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[Steven the Somnolent]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Steven the Somnolent) on Mon Nov 23, 2015, 05:57 AM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[Recursion]

1. Tell an African American we've "declined" since 1963 (nt)

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Of all the responses to this post, that was not on my list.

I don't think the OP was making the claim that there has been no progress on anything since 1963. However by the Carter administration the New Deal era of reform was over, and with the start of the Reagan administration the rollback had begun.

The efforts to integrate society have largely been abandoned and instead our school systems are segregated and unequal again, with good public schools in the affluent and overwhelmingly white suburbs and horrible public schools in the poor and overwhelmingly non-white urban areas. The wonderful war on drugs and hard ass draconian criminal justice system have created an entire prison society within our nation, and again that system inflicts its life-wrecking "justice" disproportionately on people of color. Our militarized police - a feature of society unthinkable in 1963 - kill citizens with abandon and again that terror falls disproportionately on people of color.

This decline may not have started at precisely November 22, 1963 but perhaps it is marked by the day of a different assassination April 4, 1968, and the follow on targeted killing on June 6 of the same year.

[Recursion]

3. OK, but when people talk about white progressive myopia, that was an example

People aren't just making this up.

[Ed Suspicious]

15. Life got worse, for some, a bit better.

What a snoozer of a thesis.

[BainsBane]

42. So better to maintain a system of Jim Crow

Last edited Sun Nov 22, 2015, 01:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Voter disenfranchisement, married women denied the right to own property, discrimination in the workplace, a complete absence of rights for people of color and LGBT, so that white men--a minority of the population--can prosper? You expect people to look at that and not realize he is talking about a time period when most Americans were denied employment, civil rights, voting rights, and full citizenship? We are talking about the majority of Americans, all but a select few who were born white, male and middle class.

That is precisely what many of us who were not born into privilege see when some of you talk about "taking the country back." I see it as a clear cry to take back white bourgeois male privilege, not even privilege for all white men. But it's "a snoozer of a thesis" because we don't matter. What matters is that the white bourgeoisie regain its rightful place atop the capitalist world order, where they happily lived off the exploitation of the many--both in the US and globally.

It is possible to speak about the current system of exploitation without longing for the past. Many have repeatedly pointed out that such talk is alienating and exclusionary to many, yet some persist in repeating those cries. Why?

[Orrex]

48. :thumbsup:

And what's with all this nonsense about wimmin having their own credit cards?

[cprise]

49. Maybe you should re-read the OP, then.

"The rejuvenation and emboldening of the racism that had never really gone away."

I don't understand the mentality that would cause people to point the finger at a new DUer as being 'too white', and protest about the language used in the OP as if economic equality has to be a zero-sum game against women and minorities.

[lunasun]

53. I will also guess besides too white that he is not gay or trangendered and no it is not just about

economic equality imo

[cprise]

60. The point is, he didn't make it just about economic equality. n/t

[DonCoquixote]

62. true, but

the idea of overall decline is not incorrect. Granted, the mythical high place many people think we occupied then is false, but Ronnie Ray Gun sure made it worse.

[brentspeak]

65. Been to a USA inner city, lately?

Actually, as you are located in India, you're not much of an authority on anything occurring in the USA today.

[Recursion]

66. Other than having lived in one for a couple of decades?

And, again, your jumping to "inner city" is telling; that's not where a majority of African Americans live.

[brentspeak]

67. Who said anything about where the majority of African Americans live?

And why are you talking about African Americans as if you know much about them?

[Paper Roses]

24. Welcome to DU. As an old timer, I can understand your post.

Those of us who have been around for a while now shake our heads and wonder about how far we have fallen.
In my opinion, your points are valid.

[Steven the Somnolent]

63. Thank You x Infinity

Believe me, I am not pining for the myth that is "1950s America." JFK was pro-peace and pro-equality, and that's what got him killed! (Yeah, news flash: I don't think it was just one person.)

[zeemike]

32. Good response.

And I lived through those times and remember.
That day was the end of innocence if you can pin it to a single day and we all felt it. And by 1968 most of us knew it.

[Rex]

55. It was a sad attempt at distraction from the OPs point.

Nothing more.

[heaven05]

10. I'll say this

Last edited Sun Nov 22, 2015, 05:13 PM - Edit history (1)

tell this African-american we've regressed to those times of 1963 and before, I'll believe it. We are in a "decline" as a culture politically, socially, racially, economically at least for the working poor vs the new ruling class, the billionaires. Yeah we ARE in decline. An African-american won rights in 64-65 long denied them as american citizens and Nixon-Atwater 'Southern Strategy' was and has continued to be the racist RW reactionary response since then for African-americans. RW reaction, politically and culturally to our current POTUS has shown just how rabid that "decline" has become. Don't tell me we haven't, along with other decent americans, been watching the 'decline of empire' since '63'.......

[imthevicar]

17. Well Of Course Not

Instead Of Lynching We just throw them in Jail as Slave labor!

[Recursion]

18. We did that a lot more back then.

Again. Myopia.

[imthevicar]

19. Oh Really, Then Nothing has improved.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_African-American_males

[sulphurdunn]

37. In 1963 the unemloyment rate

for blacks was twice what it was for whites. In 2014 the unemployment rate for blacks is twice what it is for white. For both races, the structural increase has been about 1.6% since 1963. Wealth and incomes are going down for most everyone. Poverty rates are on the rise again for both groups. Incarceration rates are through the roof. What progress that has been made, especially for blacks, is being rolled up like an old rug. I do believe that the standard of living and civil liberties for most Americans are in decline.

[pnwmom]

51. And LGBT people and their families. nt

[Carolina]

58. I am

an African American... and in 1963, I was 10 and living in Washington, DC (my home for 40 years). I remember that special time from January 20, 1961 to November 22, 1963 very well since my carpool drove by the White House everyday going from my NW Washington home to an experimental school in SW DC.

It truly was a special era... the real time of hope and change! But the CIA with its then new handmaiden -- the MIC, and of course the ever present right wing killed it. They all benefitted from Kennedy's murder as evident by their wide ranging scope and influence in today's policies and politics.

In the grand scheme of things, this nation has declined since that dreadful November day because more than a president died 52 years ago.

Thanks to the OP for posting and remembering what this day in history meant to this nation

[Yorktown]

4. 'Decline' was inevitable and overdue.

C'mon, China and India had such a low share of world business it was bound to end.

[951-Riverside]

5. Why in the good ol' days everything was White and "those people" were kept in their places

Muslims? What's that?

Gays? Bash 'em!

Women? Slap 'em!

Daughter expressing self worth and independence? Lobotomize her!

Commies? Aaaaah! We're gonna die!

Asians? Take their businesses and put 'em in camps!

Blacks? Forcefully sterilize 'em, subject 'em to deadly secret government experiments, make 'em sit at the back of the bus!

Illegals? Actually we don't have a problem with that unless they're IRISH!

Cigarettes? Makes you a man and extends your life!

Martin Luther King? Commie, outside agitator and trouble maker!


...but enough about the Donald Trump presidential platform, let me tell you how crazy America was 50 years ago.

[DFW]

6. I was only 11 on that day.

I couldn't quite grasp the enormity of what it all meant. I took a bus from my school downtown to my dad's office at the National Press Building at 14th and F. I saw headlines screaming "JFK SLAIN!" I was used to tabloid journalism, but found that one really over the top, even for them. When I got up to my dad's office, he had two phones in his hand and was really agitated. At that point, I started to get a bad feeling that the headlines I saw from the street vendor maybe weren't tabloid headlines after all. Between breaths, my dad confirmed it.

Still, far more shocking for me was when I got up to go to school on June 7, 1968 and my dad was nearly in tears, saying "Bobby has been shot." He knew RFK well, and was looking forward to his presidency (even though he knew Humphrey well, too). Bobby was the original "hope and chance" inspiration. I still have an RFK portrait with RFK's inscription made out to my dad, "with high regard." The feeling was mutual.

[Thor_MN]

30. I was 11 months...

So no direct memories of JFK, but I do remember Bobby being shot.

[PeoViejo]

7. They thought JFK would be their Boy.

..and killed him when they found out he wasn't.

[Enthusiast]

29. JFK wouldn't go along with the concept of perpetual war.

[heaven05]

8. well

the whole truth and nothing but the truth is apparent in THIS OP. Long slow RW coup d'etat. Succinctly put.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. If what's happened since '63 is decline, please give me more decline!

Both America and the world as a whole are immeasurably better places to live now than they were then.

[heaven05]

11. right

Can't prove it by me in the social, cultural, racial political or economic arenas. Oh and you want more decline? Just give it a generation or two, if you and I are still around.

[dbackjon]

14. I'm getting married in 3 months

I don't think a gay marriage would have worked in 1963

[heaven05]

46. Congratulations, sincerely

yet the same fear tactics used against my generation in the 50's and 60's, lynchings, burning churches, police shooting down and killing unarmed POC and killing POC while confined is still the desired course of action for putting African-americans "in their place", it seems. Gay marriage is NOT the only serious and life threatening issue out here facing americans.

[erpowers]

21. Inequality worse People Paid less

In some ways the world, along with America, has declined and in some ways they has improved. In terms of technology there can be no debate. Things are better now than they were then. In terms of medical health things have gotten better. If not for medical improvements the death toll of the Iraq War and maybe even the Afghanistan War would have approached totals close to the 58,000 killed during the Vietnam war.

However, when it come to many other things the world and America has declined. It has been argued that economic and wealth inequality is worse than it was in the 1920s. There have been reports that workers today actually make less than workers from the 50s and 60s. It has been reported that despite what some may think, the wages most regular workers are actually declining. Auto workers make less now than they did in the 1960s. There is more racial segregation now than in the 1960s. I believe it was reported that segregation is worse now than it before Brown vs. The Board of Education.

[CrispyQ]

28. When the tides continue to rise will you still think the same?

Denial of science & the glorification of ignorance is a huge step back for the entire species.

[1norcal]

12. Thanks

Thanks Stephen The Somnolent, I couldn't agree more especially after Bobby, the New Frontier was over, snatched back to a previous generation paranoid about geopolitical gamesmanship and insufficiently aware of local government importance, I.e. globalization and empire.

[Demeter]

13. And our revolution

For every action has an equal and overwhelming reaction, in politics.

[certainot]

16. the real problem started in 87 when reagan killed the fairness doctrine

and the left completely ignored the creation of the talk radio monopoly and it's highly successful use as a classic CIA style PSYOPS to create made-to-order constituencies and short circuit the feedback mechanisms a healthy democracy would have used to stop the rewriting of reagan into a god, prosecute the reagan admin for its crimes, and prevent much of the subsequent corporate/republican/MIC victories of the last 25 years.

[Enthusiast]

31. That is a fact.

Now there is no feedback mechanism. If one happens to slip by the MSM filter we get rid of them (Olbermann).

When they got away with Iran Contra it encouraged them to do worse.

I have had about a belly full of this criminal bullshit.

[milestogo]

20. Johnson didn't have to be sold on Vietnam.

He was owned by war profiteers.

[PufPuf23]

22. "The self-indulgence of the 70s and 80s." doesn't belong in your list.

What was then viewed as "self-indulgence" became new positive and broader cultural norms now taken for granted.

Current society is more selfish and expecting of immediate gratification.

I would add language regards to medical care and education.

Recommend.

[cprise]

50. Self-indulgence has been an increasing trend

The environmental problems we're facing were greatly exacerbated by that trend.

I think back to Jimmy Carter's speech about hight consumption: He recognized it (and the bad attitude) back then.

[PufPuf23]

52. I agree with you 100%.

The "indulgences" of the 60s-70s included the environmental movement and experiments in living less materialistic/energy dependent lifestyles.

[sinkingfeeling]

23. I will always remember that date November 22, 1963 and John F. Kennedy. I don't

think some people here do.

[Gman]

25. It began this very day

Things were never the same.

[2naSalit]

26. K&R

[Punkingal]

27. K&R

[LiberalArkie]

33. We had hope, Kennedy started people thinking that things would get better

He wanted us to explore, go to the moon, more science, more education. He wanted the U.S. to eliminate bigotry and hatred. He wanted us to dream big dreams.

His death did not kill the dreams we had, but MLK's did and RFK's sure did.

We have not had those dreams, the feeling that life is good and it's going to get better since.

It has been a massive roller coaster ride down down. The up's we have these days just seem like a worn down speed bump compared to the hope we felt back then.

[nruthie]

34. Yes, I agree.

We aren't saying that nothing good has happened since the day in 1963 that everything we thought we knew about our country was shot to hell; we are saying it was the pivotal event of the decline of innocence that followed. As a tired old woman I understand what you're saying completely. It changed us all. And not in a good way.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

35. Decline/Rise: Date-pinning misses the boat and the event 52 years ago is not the point.

First, date-pinning is a less than useless exercise, wasteful like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

It is an example of a seductive but misguided pattern of thought: binary thinking. The kind of thinking that sees things as Before & After, black & white, Yay or Nay, right or wrong, Left or Right, In or Out, Blue or Red, Us or Them, bad or good, Republican or Democrat, hawk or dove. It is very closely related to pigeonholing: capitalist / socialist / communist / liberal / libertarian / conservative / fascist / pacifist.

It is too easy to slip into a mode of thinking that there is a point in time where suddenly everything changed (even if people are not consciously aware of it). Assassinations, wars, inventions, arrivals, deaths, etc.

"We stopped trusting our government". Who is this we? Trust suddenly stopped and completely disappeared?

The truth is that some people have gradual changes of sentiment and some people have 'epiphanies' and sudden enlightenments / onsets of wrong-headedness.

Another truth is that these changes occur in small numbers and then larger numbers and do not occur all at once.

A further truth is that large portions of the American populace still trust the government.

Yet more truth is that most people trust some portions of "The Government" more than other portions. For example many trust the FDA and EPA and FBI more than they trust the NSA, CIA, Defense Department, or Congress.

Distrust of the US government began before it was formed. Trust in the government has always existed and will always exist. Both statements are true and compatible.

Anarchists distrusted the government when they bombed Wall Street one hundred years ago.
Women suffragettes distrusted the government while they were getting the vote one hundred years ago.
Filmmakers distrusted the government while the blacklist and McCarthyism were rampant in the 1950s.
Many people trusted the government after the Kennedy assassination until the Watergate crisis a decade later.
Many people trusted the government until the Iran-Contra affair of Reagan's regime.
... etc ...


Secondly, there are many many measures that indicate a rise in the project known as the People of the United States of America.

* Civil rights for women, visible minorities including racial minorities, and invisible minorities including ethnic and sexual orientation minorities.
* Access for differently abled people.
* Better health
* Access to abortion and birth control
* Access to information
* Greater freedom of expression in the arts and music and on the streets
* Great telecommunications and travel uniting people and families

I could go on, but of course it does not deny that there are many aspects of modern American life that are measures of decline, including some that you enumerate.

[heaven05]

47. please do go on

Women are losing the right to make decisions about their own bodies and health, the civil rights of those "minorities are being lost state by state with voter intimidation and tactics designed to lessen the impact of the minority voter, access to abortion and birth control is being attacked on EVERY front by the RW, access to information is slowly being denied, the arts and freedom of expression is still alive, but for how long if the RW neanderthals gain political power again in the form of a cheney-bush. Keep dreaming and fooling yourself. DWB is a reality. Ferguson et al is a reality. Sandra Bland is a reality. The Charleston church shooting is a reality. Confederate flag waving cretins, verbally, openly telling POC that they will be killed, by them and not being arrested is a reality. I could go on, but with you, what's the use. Everything you mentioned in your "secondly" statement is on the DECLINE.

[lunasun]

57. civil rights in 63? access of any kind to abortion in 63? and as for bith control

although some form of it has been around for thousands of years if you mean " the pill " in 63? depends which state Hope you mean married women too
Pills were not available to unmarried women in all states until 1972! Cant even on civil rights

[longship]

36. Wow! Just wow.

When I welcomed you to DU upon your first post and poked fun of your name, I kind of knew that you might be something refreshing. One has to have a sense of humility to get through politics. Apparently you do.

I am happy for that welcome.

However, one still needs a thick skin here.

I will look for your posts, however.

[enough]

38. It began before that.

Just for starters:

Guatemala 1953

Iran 1953

Democratic Republic of the Congo 1961

[90-percent]

39. New JFK/CIA assasination books/info

http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448208212&sr=8-1&keywords=dulles+cia

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/22/inside_the_plot_to_kill_jfk_the_secret_story_of_the_cia_and_what_really_happened_in_dallas/


52 years of WTF.


-90% Jimmy

[IDemo]

61. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters-ebook/dp/B005Q07DKY

Amazon.com Review
"In JFK and the Unspeakable Jim Douglass has distilled all the best available research into a very well-documented and convincing portrait of President Kennedy's transforming turn to peace, at the cost of his life. Personally, it has made a very big impact on me. After reading it in Dallas, I was moved for the first time to visit Dealey Plaza. I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions about why he died and why -- after fifty years -- it still matters.” -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

[Hydra]

40. I wasn't around then

But that was a nasty downturn. I would like to argue that the systemic problems we are seeing today had deep roots, however.

Consider how Prescott Bush was never brought to justice for Treason. Consider the gilded age madmen whom FDR saved by reviving capitalism. The people who are destroying our world were always given a free pass to do so.

At some point, that has to stop. Or we're all screwn...which we may already be.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

41. It's gotten to where I'm pleasantly surprised when progressive things like marriage equality happen

[Skidmore]

43. Oh for pity sake.

This nation has spent the last five decades trying to recreate the Fifties, a bogus Mad Men society, all shimmering like a mirage in the distance. A time that never was for many but sugar coated in pastels and gluttony following war fatigue and the all too recent memories of our parents' experiences of growing up during the Depression. The nostalgia for those good old days is what hamstrings us. There is not a single one of us who has not by omission or commission contributed to the creation of this society which descry.

I can work to fix the problems today, but I sure as hell don't want to go back to recreating that mythical golden age. It was a time that was not good to women, minority groups, or LGBQ people. The progress all of those groups have made has been in spite of those times and Kennedy's assassination was just one event in history. Those times did not benefit everyone and people were wilfully blind to government sanctioned activities as long as they were done in the name of patriotism. Remember the Tuskegee Syphilis study? How about the Monster Study at UI? The testing of the atomic bomb?

How about the sanitization of white man's America by ghettoizing cities because people didn't want to have "those people" in their neighborhoods? Or, the continuation of pushing the Native Americans into more abject poverty? Or, the neglect of the peoples of the mountain regions? Millions did not share in the prosperity of that post-war time.

We need to live in the present and create a future.

[90-percent]

69. My nostalgia for the fifties

Is due in great part to being born in 1954 and being part of my middle class white American nuclear family.

So my conclusion is that the 50's were quite good with distribution of wealth for white males. CEO's were not $80,000 a day sociopaths oblivious to the lives they ruin in the name of maximizing profit above all else, like today.

Thom Hartmann's explanations of progressive taxation and the principles and benefits are clear. When the top tax rate was 90%, it was pointless for CEO's to maximize their personal wealth above all else. It would be irksome to pay 90 cents to the government to gain an extra ten cents of salary. So the 50's CEO's took their profits and re-invested it back in the company, resulting in shared prosperity for the workers of the CEO's company. Now we have a tax system that incentivizes hollowing out and trashing companies and workers and extracting as much as possible from everything in sight, even if you have to move to another continent with lower wages to do it. CEO's in the 50's made 40 times their lowest worker, now it's over 400 times.

The points here about 50's nostalgia are all pretty valid in my book, but I do wish this country TODAY was run by the blueprint of the 1956 REPUBLICAN RESIDENTIAL TICKET! http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25838

At least in economics and the white middle class the 50's were pretty good, probably thanks to all the FDR progressive policies American's had not yet been taught by media such as Fox News to hate.

And I"m a life long drag racing fan and there's nothing more 50's than hot rods and dragsters! It's so cool one of the few segments of the drag racing sport that is growing is nostalgia nitro front engine dragsters and Funny Cars!

-90% jimmy

[Martin Eden]

44. The Vietnam War alienated a generation eager to ask what they could do for their country.

Despite the Cold War, America was on top of the world in 1963 with a young president who inspired a new generation with the spirit of progress for an even better future.

The war in Vietnam transformed that spirit into distrust, anger, and rebellion. The counterculture produced some amazing things and broke down barriers that needed to go, but ultimately the bright promise was lost. Drugs, disillusion, and a disconnect from our own government laid the foundation for what has followed.

FDR was the last of the New Deal Democrats. His Great Society and his presidency were casualties of his own poor judgment getting us mired in a war that claimed more than the lives that were destroyed.

I was 6 years old when JFK was assassinated, and 10 when MLK was taken. Vietnam and Civil Rights were the two issues that defined the awakening of my political consciousness. We've made progress on Civil Rights and still have a long way to go, but the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about has strengthened its grip.

Very little of the progress we still hope to achieve will happen as long as our treasury is drained to finance a military machine and a foreign policy that only serves to perpetuate war for the benefit of arms merchants, multinational corporations, and the politicians who serve them.

This is now the biggest issue that defines my political consciousness. It is imperative that we take back the Democratic Party from those who will serve to perpetuate the status quo.

[Spider Jerusalem]

45. I don't think so

Kennedy was already pretty sold on Vietnam, people seem to forget that (there's footage of him on the Huntley/Brinkley show talking about the "domino theory" and how he absolutely believes that you have to fight Communism in Vietnam to prevent all of Southeast Asia going Red)...and Kennedy presided over the largest expansion of the US military in history; if JFK had lived? The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts may never have passed--the day he died? Every bill on JFK's legislative agenda was hopelessly stalled in Congress; it took LBJ, with his ability to work the Senate, pleading and cajoling and bullying, to first get a budget passed...by promising Senator Robert Byrd that he'd limit it to the symbolic figure of $100 billion...and then to get the Civil Rights Act passed by browbeating recalcitrant Democrats into voting for it as the legacy of a martyred President and shaming Republicans into voting for it by calling on their history as "the party of Lincoln". I don't see any of that happening if Kennedy had lived, I'm afraid. As for the rest, "decline" as such was inevitable; the USA was the only major industrial power still standing at the end of WWII (Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan? All bombed pretty severely, with years of rebuilding ahead of them) and the USA produced HALF the world's oil at the time; the USA's economic dominance in the immediate postwar period was pretty much inevitable, as was the relative decline as the rest of the world recovered and as Middle Eastern oil production ramped up and American production declined (US oil production peaked in 1970, by the way).

[lpbk2713]

54. IMO the most subtle and yet pernicious influence ...

was the acceptance of stupidity and mediocrity in high places.

And yes, GW Bush, I'm looking at you.

[Rex]

56. I am curious, when was America at it's peek? Post WW II?

Post Vietnam? Pre 9/11? What do people think? Are we peeking now? The middle class went into decline the day JFK was killed. Of that I have no doubt.

Ford should have never pardoned Nixon either, gave a greenlight to a nonstop crime spree by the republicans. To this day.

[MFrohike]

59. This shit is so tired

Tell it to the slaves. Tell it to the indentured servants. Tell it to the West Virginia coal miners who fought a civil war against the coal company and their National Guard lackeys. Just stop telling it to me.

History didn't begin with the Kennedys. They were American politicians, not demi-gods. I find it hard to believe that Vietnam and Watergate were somehow orders of magnitude worse than slavery, the Civil War, the "Indian Wars", the Gilded Age, the ruthless and bloody occupation of the Phillippines, the 30-odd invasions of Latin America in the first 30 years of the 20th century, and Jim Crow.

[rhett o rick]

64. I am sorry, but what is your point? nm

[MFrohike]

68. I guess I wasn't clear

My point: it's ridiculous to pretend that America went off-track when JFK got shot. A whole lot of bad things had happened and were happening when he got shot. His death didn't cause those things.