1956: "America Peaked
Back Then And We've Been In Decline Ever Since" Submitted by Tyler Durden, 4/08/16 As SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo noted,
How far we have fallen! The American Dream used to
be attainable to all who worked hard, and freedom was still a tangible thing
that many experienced. People used common sense and wisdom from experience to
make it through life.
Today, most people are dumbed-down consumers
who only know what they have been told through the television, who eat processed foods
made by leading corporations with almost no nutritional value, they are in debt
up to their eyeballs, and couldn’t think independently if they tried. Problem solving and common decency have
disappeared, and the gap between the Americans of 60 years ago is
so astonishing as to make movies like Idiocracy and books like The Time Machine
appear absolutely correct. And
so Michael
Snyder (via The End of The American Dream blog) compares America
1956 vs. America 2016.
Is America a better place today than it was back in
1956? Of course many Americans
living right now couldn’t even imagine a world without cell phones, Facebook or
cable television, but was life really so bad back then? 60 years ago,
families would actually spend time on their front porches and people would
actually have dinner with their neighbors. 60 years ago, cars were still
cars, football was still football and it still meant something to be an
American.
In our country today, it
is considered odd to greet someone as they are walking down the street, and if
someone tries to be helpful it is usually because they want something from you. But things were very different in the middle of the
last century. Men aspired to be gentlemen and women aspired to be ladies,
and nobody had ever heard of “bling”, “sexting” or “twerking”. Of course life was far from perfect, but
people actually had standards and they tried to live up to them.
So
how did it all go so wrong?
Could it be possible that
life in America peaked back then and we have been in decline ever since?
Before
you answer, I want to share with you a list of comparisons between life in
America in 1956 and life in America in 2016…
In
1956, John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe were some of the biggest
stars in the entertainment world.
In
2016, our young people look up to “stars” like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and
Lady Gaga.
In
1956, Americans were watching I
Love Lucyand The Ed
Sullivan Show on television.
In 1956, you could buy a first-class stamp for just
3 cents.
In 2016, a first-class stamp will cost you 49 cents.
In
1956, gum chewing and talking in class were some of the major disciplinary
problems in our schools.
In 2016, many of our public schools have been
equipped with metal detectors because violence has gotten so far out of
control.
In
1956, children went outside and played when they got home from school.
In
2016, our parks and our playgrounds are virtually empty and we have the highest
childhood obesity rate on the entire planet.
In 1956, if a kid skinned his knee he was patched up
and sent back outside to play.
In
2016, if a kid skins his knee he is likely to be shipped off to the emergency
room.
In
1956, “introducing solids” to a baby’s diet may have meant shoving a piece of
pizza down her throat.
In 2016, we have “attachment parenting” which advocates treating
children like babies almost until they reach puberty.
In
1956, seat belts and bicycle helmets were considered to be optional pieces of
equipment, and car safety seats were virtually unknown.
In
2016, millions of us are afraid to leave our homes for fear that something
might happen to us, and if something does happen we slap lawsuits on one
another at the drop of a hat.
In
1956, many Americans regularly left their cars and the front doors of their
homes unlocked.
In
2016, many Americans live with steel bars on their windows and gun sales are at
all-time record highs.
In 1956, one income could support an entire middle
class family.
In
2016, approximately
one-third of all Americans don’t make
enough money to even cover the basics even though both parents have entered the
workforce in most households.
In 1956, redistribution of wealth was considered to
be something that “the communists” did.
In 2016, the federal government systematically redistributes
our wealth, and two communists are fighting for the Democratic nomination.
In
1956, there were about 2 million people living in Detroit and it was one of the
greatest cities on Earth.
In
2016, there are only about 688,000 people living in Detroit and it has become a joke to
the rest of the world.
In 1956, millions of Americans dreamed of moving out
to sunny California.
In
1956, television networks would not even show husbands and wives in bed
together.
In
2016, there is so much demand for pornography that there are more than 4 million adult
websites on the Internet, and they get
more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
In 1956, the American people had a great love for
the U.S. Constitution.
In
2016, “constitutionalists” are considered to be potential terrorists by the
U.S. government.
In
1956, people from all over the world wanted to come to the United States to
pursue “the American Dream”.
In 2016, 48 percent of all U.S. adults under the
age of 30 believe that “the American Dream is dead”.
In 1956, the United
States loaned more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.
In 2016, the United
States owes more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.
So
now that you have seen what I have to share, what do you think?
Has America changed for the better, or has it
changed for the worse?
Comments
I was in 7th grade in 1956. My aunts and uncles told me about the “Great
Depression”. I saw the US economy boom
after World War II. I started a Rock
Band in 1957 and we played 3 nights a week through prep school at teen towns
and parties and worked each Summer on the Admiral Steamship. In 1961 I joined a “dirty two horn blues band”
and played 6 nights a week on Gaslight Square in St. Louis through college and
worked Summers at Granite City Steel. I
was able to “work my way through college” and paid cash for a car. I graduated college and went to work in 1965
with no student loan debt. Jobs were available to everybody and the economy was
booming. I continued to play in Jazz
Trios on weekends from 1965 to 1975.
Except for a few Fed created Recessions, the US economy
kept booming until 2000. Then we saw
jobs leave the US and not return. We
also saw excessive immigration double in 1989 at a time when we should have
restricted immigration. We saw our National Debt climb from $5 trillion to
approaching $20 trillion and our federal taxes climb from $2 trillion to $4
trillion. It will take decades to climb
out of this hole and we need to begin now.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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