"HAPPY NEW YEAR 1945!"
I'm okay no really. 'Just been unstuck in time lately. You know how that can be. I was just in 1956. Nice to sit in a sun that won't give me skin cancer, and read .10 cent comics, and drink .05 cent cokes.
- AnonymousJanuary 12, 2014 at 4:41 AMLet's put it this way. If your dad had a pickup truck like mine did, you and your friends could ride in the back of the pickup - no seatbelts, no seats required, no nuthin. It was a blast. You weren't required to carry insurance on your car. If you wanted to go camping, you didn't have to make reservations at a campground weeks or months in advance for a stiff fee. You just WENT, pronto, just like that; and it was dirt cheap, or even free. You didn't need a permit to light a fire for your beach barbecue. You just did it. You could sail your hobie cat right off the beach, no special zone or launch facilities required. The Boeing 747 had just opened up the world for inexpensive global air travel for the masses. Europe was a bargain. Young people were swarming adventurously all over the planet seeing the world. There was TONS of money for education. Everyone's kids had a better future than their parents, who had it better than theirs.
When the Moon landing happened, that week Life magazine didn't print a single word on their cover. All they had to do was print a single huge high resolution color photo of an astronaut standing on the surface of the Moon, and everyone knew it was REAL, not just some futuristic science fiction fantasy from Weird Tales circa 1949. I'm tellin ya it was an exciting time absolutely bursting with a sense of possibilities. At that point in history, we coulda become a social democracy like Norway, with free medical care and all. The possibility was real. Nobody had any clue there was a Ronald Reagan presidency up ahead. For all we knew, the future was going to be great.
Of course there was lots of stupid homophobia and racism and other bullshit. Gay lib hadn't hardly gotten started yet. But America at that time was the ultimate affluent society. Poverty existed, but there was a good deal less of it. You could get a nice four-bedroom house in a very desirable area for twenty-five thousand dollars. Even adjusted for inflation, that's a small fraction of what the same house would cost you today. Life in America has gotten a LOT less affordable than it was. And what's more, back in the day boys wore these shorts that you would get arrested for looking at 'em in today.
All we've got now that we didn't have then is the Internet - that, and computers (and the NSA, the TSA, and a much higher rate of incarceration). All the other great technological promises have turned up empty. I'm still waiting for delivery on my flying car. Taken any Moon vacations lately? Where are the undersea cities we were supposed to have by now? And computers don't cut it.
Basically, without the web, they're shit - nothing but plastic pieces of planned obsolescence. Same goes for cell phones. All the breakthroughs have been those of miniaturization. The macro technologies have stopped developing, and I suspect they're even going backwards. I'd say we'll lucky to keep hot and cold running water for a few more generations, if that.
Young people, you've been screwed. Don't pay your college debts. In fact I wouldn't even consider going to college; it's become just another usurious con, a self-serving industry operated by administrators who function on much the same principles as Wall Street bankers. And the future up ahead isn't even remotely like what it's allegedly supposed to prepare you for, anyway. There will be no further ecological niches for white collar office fauna. You'd be better off learning plumbing or wiring or nursing. Also, I hope you'll burn down Wall Street. Just metephorically of course. I think.
Zaek - No kids my friend "Z" is wrong on just one point. You 'Need' to burn down Wall Fucking Street for Real!
Oh the daze of Future Past.
This could have been such a Good, and Great Country by now. Not some half assed "I'm so lucky to have this crappy job with no benefits or overtime." That, and my kids are going to be poorer than me. ...a lot poorer.
Now only the very very upper middle class or the outright wealthy can have what ordinary folks once took for granted. A good home job security the nice things of life.
The 1% of the 1% stole the country, and our collective futures. I thought that Occupy thing was the beginning of the "Great Take Back", but turned out to be a flash in the pan.
Sad that so sad. I hung out with them swell kids. "Liberty Park" was just a few blocks away, so I went over there regular. Such hope they had. It was like the early Civil Rights Movement mixed with early Hippies, and the great hopes the the late 1960's.
However...zip..Gone.
True the heat had a nationwide plan to wipe it out, and it worked. Still there is Hope. A very small flicker sort, but it's there.
Maybe they'll be another kind of "Occupy" or maybe something we haven't thought of..we'll see. The Obama re-election was an expression that the country wants the "Take Back". Although clearly that's the last thing on Papa Doc's mind.
Granted the country is better in many ways from the years I was born in 1950. However the real progress ended maybe 40 years ago. Hasn't budged an inch since. Can you imagine any elected official saying that Poverty 'Can, and Should' be Abolished. Well 'LBJ" said it...no one since though.
The parameters of the possible are narrowed dramatically. It's as if the powers that be are saying..."This is as far it's going so shut up, and get comfortable where you are".
So kids Burn Wall Street to the Fucking Ground if you want any sort of future. There it is the rest is up to you.
Catch you at the next double bill, during intermission before they play the cartoon short. There will of course be no ads on screen whatsoever, and nobody ever heard of product placements. Worst you might have to put up with is a preview - one - for a movie you actually do wanna see and can afford to.