Rating the decades
Ronald Brownstein thinks that the recent ten-year stretch—the one that’s been going on since 9/11—is the worst America’s been through since the Civil War and then the Great Depression.
I disagree. I think that the decade beginning some time in the late 60s (let’s choose 1968, for instance) and ending with the close of the Carter administration was the worst since then. True, the years I’m referring to constitute a bit more than a decade. We can tweak the length a little, but the principle remains.
Those years began with two dreadful assassinations (RFK, Martin Luther King) and riots in the streets of many cities, which lasted through the early 70s. The Vietnam War was incredibly divisive and disturbing and caused bitter rifts that have lasted until today. A president refused to run again when he might have, and another was forced out of office in scandal after his vice-president was booted (over a completely separate scandal). The upshot was that we had our first appointed president ever. At the same time, society was being disrupted by rapid changes in mores regarding the family and morality that pitted children against their parents and vice versa. Later, the economy went south and stayed there for quite some time. The whole thing ended with the ignominious Iran hostage crisis.
Have I forgotten anything? Probably, but I don’t think so. I lived through those times, and though I was personally happy (they coincided, for example, with my getting married and setting up a household for the first time), I think the mood of the country was dreadful. Curious whether you agree: those of you who are old enough to know, how would you compare those years with these?
[ADDENDUM: The music was awfully good, though, wasn’t it?]
Agree. The double digit inflation and interest rates combined with high unemployment toward the end of the period were brutal.
Having lived through it as well (we must be about the same age), I believe it was worse. Society still suffers from what happened in those days. Any war is “A New Vietnam”, those who were of the “counterculture” and wanted to “stick it to the man” are now “the man” themselves. The gigantic divide between political Left and Right has continued to grow over those years.
So maybe it’s not “better” or “worse”, maybe we are still there.
It’s a great question but I have no answer. An answer might be premature because the current turmoil is not yet behind us; in fact, heaven forbid, it’s possible that the worst is still ahead.
I’ve had a similar question in mind: has any nation ever fallen faster and farther from higher than the USA since Y2K? (We’re still falling.)
The Civil War has not been exceeded yet. Decent Americans killing decent Americans, for reasons few understood. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost because the elite politicians could not figure it out. (Hint: If Lincoln was such a great leader, why didn’t he figure out a way to prevent the War?)
The Great Depression was, in reality, no worse than people were used to, in those days–consider poverty in Eastern Europe for example. Few people had electricity, or indoor plumbing. If they didn’t have any food by the afternoon, that was normal. We CHOOSE to forget history.
Today, we are witnessing the needless and reckless destruction of our surviving Nation.
We ain’t seen nothing yet….
You forgot that in the 70’s we had shag carpeting.
I think external circumstances were worse in the late 60s/early 70s — but what seems worse to me now, and new, is the way we have lost faith in ourselves as a nation. That’s the direct result of many things that happened back then, of course, but it didn’t manifest itself so clearly until now. The malaise and disorder of the 60s and 70s was bad, but now there’s a deep-seated, growing despair that I find far more disturbing.
Althouse ran a post several months ago asking readers what their first “political” memory is.
Mine was the ’68 Democratic convention. I was 7. We had an unwritten rule in our house that when the news was on the black and white TV with the fuzzy picture, nobody spoke. I had no clue what a political convention was, but I was able to comprehend the chaos in the images coming over the TV. Then my dad broke the rule and said in an irritated and loud voice something to the effect, “those god damn hippies are going to ruin this country”. Then my mom scolded my dad for cursing in front of us children. That made him get even more irritated and he raised his voice and started talking about how leaders were being assassinated. Then my mom got even madder that he was talking about people being assassinated. She ordered us to our rooms. (I didn’t know what the word assassinated meant — my older sister clued me in when we went to our rooms).
I remember feeling really scared. Up until then, I’d always felt safe and secure and insulated from the real world. That was the day that I realized the real world isn’t as safe and secure as my family had made it seem.
I don’t remember how much time passed from that night, but sometime later my dad was so upset about the course the country was on that he suggested selling our farm that had been in the family for 150 years and moving to Canada or Australia. My mother talked him out of that, but he was seriously considering it.
At least from my experience, I have to agree that those times were more tumultuous than today.
I agree with Mrs. Whatsit. I was a kid during the 70s and though in external respects it was an awful period of time, to a kid growing up in those years, the world could be a scary place (with the cold war and all), but it was still easy to have faith in America during those days. It still seemed like a land of opportunity, and in retrospect, many great enterprises and companies were started during that period. After all, 1968 also saw the moon landing, and the mid-seventies saw the birth of the personal computer. I remember learning about the Alaskan pipeline during those years, as well as first hearing about “alternative energy” and feeling like there would be a great future ahead.
These days, by contrast, the world is full of emerging threats, our economy is in decline, people don’t feel like starting any businesses (or expanding the ones they have already started), and whereas the counter-culture zeal of the late 60s and early 70s often manifested itself in radical individualism, today’s left is dominated by humorless statists who only have a zeal for expanding taxation and regulation and for trying to punish or defeat their political and cultural foes. Nixon had many shortcomings, as did Carter, but no one doubted that either of them loved their country. Carter was naive, but he didn’t share Obama’s cynical leftism.
I agree with your time frame. The assassinations, the Viet Nam war, the unnecessary gas shortage, price & wage controls, another gas shortage, double digit inflation, high interest rates . . . I would get a “nice” increase in salary and six months later I was “in pain” again. It wasn’t until Reagan was elected that I began to feel good again and proud of this great country. Looking for the next Reagan.
On a personal basis(military service, economics, family) I agree with the mid 60’s to 70’s. But for the country and world in general I feel we on the edge of something similar to WWI. The old order to be swept away, what’s to come no idea, but I’m optimistic.
Ford Pinto
Ford Grenada
Plymouth Volare
Dodge Aspen
Chevrolet Vega
AMC Hornet
Chrysler Cordoba
These were the cars of the 1970s.
It’s always easier to see where you’ve been than where you are going.
I’m with Kurt on this.
But consider the seeds planted in that era, which had not matured to yield their bitter fruits until much later: HUD, all the other Great Society stuff. Dept of Ed, Medicare, EPA, OSHA, SEC-designated ratings agencies, the CRA…. inter alia.
Name some certifiably good gov’t products of that era.
“But for the country and world in general I feel we on the edge of something similar to WWI. The old order to be swept away, what’s to come no idea, but I’m optimistic.”
I too feel we are on the edge. I wish I could be optimistic. I was a young man in 1968, it was a difficult period for all the reasons mentioned above; but perhaps because I was young, I was optimistic. Today it looks very dark on the horizon. The recent raising of the debt ceiling was an ominous turning point from my POV. Our nation can not survive a near doubling of debt over the next 10 years.
I’m with you, neo. Any era that featured malodorous hippies, communist terrorism, Jimmy Carter, and leisure suits is a strong contender for the worst era.
Parker,
Be optimistic if no other reason than to confound the bastards. Yes we have profound problems, but humans have survived slavery, slaughter, plagues, leisure suits, AND shag carpet (though it scarred a generation) yet still prospered.
The present time is worse. In that revolutionary period (mostly street and guerilla theater) followed by malaise there was always reference to a “silent majority” that was believed to still hold to the old notions. It turns out there was such a majority and Reagan tapped into it, recognizing its basic goodness and capacity and reinforcing and praising it at every opportunity.
The present has no such underpinning. It is far more factional than the Left/middle-Right political and black/white schisms of the past; as well as those, ethnic and religious immigrant factions have been added. Citizenship has been deeply discounted by illegal immigration. Jobs have been sent abroad and cheap labor imported. Visa worker programs have been concocted to exchange high wage technology jobs held by Americans to low wage jobs manned by foreigners. Back then the central government was incompetent and weak, now it’s blatantly corrupt, arrogant, and powerful. We have doubled our wars from one (Vietnam) to two (and three what… ‘police actions’ — Yemen, Somalia, and Libya). Our involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan now extend beyond the time we spent in Vietnam; the outcome will likely be the same when we leave — more ‘killing field’ than democratically disposed nation.
We are, to quote Mark Steyn “the brokest nation in history” and will be so when our grandchildren comprise the “we”. The unwinding of the greatest theft in history hasn’t even begun as we keep throwing more debt to ease our way out of debt — a sure sign of insanity. As yet there have been no investigations let alone anyone going to prison – as sure a sign as any of vast corruption. Add to that…
…never mind. I’ve so thoroughly depressed myself I’m going to pour myself a drink and watch a Fred and Ginger movie, dancing and romancing in the good ol’ days — the Great Depression.
I agree with George Pal. I was still pretty young in the late 60s and early 70s (I turned 10 in 1968), but I think our situation is much more dire now.
Back then we were still a very powerful nation despite our problems. We made humanity’s only flights to the moon during that period. Our borders were secure. Political leaders of both parties were still unashamedly pro-American. Bomb-throwing radicals like Bill Ayers were a tiny minority and were widely despised by the vast majority.
Now Ayers and his ilk have thoroughly infested our institutions and culture, to the point where roughly half of the population believes that America is inherently evil and is in need of “fundamental transformation”. Our southern border has dissolved, we’re suffering a wholesale invasion from the Third World, and political leaders of both parties have an internationalist outlook and see no problem with the dissolution of our national sovereignty and culture.
No, the present era is an order of magnitude worse, and we’re not even close to hitting bottom.
Man is a vessel, and stained,
a frightening thing. Unknown
his functioning brain, remained
a loss of soul which is flown.
In many ways the 68 – 79 period was worse than what we see today. There were all the things youi mentioned, neo, plus the oil embargoes, two recessions (one quite severe), the lack of communication to citizens except from what we call the MSM (which, even then, was carrying the liberal’s water), entrenched inflation, “fair pricing” practices (agreed on retail prices that were seldom marked down), the beginnings of illegal immigration after the Bracero program ended, and a general sense that nothing could be done to change our destiny. (Carter called it a “malaise.”)
I was so alarmed in the 70s under Carter that I moved my family to the mountains west of Denver. We had food, fuel, water (our own well), guns & ammo stored and owned a couple of bags of silver coins ($1500/bag). We were ready for the end of normal society as we knew it. Much of the survival stuff I read today reminds me of some of the info that was being published back in the 70s. Much tio my amazement, Reagan was elected and, after a painful period of high interest rates, things turned around. In fact, I look back at the 80s through the 90s as a time when this country achieved wealth and productivity I never would have believed possible, particularly after going through the 70s.
I agree that many of the progressive programs that we see today (belief in big government, War on Poverty, and environmental restrictions on production of natural resources) had their start in the 70s and have become big factors today. They are, IMO, in the process of being challenged and, hopefully, replaced.
This country is not weak or about to fail. We have enormous resources and resilient people. We have gone off course much as we did in the 70s. Proper government policies (smaller government, less restriction on natural resource production, and less foolish regulation) will get us back on course. As Carter failed, so has Obama. The MSM will try to get him re-elected, but things are bad and he refuses to change course in a way to save himself. (Unlike Bubba) I believe we will see a change for the bettter with the election of a new President. Rather than escape to the mountains as before, this time I am spending my time, energy, and money working to get conservatives (or the closest things to it!) elected.
Yeah…those times were bad but we DID have disco for dancin’ our cares away. 🙂
1935-1945. Depression hits full swing followed by a war, the outcome of which was not assured. Hundreds of thousands of Americans killed as a result of terrible ideas abroad; millions of Americans suffering because of bad political philosophy at home. And we had it easy compared to people in Europe and Asia.
james says, “… humans have survived slavery, slaughter, plagues, leisure suits, AND shag carpet… ”
Very true, and I smile at the leisure suits & shag carpet reference. However, I’m not pessimistic when it comes to human survival, individual humans are capable of surviving leisure suits & shag carpeting. 🙂 But I’m far from being optimistic about the survival of the grand experiment known as America because there is one issue that supersedes all other issues and that is the annual deficits/debt crisis.
I see no will on the part of the clowns in DC or a majority of the people to deal with this issue in a meaningful way. Dealing with this issue in a meaningful way will require a great deal of pain. We need a balanced federal budget now, not 10 or 20 years from now. Very few are willing to take the pain this would create.
Failure to deal with this issue in a serious manner will eventually (3-5-10 years?) lead to financial apocalypse and I’m not being hysterical when I use the word apocalypse. Is it not obvious that we are on the road to becoming Greece (which will default within 6-12 months) on steroids unless drastic measures are taken and taken soon? And, when is it too late?
Is it too late when interest payments equal 50% of DOD or Medicare? When interest payments equal 100%? When interest payments equal 5% of GDP? 10% of GDP? 20% of GDP? Once its too late, its too late. And anyone who believes we can grow our way out of this dilemma is engaged in wishful thinking.
We have a choice. Severe, non-life threatening injuries now or terminal cancer in the near future. Sorry to be Cassandra, but that’s how I see the situation. Could I be wrong, yes. Could I be right?
Parker,
My optimism comes from our individual human survival inclinations (not skills). We have never done anything according to a set plan. Oh we’ve started with ideas, but never doing it step one, two,…..
The Revolution as an example. The Committees of Correspondence didn’t have a copy of the Constitution in their pockets when they started. They just told everyone “George III sucks”, who of course didn’t like it and people started shooting. By the time of the Constitutional Convention if you had asked any delegate how it all got from 1774 to then, they probably couldn’t have told you.
Freedom, the idea is what’s important (the genie out of the bottle), it’s eternal, cannot be killed or even be historically erased as some libs are desparately trying to do.
So be optimistic.
Oh, and texexec you had to bring up disco that’s cruel.
The War on Terrorism is a walk in the park compared to the Cold War. I was a young Army officer in the late 70’s. People who wore the uniform were spat upon in those days and my wife jumped at every evening phone call fearing that her husband would be deployed, never to be seen again. I was convinced that my unit full of heavily drugged high school drop outs would be easily wiped out when confronted by the better trained and equipped Red Army. These were’nt backward Arab peasents we would fight, but hardened Russion soldiers, who seemed unbeatable at the time. Things changed after Reagan was elected. We finally had a president who had a successful strategy for the Cold War- “We win, they lose”. The 70’s was a darker time. Pollution was worse and we were less competitive economically. Today we are still the world’s largest manufacturer and the only real world power. Technological advances make life so much better — and yet, people are still unhappy and still afraid.
The Great Depression, WWII make the 1930s-1945 primary contenders for the Worst Decade. Americans faced all manner of hardship, war, anarchists and progressive politicians. But they had faith in God and a sense of family, community, and country that is lacking now.
In more recent times I agree with you, Neocon. Though it’s not technically a decade, I would mark the beginning at the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, though he was probably a lousy enough president to push it back to 1961. Certainly the Cuban missile crisis rates highly as something I don’t want to experience again (as well as those “educational” films about what to do when the Russians nuke us and the routine “duck and cover” drills at school). But you are correct to suggest that by 1980 we were a weary and tattered nation in every imaginable way.
This recent decade? It’s not been great, and we’re facing grave threats at home (al Qaeda being the least of them) but I have faith, and the rise of groups like the Tea Parties gives me some optimism. We have a lot of work to do, a lot of damage to reverse. The 20th Century as a whole left a lot to be desired…
But the music of your ’68-’80 decade? Yes. Some of the best ever. ; )
http://www.breitbart.tv/palin-wows-iowa-crowd/
Full of good zingers like “Barak Obama has shown us crony capitialism on steroids.”
No one is a killer like Palin and it is time to confront and destroy the elite ruling class which has usurped our power. They are the real enemy even before Islam and socialism.
The period from 1945 to the present in America appears to be one of great strides, interrupted by people for whom prosperity turns into unnappreciative brats.
Somewhat unrelated but…
It’s Great to be Alive!
We weren’t coddled back then and few adults were worried about our “esteem issues.”
After WWII, all of Europe, including the USSR, lay in rubble. As did much of Japan. While the USA sacrificed alot of lives and treasure, our domestic infrastructure (roads, rails, manufacturing base, communications system, etc) was intact.
At Bretton Woods, when the leaders got together to create a new monetary/financial system, because the rest of the world was in tatters, world leaders decided the dollar would become the global reserve currency. Nearly all global trade was denominated in dollars. The “dollar was as good as gold” because it was convertible into gold.
Then as the Vietnam War escalated, we started abusing the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency to fund the war effort. The French got nervous about the devaluing and began dumping dollars for gold, which was draining our gold reserves out of the country. Nixon declared we would no longer redeem dollars for gold. We’ve been on a complete fiat monetary system ever since. Even today, nearly 60% of global trade continues to be denominated in dollars even though the only thing backing the dollar is that we have the biggest guns.
As American influence in the world continues to wane, the current phony fiat monetary system is eventually going to be replaced and there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do to stop it. Our policy makers have abused our unique position as the global reserve currency for four decades, and the rest of the world is not going to tolerate it much longer.
Nobody knows for sure what comes next, but however the current monetary system is re-ordered, it is almost certainly going to involve a huge drop in the standard of living for Americans. But the bigger question is how will Americans respond politically when their standard of living is cut, say in half (just picking a random) overnight? EVERYBODY’S lives will be disrupted in some way. Probably lots of civial unrest. Riots maybe. Who knows?
When Rome fell, the constitutional republic first descended into democracy. But even Plato knew 2500 years ago that democracies are inherently unstable as they are nothing more than mob rule. With Rome, the majority figured out how to vote themselves farm subsidies, housing subsidies, (sound familiar?)until the treasury was depleted. The Roman democracy ultimately descended into an oligarchical tyranny of the Caesars.
Considering how little regard contemporary Americans have for individual liberty, I am not certain that when the great restructuring of the monetary order occurs and everybody’s lives get turned upside down, that we’ll be able to hold onto our constitutional republic. Not only that, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll hold onto our national sovereignty. When the USSR collapsed, it broke up into a bunch of smaller pieces. There’s a Russian professor who has been predicting for over a decade that the U.S. will follow a path similar to that of the USSR, and ultimately sever apart into 5 or 6 different sovereigns. Sounds crazy, I know. But I bet the average Soviet citizen thought predictions of the USSR’s collapse sounded crazy in 1970 or 1980.
We have far bigger challenges ahead than policy makers and elites are willing to talk about publicly.
I suspect Brownstein is really trying to write another ‘the Presidency has become too much for one man’ article of the kind I first saw under Carter. Also, if the whole decade is to blame, then ‘Bush Did It’ and Obama isn’t really to blame; he only came in near the end to try and save us from it all. Go ahead, pull the other one.
I would think the notion that 2007-2017 is already a better candidate for Bad Decade status but that puts Obama (and Democratic control of Congress) in a more responsible position. Using 9/11 is a convenient bracket, but the military, economic and political troubles since 9/11 just don’t measure up to the same scale (e.g. fatalities of Vietnam, loss of wealth from inflation, domestic political violence), at least not until the Obama debt explosion.
“We have a choice. Severe, non-life threatening injuries now or terminal cancer in the near future.”
Parker, Sarah Palin made essentially the same point in her speech yesterday. She said, “We WILL have entitlement reform. Either we do it ourselves or the world capital markets will do it for us.”
One of the most egregious labels is “the dark ages.”
The dark ages. Well, okay, but not okay. Why was it the dark ages? The libraries got burned or something?
What a story. Why do the last people who burned get blamed as if the whole preceding bunch didn’t burn. They did. They burned and salted. The end of the ancient world was the end of the dark ages. Once Rome and Greece was gone, things got better, not worse.
And if we’re challenging: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Reformation, Modernism, Positivism, Plopism (the sound of Wittgenstein going poop which he surely did, so sorry, he wasn’t divine.)
Screwy bunch of labels by a bunch of bunchers. And by bunchers I mean Jacobists (atheists). You wouldn’t want them for friends or relatives. Read Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals.”
Travel further than you expect to pull up the roots of progressive lies. The left has abandoned Obama because he did NOT GO FAR ENOUGH!
Obama, then, represents a heeled version of our enemy.
I agree with you, neo. Using a broad brush here, it was a time when there were so many upheavals all at once it seemed like the country was “going to hell in a hand basket.” Our parents’ generation got through the depression, won WWII, then set about building up material wealth no one had ever seen before – and then their kids rejected all that. Violence was accepted by the little brats as somehow justified in the name of “peace” (e.g., burning down ROTC buildings). The civil rights movement became black versus white violence. The quality of cars produced was so bad people were torching them at the entrance to the factories. No wonder a lot of folks escaped into disco.
For me personally, the 70s were not all that bad. I married in 1972 and my husband and I had a thriving business until 1978 – and even then we sold out rather than declare bankruptcy.
What I see facing my children (born 1975-1981) scares me. They are successful — much more so than their parents… but they are also much more vulnerable than we were.
Their expectations (and achievements) are higher. Perhaps it’s those achievements that I worry about. They have worked much harder than I did and they have more to lose than I ever did.
They are where I was not in the 70s. They have more to lose. Or… maybe less. In the 70s I and my husband owned our own small business. Yes, it failed in some ways, but the overall investment did not.
My children are all working for someone else and their jobs are of the intellectual sort. We thought their educations would shelter them but now I am not sure of that.
The difference I see between the 70s and now is one of opportunity. And I do not think that my children have the opportunity that their parents had.
Jimbo says, “Today we are still the world’s largest manufacturer and the only real world power. Technological advances make life so much better – and yet, people are still unhappy and still afraid.”
Right now $0.43 per inflated dollar of that greatest power is borrowed money. Twitter & facebook all you want but that money is owed to the Federal Reserve (a private institution of dubious character) or China or other off-shore entities. Soon, at our current rate of spending/borrowing, it will be $0.50. Within 2 years, without a drastic correction, it will be $0.60.
This is not sustainable because at that point we are no longer a sovereign nation. We are pauper puppets of our creditors.
rickl says, “… and we’re not even close to hitting bottom.”
Sadly, I agree.
Curtis says, “No one is a killer like Palin and it is time to confront and destroy the elite ruling class which has usurped our power. They are the real enemy even before Islam and socialism.”
Palin is one of the few voices of REAL hope and change I can listen to and believe. (Johnson & Cain are in this short list.) She is a real leader. If she tosses her caribou skin hat into the ring she has my support.
The 1970’s had to be lived. I was in high school when all the local steel plants shut down. It wasn’t fun, and can only hope that our current trend doesn’t nationalize my experience.
As Tex and Paul have pointed out – we did have disco and shag carpeting to sooth our minds when Jimmy spoke. —- Sheesh —- Reagan come in and everybody wondered. There were sudden chants of USA breaking out at sporting events. It was strange because our area was solid Democrat. The right leader can make a difference. But who?
In no previous era have we had leadership so obviously hostile to the Country and its institutions. Obama and his cronies, Soros especially, hate the United States and all we used to stand for.
I’d say we’re right in the middle of the worst decade ever – it started when the Democrats won congress in 2006.
@Parker…
The All Volunteer Army.
Interestingly enough, this was an effort that actually reduced the control that the central government had on our lives. I remember the angst that we had at the time (I was just a kid who wanted to make the Army a career choice) that it would not work, and later would see just how close it all came to failing miserably. But this ended up being one of the most important changes to military service, our ability to respond to crises with reduced expenses and in restoring faith in our professional military.
It may not seem like much, but this was a big thing back then and we are bearing the fruits of that change now.