Thread by @eigenrobot

the need for political groups to denigrate or idealize the past is an interesting phenomenon that isnt discussed with sufficient care i think

this is a really dreadful example of bad behavior but its helpful in highlighting how dumb this can make people and in which ways

for example there were a lot of polio cases in the early 1950s yeah

if i had to guess the spike may have been related to the baby boom

but the most notable thing about polio in the era was that the vaccine was released *into the public domain* in 1955

this was miraculous

i havent had much success in finding data regarding womens mental health in the 1950s

s*icide figures might be most reliable as an indicator but unlike homicides there are more plausible issues here

a further issue is that these are not age adjusted, which matters

call it even

what is interesting is that mens suicide rates were as usual higher, but possibly noticably higher in the 50s

its curious to me that the dumb political cartoon ignores what I somewhat suspect was the most widespread mental health issue in the 50s that no one talks abt, PTSD

I dont have any proof of this but it seems likely reasonable to expect it may have been a problem, arguments about social reception and appreciation of warriors like those discussed in Sebastian Junger's _Tribe_ notwithstanding

I also have an anecdote

my great uncle was a sniper in Europe. reputedly a capable one. later in life he was an exceptional golfer.

when he demobilized he lived in a house down the street from his parents and for years would wake up in the middle of the night to run to his mother, screaming, to be held

so anyway thats probably under-discussed as a source of quiet misery for men in the 50s

no easy data on antigay sentiment

its plausible it was historically high though

arrests by entrapment were routine at least in public venues in major cities (and perhaps it would have been relatively difficult to meet in other circumstances, idk)
archive.is/YlBFK

wonder who popularized this policy ha ha

i dont know what life was actually like for gay men in the 1950s. obviously in a lot of ways "not great" but the closet was sometimes a polite mutual fiction

eg: my extended family was well aware that another of my great uncles was gay. they remained close his whole life

a related matter is that the country was at least in some ways relatively relaxed about transgender people

when Christine Jorgensen's reassignment surgery was announced in 1952 it was billed as a Miracle of Science and the Army said, yeah, ok, we'll change your name, no prob

the notion that american women "werent allowed" to go to college in the 1950s is risible

my maternal grandmother, born in the _1920s_, was a college-educated medical laboratory technician

this was in no way novel. america has had womens colleges for nearly 200 years

on the point regarding molestation i frankly have no idea how to obtain data on this matter and i honestly would prefer not to look

this would also be a misconception

my point is not that everything in the 1950s america was good or bad, and i hope ive not tried to covey either absurd extreme

if i had to _guess_ id say it was one of the strangest times in american history

yes we had just conquered half the world and we were suddenly richer than any people in history had ever been

but wed only half made it through two decades of war and poverty and revolution--korea itself was 1950-1953!

there were soviet spies everywhere, and they had the Bomb

images like the one that OP defaced were ads, right. they were kitsch

but you can learn alot from kitsch as ive said before

there are two deadly mistakes you can make looking at images like these

the first is to imagine that they were representative rather than aspirational; that things ever really were so uncomplicated

the second and in my opinion more corrosive error is to perceive the difference between the idealized images and an often rough reality, then go further to refuse not only the possibility of approaching the ideal; but further still denying its value, were it somehow attained

the denial of the possibility or value of things good and transcendent is a sickness of the spirit

im sorry (not sorry) to be a mystic about this but its the most efficient means of conveying the mentality involved in nihilist aesthetics

this is an intermittent occurrence in culture but it seems to me that its reached a kind of recent zenith

@Vert_Noel and @keyofgeo pointed me at this @SMBCComics strip after id complained in verse about a parallel trend in written english

i guess the point of this thread is that i am once again asking you to eschew luciferian despair and the ensuing embrace of hell for fear that you might not attain some heaven

@threadreaderapp unroll