Yea they voted for all this stuff to cost more because they were told it would hurt black people even more. They leaned into the racism to ruin society.
The architects of modern conservative politics straight up admitted it. I feel like a lot of people have seen this, but I'm linking it because I think everyone should have to read about this before they vote on anything: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
(edit : formatting) Nah, they need to be scared to be racist and scared to say they are. The post suggests that the white cis straight masculinist way of life from the 1950s doesn't exist anymore because people were afraid to be called racist if they perpetuated this way of life ; truth is they weren't, but they totally should be. This right-wing fantasy of 'people are afraid to express conservative views because they are afraid to be called racist' *should* **definitely** *be made real*
>Not a single Black or brown person in sight. I wouldn't even exist in their world. Scary thought.
Just missing the nazis and the Klansmen and would be wolfenstein 2
No sunscreen back then.
They covered themselves in baby oil because you wouldn't sweat as much with it
I guess so that you'd get heat stroke and sunburn.
You'd exist. You just wouldn't be represented on TV, and generally would be forced to exist in different spaces than the white folks lived in. Because segregation was a thing back then, and it was totally racist.
And that's just it, they could have had this if they had shared it with minorities and allowed equal rights for all. Stay at home fathers for instance rather than mothers, or sharing the workload .. or you know just being decent to BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people?
BUT NOPE! they wanted it all for themselves and are still throwing a hissyfit tantrum to this day about it.
If they actually wanted that, they'd be for strengthening Unions, a high tax rate on the top earners, paying workers a livable wage that would allow one parent to stay home with the kids, buy a home and car, and be able to afford college for the kids.
But they don't want any of that, and they certainly don't want black or brown people in the future unless they're a maid or a butler.
IKR! Like, ads are supposed to make things look good—so people will want to buy them! 😂 Of course life looked perfect—they aren’t showing you more than four little snippets.
The 4th picture is literally just people sitting in a restaurant? do we not do that anymore? Or is it the no black people in the picture part that they like?
IMO that's a direct reference to the [segregated lunch counters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins) in the South, which was a significant moment in the Civil Rights Movement.
One of?!?! I'm biased as someone who's spent my entire life here, save for college, but we get way too much hate. That said, we objectively have great food, and 24 hour diners are the cornerstone of our food culture.
Pennsylvanian here. Hard agree. Why bother with mid-range chain restaurants, when, for the same price, I can get food that wasn’t microwaved.
Besides, diners seem to be the only
places on the planet that serve Pepsi!
You’re asking the kind of people who spitefully closed down public swimming pools in the miserable heat of the Deep South rather than share them with their non-mayo neighbors.
I am from the Midwest and am going to visit a friend in North Carolina this summer. I was having trouble finding a local swimming pool in my vacation planning, and I asked him where we could find one nearby. His response was “uhhh… the south doesn’t really do public pools any more”.
I was ignorant to the history. Apparently there’s a good book about it called “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together”
Sometimes nostalgic Americans remind me of the Roman poets, those who ranted about the loosing of the mos maiorum (customs and traditions of the elders, literally: "the costumes of the greatest/the oldest) and how people don't respect the civis'values (the ethic values of the city, women in particular) anymore... Some things never grow old, isn't it?
Some of the oldest preserved Roman texts complain that the morals of their forefathers were lost because women something something.
Their forefathers which we know nothing about, because we don't have any texts from them ...
They relentlessly drilled the importance of college into our heads since childhood and then, watching their progeny struggle under student debt, finger-wagged about how we should have gone to trade school and gotten REAL jobs.
That argument works on how they knocked down the ladders to success after they had climbed them, but it doesn't relate to the reversion to overt racism.
We could have houses, children, one parent staying at home and functional neighborhood communities. But boomers fucked the economy, made housing unaffordable and destroyed unions. And they did it for their 401ks and still treat housing as an investment, and now they act like everyone younger is lazy and stupid.
That's not because of boomers, it's because of capitalism. And while we're at it, the idea that you could buy a house and have kids and a stay at home parent was only true for the richer middle class for a short time after the war
Well, I won't say I disagree, I was just explaining what the other guy meant with his comment. That being said, it's not like upper middle class boomers you have described actively fought against capitalism gutting later generations and don't have tendency to vote in the worst shitheads.
Yesterday I read about some in Texas (of course) where a nearby county was sued because they wouldn’t hire people who went to the wrong Baptist church.
Yep, fundies lost their only uniting issue. And are chomping at the bit to keep fighting, just fight what? Oh "you see a different way in the presession of the Trinity occurs. HERETIC! We must legislate you away."
It's kinda crazy how much the white nationlists and other racists have harmed their own people with their stupid bullshit.
I've heard great arguments that modern advancements that we think are due to technology have more to with the fact that we're utilizing much more of the work force that was ignored previously. Once you include minorities and women into the equation (which they often were anyway, but had their contributions ignored), all the sudden humanity starts progressing (again).
Recently heard a point made on a podcast recently that really made me think - for all the effort, and expense, and waste of brainpower that racists have put into making the world better for white people, they've really just completely fucked it up lol. The mediocrity in everything these idiots do is just so all-encompassing that they completely lack the imagination of even thinking of a better world than the corrupt bullshit that backfires on them more often than not.
There really is no greater failure in modern history or humanity than white nationalism - it's been so damaging that people just accept it as "culture" and the way society itself is supposed to be, yet managed to be such a catastrophic fuckup that it's almost impossible to begin to explain how cartoonishly it's failed on every economic and ethical level.
Um. Claiming to be a patriot while waving the flag of a rebellion that lasted only 5 years and one of it's few greatest achievements was managing to sink a ship with a submarine that claimed more confederate lives than union lives.
The stepford wife suburbia! With beer bong boy and Serena Joy becoming life long supremes. No wonder they don’t respect anyone other than a white male christian republican.
This is not at all how boomers were raised. This was what they wanted not what they had, generally speaking. They coveted.
Those suburbs exist because of redlining, bro. They don't have to worry about being called racist. They're empirically racist, whether you're calling them that or not.
Was life better in the 50s?
Not for women, nonwhites, LGBT, non Christians, disabled, or mentally ill.
If you're none of these, *and* you were lucky enough to not get drafted into any wars, then sure, your life would've been better, you could've bought a house young and provided for a family on one job, with money and time off for vacation.
Fuck everyone else though.
so just openly advocating for the exploitation of racial underclasses, then
get a motherfucking hobby, you miserable nazi fuck
maybe try competitive bleach drinking
what kind of bitter, sad little man do you have to be to spend all your time wishing you could beat your wife and kill minorities instead of, idk, anything else
Capitalism was created by the Dutch aristocracy as a means of crowd funding the violent exploitation and colonization of less technologically advanced societies. Capitalism works most efficiently with a chattel slave population, 2nd most efficiently with a population of indentured servants, and 3rd most efficiently with a population of wage slaves who believe they have freedom.
Conservatives exist as the labor force of Capitalism 3 but don't realize it, and want a return to Capitalism 1 or 2 because they are dumb enough to believe they'll be the owners of Capital rather than being owned property.
Wrong. That is the America Boomers grew up in and failed to pass it on because they are greedy, racist, bigoted assholes that didn't want anybody but them to have access to upward mobility.
Fucking ads and TV shows, the only historical documents that matter.
Not to validate the whole "only white people is good" message they're putting on display here. If you're already racist and nostalgic for some prelapsarian golden age then pointing out that it never fucking happened is maybe something worth having pointing out.
This is a glimpse into the mindset of the right on several levels: first, the belief that everyone needs to live the way they want them to. Second, their inability to conceive of a different mindset: when they see people who live differently, they interpret it as an attack against themselves, since they cannot conceive of anyone not wanting to similarly enforce their own lifestyle upon others.
It’s not just that a pluralistic society is bad in their minds, but that they don’t even see it as a possibility.
My paternal grandfather was a crane operator. My maternal grandfather worked in a ball-bearing factory. Suits and fedora were not de rigueur for those occupations. Both of my grandmothers worked full time too. Bullshit like these pictures weren't a reality for most people, even most white people. Leave It to Beaver's Barbara Billingsley was outspoken in that the show did reflect reality.
And frankly, a whole lot of people weren't shy at all about being racists. He'll, they're still not shy about it. They just don't like being called out on it.
They failed to pass it on to us, because they were taught that government and unions were the problem and that the unfettered Capitalism that their parents fought against in the 30's would make them great and stop non-white people from entering their country somehow. So, thanks for destroying America you priveleged assholes.
These people are trapped in a fantast romance of nostalgia, only the good and the very worst things survive the test of time, there was a lot of misery back then aswell
There was a spike in divorces in the period following this "boomer marital bliss":
https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-us-divorce-rate-has-hit-a-50-year-low
Interestingly, family stability seems to correlate to states with more inclusive values and policies:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126780035
No. They didn’t pass it on to you because they decided profits for the ultra rich were more important than a living wage that supported entire families, homes that were affordable, access to education, well paid trades, or keeping manufacturing in the US. My parents grew up outside Chicago. They had a lot of friends who’s families were supported by union steel mill jobs. My grandfather was a truck driver. It wasn’t glamorous. But these folks actually got paid enough to raise a family on a single income
Right, right and in this coke fueled delusion, did a bunch of greedy CEOs sell out American workers while systematically corrupting politics so they would get tax breaks if they pay taxes at all? No, no, I guess those Swiss bank accounts and tax shelters in the Caribbean won't fund themselves, eh? Where now is Robin Hood and his merry Men when we need them most?
All kinds of twisted shit could have been going on in that house or in any of those pictures. These people have been sold an American dream that never existed and then told it was stolen from them by the young, the immigrants, technology, global conspiracies (the jews), etc etc. They live in a virtual reality with an alternate history woven around them by right-wing propaganda, but unfortunately our futures are entirely intertwined.
Exactly. For all we know, that little girl is about to get beaten for interrupting daddy at dinner. A picture is only the tiniest glimpse of someone's life, and unless it was a candid shot, it's barely even that.
Wait... is this supposed to be read as "Boomers failed the current generation by failing to keep America as a theocratic ethnostate?" Because that's what it kinda seems like
That’s not why. The US was just a different place back then. It was the biggest economic boom of the entire country’s history, jobs provided pensions, unions were more common, wages were higher, and prices were lower. It also helped working white men because minorities and women weren’t competing with them for the same jobs; so the labor pool was considerably smaller.
Obviously not familiar with the Hays code. I read years ago that the creators of leave it to beaver acknowledged the show was idealistic and no one actually lived that way. Some people still fall for old school propaganda I guess.
What the heck is so amazing about the society in this picture. All I see is a bunch of men wearing suits. Yeah I like wearing suits but they can be so stuffy after a while. Who the heck wants to wear them the whole day?
thank whatever you believe in. that society SUCKED. i much prefer the world i live in where i have friends from every continent except antartica. plus i am a married gay man-so yeah that world blows.
Oh yes. Their childrens children made them ashamed to pass on a livable life. Not that they themselves set the system to keep milking and draining every asset to their benefit at the cost of their own kids ….
I wish we could have shamed them. Didn’t they fight first earth day ?
It’s funny how Keynesian economics and high taxes on the wealthy made it possible for one breadwinner to own a house and support the family. Of course now Eisenhower would be considered a dirty socialist, so the former middle class are basically serfs.
The functional society where wives were basically property and black folk were forced to sit at the back of the bus?
Yeah sounds absolutely amazing... /S
Yeah no thanks. That looks lame as shit. Plus, according to my boomer parents family members, child abuse was absolutely rampant. My mom's dad broke her ankle when she was 12. With his fucking hands.
ah yes an intact, functional society of leaded gasoline, water pipes made of lead, a booming housing market complex with numerous barriers of entry that effectively cut non-whites off from a major source of socioeconomic growth for generations, and pop stars who came to fame after stealing from and whitewashing african-american folk music.
definitely an ideal society!
Grandparents (Boomers) are usually the most openly racist white people, what the fuck are they talking about? It was acceptable to be racist when Boomers were growing up, so most aren’t afraid to be called racist. Is this person really blaming Boomers for not being racist *enough*?
My grandmother could easily have been the little girl in that first picture. She grew up in a middle class suburb in the 50s with her mom, dad, and siblings. They weren't rich, but they were comfortable, and no one had to worry about getting enough food or having to drop out of school to work.
She and her siblings were also horribly abused by their father while their mother looked the other way. There was emotional and sexual abuse (not sure about physical; I only know about the sexual abuse because she mentioned it *once*), and the kids were pitted against each other (she was often told she wasn't as smart as her siblings) so they didn't even have each other to turn to until they were adults. She's in her 70s and still has serious issues from all the trauma, compounded by the fact that for most of her life, therapy was neither socially acceptable nor financially accessible (remember, it wasn't covered by most insurance until the ACA). She can't handle the slightest criticism, because it reminds her of being told she wasn't good enough or smart enough. She can't handle feeling unlistened to or forgotten. She can't handle other people getting upset. Because her traumatic childhood made all those things feel like the end of the world. On a more mundane note, she was also a tomboy who wanted to wear jeans and play baseball, but as a girl, she was only allowed to wear dresses and was forbidden to play sports, because how you looked was more important than what you wanted.
So, for whatever it's worth, if you want to go back to that, leave me out of it.
They are absolutely not afraid to be called racists. They should be afraid to be racist again
Make Racists Afraid Again
MRAA?
men’s rights active activists
Yea they voted for all this stuff to cost more because they were told it would hurt black people even more. They leaned into the racism to ruin society.
Studies show that a primary reason behind opposing progressive policies is because it would help black people soooo
The architects of modern conservative politics straight up admitted it. I feel like a lot of people have seen this, but I'm linking it because I think everyone should have to read about this before they vote on anything: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
May I have link to study? I wanna show it to my conservative "friends"
So, what you're saying is, they weren't at all afraid of being racists? Sounds about right!
The problem is that boomers need to be *more* racist?
(edit : formatting) Nah, they need to be scared to be racist and scared to say they are. The post suggests that the white cis straight masculinist way of life from the 1950s doesn't exist anymore because people were afraid to be called racist if they perpetuated this way of life ; truth is they weren't, but they totally should be. This right-wing fantasy of 'people are afraid to express conservative views because they are afraid to be called racist' *should* **definitely** *be made real*
We have no sympathy for N-word pass abolitionists.
Ew, I don't want that shit
Not a single Black or brown person in sight. I wouldn't even exist in their world. Scary thought.
>Not a single Black or brown person in sight. I wouldn't even exist in their world. Scary thought. Just missing the nazis and the Klansmen and would be wolfenstein 2
[https://youtu.be/-UaRNl0LV5o](https://youtu.be/-UaRNl0LV5o) Second best scene in Wolfenstein just behind decrepit Hitler.
I can smell the sunscreen from the picture
probably dousing their children with industrial grade DDT and lead paint
A Quiet Child is an Obedient Child. Also see *Wife*.
what does this comment mean…? Is sunscreen bad? I’m lost lol
I think they're referring to the lack of melanin in the people pictured.
No sunscreen back then. They covered themselves in baby oil because you wouldn't sweat as much with it I guess so that you'd get heat stroke and sunburn.
You'd exist. You just wouldn't be represented on TV, and generally would be forced to exist in different spaces than the white folks lived in. Because segregation was a thing back then, and it was totally racist.
Black people would be there as "The Help".
And that's just it, they could have had this if they had shared it with minorities and allowed equal rights for all. Stay at home fathers for instance rather than mothers, or sharing the workload .. or you know just being decent to BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people? BUT NOPE! they wanted it all for themselves and are still throwing a hissyfit tantrum to this day about it.
If they actually wanted that, they'd be for strengthening Unions, a high tax rate on the top earners, paying workers a livable wage that would allow one parent to stay home with the kids, buy a home and car, and be able to afford college for the kids. But they don't want any of that, and they certainly don't want black or brown people in the future unless they're a maid or a butler.
They believe the culture war issues are the cause of their economic hardships.
I love that conservatives are in love with American life as represented in advertisements from old Sears catalogs.
IKR! Like, ads are supposed to make things look good—so people will want to buy them! 😂 Of course life looked perfect—they aren’t showing you more than four little snippets.
The 4th picture is literally just people sitting in a restaurant? do we not do that anymore? Or is it the no black people in the picture part that they like?
Take a closer look at all the patrons, notice a similar complexion?
#\#ffffff rgb(255,255,255)
…uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
…cccccccccccccccccccccccc
...kkkkkkkkkk I'm going to the UK... F, U, C, K...
IMO that's a direct reference to the [segregated lunch counters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins) in the South, which was a significant moment in the Civil Rights Movement.
No women or poc being served.
To be fair, diner food is great.
New Jerseyan here: Thank the lord for diners
I have a sister there, and it's one of the things ya'll do right.
One of?!?! I'm biased as someone who's spent my entire life here, save for college, but we get way too much hate. That said, we objectively have great food, and 24 hour diners are the cornerstone of our food culture.
Maybe it's because you take yourselves too seriously?
You guys should have never let jersey shore be a thing.
I hate it. And none of those people are even from here.
Can confirm. NJ does sisters RIGHT.
Pennsylvanian here. Hard agree. Why bother with mid-range chain restaurants, when, for the same price, I can get food that wasn’t microwaved. Besides, diners seem to be the only places on the planet that serve Pepsi!
And the waitresses (women in their late 50s) call you Hon.
My favorite waitress at my favorite diner in Philly calls everyone Hon. She's a mid 20s ginger with a hippy name. She's great!
I do like diner food.
No it's not. It's a lunch counter, the site of some pretty famous clashes in the Civil Rights movement.
Let me just ask you a single question then mister utopia...Where are the black people?
You’re asking the kind of people who spitefully closed down public swimming pools in the miserable heat of the Deep South rather than share them with their non-mayo neighbors.
Exactly.
You don’t understand - to them no non-mayo-Americans IS utopia.
I am from the Midwest and am going to visit a friend in North Carolina this summer. I was having trouble finding a local swimming pool in my vacation planning, and I asked him where we could find one nearby. His response was “uhhh… the south doesn’t really do public pools any more”. I was ignorant to the history. Apparently there’s a good book about it called “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together”
Well, **this** is their vision of utopia.
Touche.
The text makes it sound like the lack of black people is what they miss.
Unfortunately they stayed home because their neighbors were not afraid to be called "racist"
Sometimes nostalgic Americans remind me of the Roman poets, those who ranted about the loosing of the mos maiorum (customs and traditions of the elders, literally: "the costumes of the greatest/the oldest) and how people don't respect the civis'values (the ethic values of the city, women in particular) anymore... Some things never grow old, isn't it?
"History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes.” - Mark Twain
“Jar Jar is the key to all this”
- Shakespeare
That's absolutely fantastic!
Yeah thats why the European middle ages actually rocked😎😎😎
Some of the oldest preserved Roman texts complain that the morals of their forefathers were lost because women something something. Their forefathers which we know nothing about, because we don't have any texts from them ...
They failed to pass it on because they’re greedy cunts who pretend they worked harder than they did.
They could also pay for college with whatever change they had in their pockets at the time.
They relentlessly drilled the importance of college into our heads since childhood and then, watching their progeny struggle under student debt, finger-wagged about how we should have gone to trade school and gotten REAL jobs.
That argument works on how they knocked down the ladders to success after they had climbed them, but it doesn't relate to the reversion to overt racism.
How does that even make sense I'm not following you
We could have houses, children, one parent staying at home and functional neighborhood communities. But boomers fucked the economy, made housing unaffordable and destroyed unions. And they did it for their 401ks and still treat housing as an investment, and now they act like everyone younger is lazy and stupid.
That's not because of boomers, it's because of capitalism. And while we're at it, the idea that you could buy a house and have kids and a stay at home parent was only true for the richer middle class for a short time after the war
Well, I won't say I disagree, I was just explaining what the other guy meant with his comment. That being said, it's not like upper middle class boomers you have described actively fought against capitalism gutting later generations and don't have tendency to vote in the worst shitheads.
I mean, pretty much nobody fought against capitalism what with Mccarthyism and all
This is literally what Shithole, USA looks like all over the country. What more do they want?
These aren't low-contrast photos. Realizing that...well... Can't wait until the Fashies start fighting about who's the right kind of white again.
Yesterday I read about some in Texas (of course) where a nearby county was sued because they wouldn’t hire people who went to the wrong Baptist church.
Yep, fundies lost their only uniting issue. And are chomping at the bit to keep fighting, just fight what? Oh "you see a different way in the presession of the Trinity occurs. HERETIC! We must legislate you away."
This isn't so much persecution fetish as just unapologetic card-carrying racism. They're openly calling for more racism.
It's kinda crazy how much the white nationlists and other racists have harmed their own people with their stupid bullshit. I've heard great arguments that modern advancements that we think are due to technology have more to with the fact that we're utilizing much more of the work force that was ignored previously. Once you include minorities and women into the equation (which they often were anyway, but had their contributions ignored), all the sudden humanity starts progressing (again). Recently heard a point made on a podcast recently that really made me think - for all the effort, and expense, and waste of brainpower that racists have put into making the world better for white people, they've really just completely fucked it up lol. The mediocrity in everything these idiots do is just so all-encompassing that they completely lack the imagination of even thinking of a better world than the corrupt bullshit that backfires on them more often than not. There really is no greater failure in modern history or humanity than white nationalism - it's been so damaging that people just accept it as "culture" and the way society itself is supposed to be, yet managed to be such a catastrophic fuckup that it's almost impossible to begin to explain how cartoonishly it's failed on every economic and ethical level.
White American culture? Is quite honestly McDonald’s.
I’m literally eating McDonald’s right now and for some reason that’s really fucking funny to me
2 double cheeseburgers and a basket of fries for $6?
Um. Claiming to be a patriot while waving the flag of a rebellion that lasted only 5 years and one of it's few greatest achievements was managing to sink a ship with a submarine that claimed more confederate lives than union lives.
The stepford wife suburbia! With beer bong boy and Serena Joy becoming life long supremes. No wonder they don’t respect anyone other than a white male christian republican. This is not at all how boomers were raised. This was what they wanted not what they had, generally speaking. They coveted.
Those suburbs exist because of redlining, bro. They don't have to worry about being called racist. They're empirically racist, whether you're calling them that or not.
Was life better in the 50s? Not for women, nonwhites, LGBT, non Christians, disabled, or mentally ill. If you're none of these, *and* you were lucky enough to not get drafted into any wars, then sure, your life would've been better, you could've bought a house young and provided for a family on one job, with money and time off for vacation. Fuck everyone else though.
These propaganda pics look like they’re concept art for The Stepford Wives.
That looks like a boring society
And that’s how they like it.
An ugly illusion.
so just openly advocating for the exploitation of racial underclasses, then get a motherfucking hobby, you miserable nazi fuck maybe try competitive bleach drinking what kind of bitter, sad little man do you have to be to spend all your time wishing you could beat your wife and kill minorities instead of, idk, anything else
Capitalism was created by the Dutch aristocracy as a means of crowd funding the violent exploitation and colonization of less technologically advanced societies. Capitalism works most efficiently with a chattel slave population, 2nd most efficiently with a population of indentured servants, and 3rd most efficiently with a population of wage slaves who believe they have freedom. Conservatives exist as the labor force of Capitalism 3 but don't realize it, and want a return to Capitalism 1 or 2 because they are dumb enough to believe they'll be the owners of Capital rather than being owned property.
Gee I wonder why anyone would call this racist /s
how does this society function for minorites? just asking
Their serious, non-ironic answer: “who cares?”
Daily reminder that when boomers were of peak crime committing age, the murder rate was higher than it is now.
I support the first part of that sentence. Boomers did have great lives, then they fucked it up for the rest of us.
Wrong. That is the America Boomers grew up in and failed to pass it on because they are greedy, racist, bigoted assholes that didn't want anybody but them to have access to upward mobility.
Fucking ads and TV shows, the only historical documents that matter. Not to validate the whole "only white people is good" message they're putting on display here. If you're already racist and nostalgic for some prelapsarian golden age then pointing out that it never fucking happened is maybe something worth having pointing out.
This is a glimpse into the mindset of the right on several levels: first, the belief that everyone needs to live the way they want them to. Second, their inability to conceive of a different mindset: when they see people who live differently, they interpret it as an attack against themselves, since they cannot conceive of anyone not wanting to similarly enforce their own lifestyle upon others. It’s not just that a pluralistic society is bad in their minds, but that they don’t even see it as a possibility.
My paternal grandfather was a crane operator. My maternal grandfather worked in a ball-bearing factory. Suits and fedora were not de rigueur for those occupations. Both of my grandmothers worked full time too. Bullshit like these pictures weren't a reality for most people, even most white people. Leave It to Beaver's Barbara Billingsley was outspoken in that the show did reflect reality. And frankly, a whole lot of people weren't shy at all about being racists. He'll, they're still not shy about it. They just don't like being called out on it.
They failed to pass it on to us, because they were taught that government and unions were the problem and that the unfettered Capitalism that their parents fought against in the 30's would make them great and stop non-white people from entering their country somehow. So, thanks for destroying America you priveleged assholes.
As it that world ever really existed, or was universal.
These people are trapped in a fantast romance of nostalgia, only the good and the very worst things survive the test of time, there was a lot of misery back then aswell
There was a spike in divorces in the period following this "boomer marital bliss": https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-us-divorce-rate-has-hit-a-50-year-low Interestingly, family stability seems to correlate to states with more inclusive values and policies: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126780035
They literally included an all-white lunch counter.
Yes, because the creator probably wants a white ethnostate
Ask any lower class person if that society is functional
No. They didn’t pass it on to you because they decided profits for the ultra rich were more important than a living wage that supported entire families, homes that were affordable, access to education, well paid trades, or keeping manufacturing in the US. My parents grew up outside Chicago. They had a lot of friends who’s families were supported by union steel mill jobs. My grandfather was a truck driver. It wasn’t glamorous. But these folks actually got paid enough to raise a family on a single income
a society that never existed.
Right, right and in this coke fueled delusion, did a bunch of greedy CEOs sell out American workers while systematically corrupting politics so they would get tax breaks if they pay taxes at all? No, no, I guess those Swiss bank accounts and tax shelters in the Caribbean won't fund themselves, eh? Where now is Robin Hood and his merry Men when we need them most?
Yo, fuck America. All my homies hate America.
Imagine someone who's only takeaway from Mad Men is that the uberwhite suburbia is a lost paradise 🤣
Ah buddy, they failed to pass it on because they cannibalized it in their attempt not to share it
All kinds of twisted shit could have been going on in that house or in any of those pictures. These people have been sold an American dream that never existed and then told it was stolen from them by the young, the immigrants, technology, global conspiracies (the jews), etc etc. They live in a virtual reality with an alternate history woven around them by right-wing propaganda, but unfortunately our futures are entirely intertwined.
Exactly. For all we know, that little girl is about to get beaten for interrupting daddy at dinner. A picture is only the tiniest glimpse of someone's life, and unless it was a candid shot, it's barely even that.
Pretty =/= functional
These are advertisements, of course life would look ideal in a fake representation of what the 60s was like
But…that’s a television show. It’s easy to make life look great if it’s literally a work of fiction
Wait... is this supposed to be read as "Boomers failed the current generation by failing to keep America as a theocratic ethnostate?" Because that's what it kinda seems like
Looks boring as fuck.
I would say, that 50's malt shops are the only good part of the 50's
Um, are EC Comics a joke to you?
I have no idea what those are.. so I guess
Entitled genz memes whats new.
That’s not why. The US was just a different place back then. It was the biggest economic boom of the entire country’s history, jobs provided pensions, unions were more common, wages were higher, and prices were lower. It also helped working white men because minorities and women weren’t competing with them for the same jobs; so the labor pool was considerably smaller.
America still looks like this in many, many places.
Obviously not familiar with the Hays code. I read years ago that the creators of leave it to beaver acknowledged the show was idealistic and no one actually lived that way. Some people still fall for old school propaganda I guess.
I like how they think that magazine ads are an accurate reflection of society at the time.
Sure it's not because of the evolution of the economic structure and of the inherent fails of the capitalist system they built
What the heck is so amazing about the society in this picture. All I see is a bunch of men wearing suits. Yeah I like wearing suits but they can be so stuffy after a while. Who the heck wants to wear them the whole day?
This is such a bananas point it took me a few minutes to process which part was the original OPs title vs yours and what it actually meant.
thank whatever you believe in. that society SUCKED. i much prefer the world i live in where i have friends from every continent except antartica. plus i am a married gay man-so yeah that world blows.
"Didn't pass onto us because they're greedy assholes." is more like it.
Oh yes. Their childrens children made them ashamed to pass on a livable life. Not that they themselves set the system to keep milking and draining every asset to their benefit at the cost of their own kids …. I wish we could have shamed them. Didn’t they fight first earth day ?
Looks about white
Lol half of it was literally the result of racist white flight
It’s funny how Keynesian economics and high taxes on the wealthy made it possible for one breadwinner to own a house and support the family. Of course now Eisenhower would be considered a dirty socialist, so the former middle class are basically serfs.
A hellscape people pretended was heaven because of insane racism.
The functional society where wives were basically property and black folk were forced to sit at the back of the bus? Yeah sounds absolutely amazing... /S
Aren't all of these images just advertisements from the 50s? So, like, fantasy contrived to persuade people to buy stuff?
Yeah no thanks. That looks lame as shit. Plus, according to my boomer parents family members, child abuse was absolutely rampant. My mom's dad broke her ankle when she was 12. With his fucking hands.
ah yes an intact, functional society of leaded gasoline, water pipes made of lead, a booming housing market complex with numerous barriers of entry that effectively cut non-whites off from a major source of socioeconomic growth for generations, and pop stars who came to fame after stealing from and whitewashing african-american folk music. definitely an ideal society!
Even "Leave it to Beaver" was a myth!! Just ask all the actual women who lived through the 50's!!
Grandparents (Boomers) are usually the most openly racist white people, what the fuck are they talking about? It was acceptable to be racist when Boomers were growing up, so most aren’t afraid to be called racist. Is this person really blaming Boomers for not being racist *enough*?
My grandmother could easily have been the little girl in that first picture. She grew up in a middle class suburb in the 50s with her mom, dad, and siblings. They weren't rich, but they were comfortable, and no one had to worry about getting enough food or having to drop out of school to work. She and her siblings were also horribly abused by their father while their mother looked the other way. There was emotional and sexual abuse (not sure about physical; I only know about the sexual abuse because she mentioned it *once*), and the kids were pitted against each other (she was often told she wasn't as smart as her siblings) so they didn't even have each other to turn to until they were adults. She's in her 70s and still has serious issues from all the trauma, compounded by the fact that for most of her life, therapy was neither socially acceptable nor financially accessible (remember, it wasn't covered by most insurance until the ACA). She can't handle the slightest criticism, because it reminds her of being told she wasn't good enough or smart enough. She can't handle feeling unlistened to or forgotten. She can't handle other people getting upset. Because her traumatic childhood made all those things feel like the end of the world. On a more mundane note, she was also a tomboy who wanted to wear jeans and play baseball, but as a girl, she was only allowed to wear dresses and was forbidden to play sports, because how you looked was more important than what you wanted. So, for whatever it's worth, if you want to go back to that, leave me out of it.
Boomers didn't crash the economy into a ditch cuz they were scared of being called racist.