I'm curious about the age demographics in this Group - please vote!

[scarletwoman]

5. Hah! Seeing your subject line in My Posts gave me a good laugh!

Happy belated birthday, btw. I just hit Medicare eligibility age week before last. Got the card and everything!

Yeah, imparting wisdom would be lovely, if only anyone cared. I never knew there was so much hatred for Baby Boomers out there until I saw it on DU.

Still:

There's a lot to be said for remembering the post-war optimism and Roosevelt's long shadow, despite all the problems of those days. Not to mention the hippie era, when we thought we could change the world (and in some measure accomplished that). Having been through all that gives you a different sort of consciousness if you have no direct memories of the world before Reagan.

That pretty much nails the way I see it, too. Thank you for saying it so well.

I think that hardest thing of all for younger folks to conceptualize is that when you and I were growing up, a sort of generalized cultural/political liberalism was the default state of our country pre-Reagan. Not that there wasn't always some form of conservatism fighting for space in the public consciousness, but aside from the rightwing fringe of those days (the Birchers and their ilk), it didn't actively seek to completely undo and destroy all things liberal. It was more about seeking accomodation for conservativism within the existing paradigm.

The sense of The Commons was taken as a given - being as it was a traditional value going all the way back to English Common Law. We as a nation were proud of our system of free public schools. We as a nation saw our government as the means by which our needs and the needs of our fellow citizens would be met with impartiality. Government wasn't the enemy, it wasn't "other", except to the fringe nutjobs.

I know I'm glossing over a lot - it's just that life in the U.S. felt different in those days. Workers were proud of their Unions, and we were proud of them for having Unions. We were proud of our National Parks, we proud of the WPA and CCC. We were proud of our arts, proud of our libraries, proud of our universities, proud of our scientists, proud of our family farms, proud of our small businesses, proud of our "classless" society. We felt like the U.S. was doing a damn good job of being an advanced, civilized nation. We knew how to make it all work and we were only going to get better and better.

Yeah, we had the extraordinary good fortune to have lived through a time of general optimism. I can understand how that would be hard to grok if you weren't around then.