The Good Ol’ Days?

People – let’s call them “friends” and “relatives” – are always forwarding useless tidbits of trivial data, ersatz humor, and rose-colored reflections on life, circa 1955, to me via e-mail over the Interweb. The unifying premise among most of these communiqués is the lament, “Why can’t things be like they were in the good ol’ days?” Because, that which people remember after they reach middle age and beyond (okay, elderly status) as “better” or “simpler” times occurred while they were children.People – let’s call them “friends” and “relatives” – are always forwarding useless tidbits of trivial data, ersatz humor, and rose-colored reflections on life, circa 1955, to me via e-mail over the Interweb.

The unifying premise among most of these communiqués is the lament, “Why can’t things be like they were in the good ol’ days?”

Because, that which people remember after they reach middle age and beyond (okay, elderly status) as “better” or “simpler” times occurred while they were children.

And, in most cases, childhood is a simpler time.  At least, it’s supposed to be.

During childhood, we generally choose to not concern ourselves with politics or world events.  Even when we are aware of such adult concerns, we tend to let them roll off our shoulders and accept the life that’s playing itself out in our own environment.

About the only things youngsters really care about are the end of the school day, playing baseball or whatever, and avoiding anything remotely resembling responsibility.

People who were in their youth during the Great Depression might talk about how hard life was, yet they always seem to reflect upon that period as “the good old days.”

Those (on the North American continent) too young to be drafted while World War II was wreaking hell on Earth, reducing South Pacific paradises, Europe and, eventually, Japan to massive infernos and incalculable devastation, generally accepted rationing and the extended absences of fathers and brothers (in far many instances permanent) as “the way things are.”

Despite being inundated throughout the 1950s with bullshit like “duck and cover” (as if that would save your ass when the missiles came), the sight of Civil Defense shields on public buildings did not freak us out.  No one much fretted over the end of the world.

Actually, we learned to freak out all by ourselves as the 1960s rolled along its own hallucinogenic course.

It’s rather curious, and certainly no coincidence, that the carnage in Vietnam, an upswing in marijuana usage, and a broader experimentation with psychedelic substances began in earnest after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Nor is it coincidence that the open and often turbulent protestations against America’s governmental policies, especially with regard to war against non-aggressor peoples, escalated after Robert f. Kennedy was assassinated.

As much as I enjoy watching classic 1950s television such as “Superman,” “Have Gun-Will Travel,” “Cheyenne,” “Leave It To Beaver,” “Dragnet,” “M Squad,” et al., I take them for what they are – good storytelling (okay, so “Superman” is often just silly, but it’s early-50s silly).

The production values may not hold a candle to today’s television fare (after all, early television producers were still fumbling around in the dark), the stories these shows tell, the values presented therein, remain – more than 50 years after their initial presentations – as apropos in the 21st Century as they did back then.

Any way one looks at it, life was complex “back in the day.”

As it always was, and always shall be.

Thus is the inescapable nature of man.

It was 50 years ago that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of the great evil growing like a cancer in our midst, the “military-industrial complex” to which we have become subservient.

Three years later, his successor — our President — was murdered in a coup to advance the madness of power that has wrought myriad wars and global unrest; this act and its official overlay of veneer deposited the seat of power to a self-selected few that has made them wealthy beyond all conceivable acuity while strangling Americans with the demolition of our tenuous economic system.

Driven to distraction by a woefully underreporting corporate media, wherein opinion and insinuation masquerade as “news,” which is conspicuously abetted by five extreme Right-wing activist Supreme Court justices, the American public, undereducated for generations, is just sucker enough to accept such forced feeding.

Even though he was born after this shitstorm began, those who fear our “negro president” – for no reason other than he’s not of the white privileged class – blame Mr. Obama for everything that’s wrong with the United States of America.

Why?  Because, instead of educating the unwashed masses, the aforementioned media focuses only on the negative, and provides no support whatsoever for movement in a forward direction.

Where we once had reason to “hope,” even that has been turned into a four-letter word.

So, please don’t tell me about how wonderful life was back “in the good ol’ days,” because keeping the blinders on is what got us here.

Shalom.

(Jerry Tenuto is an erstwhile Philosopher and sometime Educator.  A veteran with seven years of service in the U.S. Army, he holds a BS and MA in Communications from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.  Depending upon your taste in political stew, you can either blame or thank Jerry for his weekly “Out Of The Blue” feature in The Lone Star Iconoclast.  Visit his blog Blue State View at illinoiscentral.blogspot.com)