This message was self-deleted by its author

[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.