Re:RIP Good Times (2008)
by gumby on Thursday May 19, 2022 @07:19PM
(#31441448)
I am not a boomer but am a graybeard Xer with a history degree and things don’t look anywhere as grim to me as they do to you.
Nobody is an expert so I am not replying to try to change your mind, just give you my perspective.
In particular this comment stuck out: “political class that seems desperate to start WW3.” They seem desperate to try and thread the needle to avoid two possible paths to WW3. The aggressor is a very weak and poverty-stricken country and the calculus is that it is better stopped now before it can grow stronger. You can of course disagree (there are plenty of good arguments against that position) but it draw upon perhaps a century of learning.
Ignore the popular press; the biggest political analogy for the US is 1930s France, not Germany, and people are actively defending against that.
I think you are correct to fear the large amount of disinformation and gratuitous (not principled) dissent, but the US and the West has recently faced far worse (USA: 1930s, 1950s), Europe (1870s, 1910s) and come out stronger; and when I look at some of the worst revanchist efforts they seem be a counter response to the “good guys” winning, often noisily and destructively slamming the barn door (gay rights, interracial marriage). I know what it’s like to be a child of an interracial marriage when it was explicitly against the law and believe me it was far worse than today.
Things were far worse in the 1950s under a veneer of gentility. There is no prelapsarian past when the people in government were any better than the folks today.
So yes, worry and work for a better world, but don’t despair. Which are the two things you should be doing anyway, even when things are going swimmingly.
Nobody is an expert so I am not replying to try to change your mind, just give you my perspective.
In particular this comment stuck out: “political class that seems desperate to start WW3.” They seem desperate to try and thread the needle to avoid two possible paths to WW3. The aggressor is a very weak and poverty-stricken country and the calculus is that it is better stopped now before it can grow stronger. You can of course disagree (there are plenty of good arguments against that position) but it draw upon perhaps a century of learning.
Ignore the popular press; the biggest political analogy for the US is 1930s France, not Germany, and people are actively defending against that.
I think you are correct to fear the large amount of disinformation and gratuitous (not principled) dissent, but the US and the West has recently faced far worse (USA: 1930s, 1950s), Europe (1870s, 1910s) and come out stronger; and when I look at some of the worst revanchist efforts they seem be a counter response to the “good guys” winning, often noisily and destructively slamming the barn door (gay rights, interracial marriage). I know what it’s like to be a child of an interracial marriage when it was explicitly against the law and believe me it was far worse than today.
Things were far worse in the 1950s under a veneer of gentility. There is no prelapsarian past when the people in government were any better than the folks today.
So yes, worry and work for a better world, but don’t despair. Which are the two things you should be doing anyway, even when things are going swimmingly.