There are a lot of people in America who liked “the good old days” and want society/culture to return to those wonderful times.
They fondly reminisce about “Ozzie and Harriett”, 25-cent gasoline, “readin’, writin’, and rythmtic”, church on Sundays, men in charge of everything, women “barefoot and pregnant” whose “place” was at home, cars with lots of chrome and power, minorities who “knew their place”, and consumer products that were mostly “Made in America”.
Oh, those magical times!
Actually, I grew up back in the good old days and, in my opinion, they were wonderful… for me, a White, middle-class kid living in suburbia, raised by a Mom who loved me and a Dad who was always employed. We weren’t well-off financially, but our family enjoyed camping vacations from time to time. It wasn’t until my Mom began working that we were able to afford the upgraded consumer goods and realization of the American Dream.
Of course, those good old days weren’t so good for a lot of Americans, particularly minorities and women, who were discriminated against in housing, borrowing, and in the workplace. Black and Brown American citizens were routinely harassed by the police in urban areas and the South and there was a two-tiered system of justice where White people were treated with more respect than non-Whites. I was too young to appreciate this in those days (mid-1950’s), but I do recall our next door neighbor, Veigh Vaughan, a Los Angeles policeman, bragging to my Dad about how he routinely tuned-up Black people on his beat with his “nigger knocker” nightstick.
That problem, of systemic racism in the law enforcement and criminal justice systems, exists today and is the generator of BLM protests and Black mistrust of cops, anger in the law enforcement community (for being called out for misbehavior and criminal acts), and the recent hoopla by right-wing politicians about “wokeness”.
Things change, though. As Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, once said, “Change is the only constant in life”. This wise man also noted that, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Humans and every other organism on Earth evolve as time goes on, changing so that they can thrive in the ever-changing world. The Covid-19 virus is an example, where the original version ran rampant, then ran into human defenses that caused it to morph into a different version of itself to remain viable, and then repeated that evolution a number of times until today, where the virus still thrives but is less lethal.
Human brain size has nearly quadrupled in the past six million years, average height has increased, and people are living longer lives because of medical advances, better nutrition, and government programs to assist the elderly. Premature deaths from automobile accidents, Black Lung disease, cigarette smoking, and lynching are down significantly due to societal changes since “the good old days”.
I would suggest that this “change” or “progress” is a good thing, that we’ve evolved a bit, just like that pesky virus.
Religion, something that man inflicted upon himself, has always been a barrier to societal progress in that it marginalizes the role of women, discourages learning, and perpetuates discriminatory behavior. The bottom-line purposes of religion have always been to obtain and wield power over individuals, to tell them how to think and act, and collect money from the faithful. The concept of “freedom” is anathema to religion, as all of the major religions officially prohibit a variety of human behaviors and perpetuate dogma which stresses blind obedience to the utterings of the clergy… which is universally old and male.
The faithful are “not to think beyond what is written” (Apostle Paul, Corinthians 15:3,4)
Why should a Jew be allowed to eat fish and fowl and meat but be prohibited from consuming pork? Why should a Muslim woman have to cover her head and face in public? Why should a Catholic woman be prohibited from aborting an unwanted fetus? Why must Brahmin Hindus eat only vegetarian foods? Why are young Christian children baptized before they can even understand what religion is? The answer is the clergy’s desire to control behavior to the Church’s benefit.
The Renaissance, which marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, featured the rise of “humanism”, which is defined as an outlook of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. The Renaissance set the stage for the decline in the power of the Church over individuals, the rise in scientific thought, development of free-thinking philosophies which produced the democratic governing model, and the expansion of global trade.
Had not the Renaissance occurred, we would still believe that the planets revolve around the Earth, that leprosy and cleft palates are punishments from God, and that every child is born a sinner. There would have been no United States of America, no Industrial Revolution, no Theory of Evolution (which is the cornerstone principle of modern biology), no polio vaccine, no electricity, no Internet, no cell phones, etc.
We would have been stuck in “the good old days” when religion told everyone when to jump and how high. The clergy liked those times.
We would still have slavery, too.
One only has to read the books of the Old Testament to see that God Almighty was comfortable with, utilized as punishment, and encouraged Hebrew leaders to utilize slavery as a nation-building tool. If you don’t believe this, read carefully the books of Genesis, Proverbs, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Judges.
It is small wonder that Americans living in the “Bible Belt” have a much different opinion about the treatment of human beings than in other regions. For the most part, the forefathers of these Christians economically benefitted from slavery for three hundred years and were angry enough over “abolition of slavery” to start a Civil War over the subject. Interestingly, the United States (with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1864) abolished slavery, becoming one of the last civilized countries in the world to do so.
Not surprisingly, the State of Mississippi, a bastion of the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, and Jim Crow discrimination against the children of former slaves, didn’t ratify the 13th Amendment until 1995. Recently, the capitol city of Jackson has been in the news for the toxic water than most of the Black inhabitants must drink and a proposed new court system for the city (which is 80 percent Black) which would be administered by White politicians.
This situation is an example of a society that wants to live in the past, opposing the evolution of civilization since those “good old days” (presumably Antebellum times!).
I see a lot of this rhetoric lately in news releases by Bible Belt politicians who, like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, suggest that it is time for a new civil war (in her words, a “national divorce”), where people of like values, religion, and politics can congregate and do what they please, free from interference by those demonic Democrats, liberals, and pointy-headed intellectuals who reside in the “Blue” states.
The problem, for Southern right-wing Republicans like Greene, is that the demographics of Bible Belt states are changing. In her own state of Georgia, young people, professionals, and Blacks make up a growing percentage of voters who have “moved on” from the old Southern mentality. Democrats now control the Georgia statehouse and the two U.S. Senate seats.
Speaking of moving, the Congresswoman has proposed that Democrats moving to Red States (i.e. predominantly Republican) should not be able to vote for five years, so as not to pollute the government and society in those Gardens of Eden.
(I find it ironic that right-wing politicians exalt the concept of “freedom” but not their opponents’ freedom to vote.)
Congresswoman Greene wants to turn back the hands of time, something that history tells us is impossible… because the world changes and evolves. Bad ideas, like racial discrimination, religion involved with government, and old-school attitudes about the role of women in society have almost universally been discarded.
It should be noted that, in “the good old days”, back in that wonderful Southern paradise, women like Marjorie Taylor Greene couldn’t work outside the home, vote, or be elected to Congress. Thank goodness that society has evolved a bit in the past one hundred years, otherwise we’d have never heard of Ms. Greene and her lame-ass, anti-democratic ideas.
Welcome to the Twentieth Century!