicitly not doing that in the slightest.Nowadays, the US will have to fight again against capitalism.
And capitalists are warring to survive, not just abroad,
but at home as well.
Their ideology currently is that capitalism has won,
communism has lost and therefore any concessions to the left
will no longer have to be made.And US Social democracy isn’t coming from the top this time,
when FDR decided to take a turn for the left and continued going left,
up until Jimmy Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagen.This time it’s coming from Zohran Mamdani
and this time it looks like it’s taking the form of democratic socialism,
a step more to the left than social democracy.With better job availibility, your father would have had a much easier time
maintaining a good income and thus a family.
You however, would have a trade-off.
Better job security, but little to no knowledge of your sexuality.
Also terrible medical practises, barbaric in some fields.Bettergood wagesI want the economy of the 50s and civil rights for everyone.
Sadly, it seems like we’re moving the economy further away from the 50s and only bringing civil rights back there…
I want the economy of the 50s
so, prosperity based off of genociding and overworking brown people abroad?
There were plenty of local jobs that paid better than jobs today do (adjusted for CoL) and needed less education etc.
in the us*
I wasn’t alive back then, so I guess you mean
in the me*
We both know you know what was meant. Don’t be like a republican. Have a good day.
no, you don’t seem to know what i meant.
your comfort and booming economy is a direct result of your imperialism and owning the world’s currency. “the economy of the 50s” was fueled by blood.
don’t be an apologist for it. don’t be like a republican.
there was literal outright colonialism in the 50s, white people don’t get this
Oh I know what you meant, exactly. It’s grade school history. It’s also the same take repeated endlessly on internet forums where pedantry and needing to spell out every single facet rule supreme. So I guess I’ll spell it out. “The economy refers to the fact someone was able to pay for a home, family, and yearly vacation on an entry level, high school diploma as the only requirement job. The civil rights and liberties people are stating as the one thing they didn’t want to bring to modern times.”
I’m going to assume you know why someone would want that without the abuse of minorities, immigrants, or third world countries.
Or you can just pull the same thing everyone else does and state, “A society like that couldn’t exist without that exploitation.” like the true unique free thinker you are. To which I say prove it. We’ve always had a rich parasite class that needed exploitation, those who are fine without being far wealthier than others are perfectly capable of doing fine without the exploitation, its the leeches that require it.
If you were a straight, white man it was a good time to exist economically with a high degree of social cohesion. Oppression was worse, but it probably was much less visible to your dad’s sort of person.
And the economy was booming. My own dad went to college full time and worked 20 hours a week loading trucks in his 20s. On this salary, he was able to buy a starter house, marry his first wife, have 2 kids, and complete his degree.
It fucking sucked if you were literally anyone else though. Married women were barely better than property, and they frequently killed themselves to escape their husbands. Spousal abuse was common and not really looked down on in many communities unless you took things “too far” and sent them to the hospital. Being queer was just straight up illegal, and you’d be imprisoned and ostracized if you were caught. Racism was…worse to say the least.
While things might have been better in the past for a specific population or from a specific point of view, always remember that we have made substantial progress even in the past decade or two. Living in the past is a fool’s paradise.
Buying a house, a car, a golden retriever, having a wife and two kids by the age of 22.
Because white guys.
The 50s were objectively a time of prosperity and entitlement for the US. It’s literally why they’re called “boomers”, it was an economic boom. We had high taxes on the rich, people saw those tax dollars translate into quality public services like highways, corporate competition was high, education was affordable, housing was plentiful. It was undoubtedly the best time to be a while male in US history.
And then capitalism did its efficient best to buy up the govt and begin squeezing all that prosperity into their pockets. And here we are.
Boomers were named after the Baby Boom, not the economic boom.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers
There was also an economic boom, but that’s absolutely not where the name comes from.
It’s all the same post war boom. It all happened, and is named for the same reason. People didn’t suddenly have a lot of babies because they were on hard times. There’s nothing to nitpick here.
i completely agree. people felt the economic upwind and decided to have children because they could afford that.
I thought it was more about coming back from the war combined with advances in healthcare. The economic aspect makes sense, but families were bigger throughout history even in poorer economic times.
The successful end to the years-long world war that the whole country felt unified behind, and the sudden influx of money away from that war and into disposable income made it very easy for families to flourish in the US.
Advances in healthcare played a part, sure, but not that much in that short of time, and eventually the baby boom faded but the advances continued.
It’s literally why they’re called “boomers”, it was an economic boom.
It’s short for “Baby Boomers”, because there was a huge baby boom after WW2.
By that logic, there must have been a baby zoom in the '90s
Sorry, not following?
Just a stupid joke on the tendency people have to try to reconstruct etymology from the top down rather than bottom up, often using tenuous logical connections lol
Boomers are called that because they were born after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Zoomers are the generation of high speed rail and fast cars
Gen alpha are all chads due to the hormones used in agriculture
Social safety nets were stronger and income inequality was lower, largely thanks to the post-war economy retaining a lot of its state planning towards full employment, and largely due to the expansion in safety nets under FDR as a response to the Soviet Union’s massive improvement in safety nets. Time was good, if you were a hetero white man. The US was also emerging as the clear imperial hegemon.
Reactionary rhetoric tries to turn the clock backwards, to when the contradictions of society weren’t as sharpened. It’s usually a petite bourgeois conception, but can also be a part of other classes. It’s the opposite of progressive movement, trying to move the clock forward into the next mode of production, socialism in the case of the US.
Because I could by my amphetamines legally and the doctor would give me a steady supply of heroin if I paid him under the counter
/s
Idk why people want to go back to the 1950s they sucked.
I kind of think of the 50s as kind of a major turning point for the US. There were a lot of seeds of greatness then that weren’t properly nurtured in the following decades so that they could grow.
While just about every other country in the world was trying to put themselves back together from WWII, we had emerged not only unscathed, but in almost every measure better than we were before. We had military might, we had a booming economy, manufacturing, science, technology, arts, entertainment, cars, appliances, TV, electricity all on a scale previous generations could only dream about.
Even if you were part of a marginalized group- black, LGBTQ, female, etc. there were some glimmers of hope that looked like things might get better soon- the civil rights movement was picking up steam, there were some early LGBTQ rights movements and demonstrations taking shape, women entered the workforce in a big way during the war, and after the war mostly returned to the home afterwards but those seeds were planted, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that little girls growing up in the 40s watching the women in their lives being the Rosie the Riveter would become the ones who embraced 2nd wave feminism 20 or so years later.
And of course we had high corporate taxes helping to fund it all.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses of course, and you will certainly find no shortage of people here on Lemmy who will happily spell out all of the many reasons the 1950s sucked, and I don’t disagree with them, but that’s not what you asked, so I’m not going to go into that.
The 50s were a major leap forward in the quality of life for many people in america, and while far from perfect, there is definitely an angle you can look at it from where things looked like they were more-or-less on the right track.
Most people have an idyllic view of certain childhood years, usually around the ages 5 to 10 or so. It’s before you start to understand just how broken the world is, and your worldview gets more complex and nuanced.
Many people wrongly assume that the world really was simpler when they were that age. The truth is, the world was just as messed up–they were just blissfully unaware.
Next time your dad complains, remind him that we still have milkshakes and racism.
Agreed on all points, and also would like to point out most of the people who want to “go back” are not the ones who were oppressed during that time. It’s no surprise that the people who want to go back are mostly those who grew up in the white suburbs and small towns, where it was simple and easy.
The oppressed are conveniently left out of those conversations. Where were the black people, or the gay people during those times? They existed, but in a very simple worldview it’s easy to forget that.
