What Caused the United States to Fall Apart After the 1950s?

Big Business linking up with religious white supremacy?

Anti-intellectualism and a certain segment of the population rather cut off their nose to spite their face instead of a standard quality of life for all.

With that being said, as a black man things are a lot better for my folk.

Interesting thread. Thanks OP

BORIS!

You are so transparent.

Too many people.

The usual suspects : Capitalism & Racism

What R6 said ^^^^

American exceptionalism after WW2...disastrous overseas adventures, endless wars, an economy dependent on the MIC

Are we moving into a new Dark Age? Anti-science, misinformation, pandemics and religious nonsense abounds.

JFK dropped the ball on pretty much every issue but was covered for and excused by a worshipful media ( such as Ben Bradlee ). Laos and then Vietnam were the direct consequence of his failure in Cuba trying to regain respect as a strong leader. Everything spun out from this.

"Dune" was written with the idea of warning against a charismatic leader just as Kennedy specifically.

Probably the death of God and no consensus on who to worship next. Lack of community. Growing distrust of others.

I'm not saying any of this is reasonable because it isn't but I think that's what did it.

R10 - God didn't die on November 22, 1963, if that's what you mean.

I think the changes we have been experiencing socially and in our political life started after 9/11. I believe people's attitudes and behavior changed.

I would rather know why Russia never was ever able to get it together. It's like they gave up

It's been a kleptocratic free-for-all since 1991. The great bringing of "Democracy"

OP caused the United States to fall apart after the 1950s.

Systemic racism and intolerance finally caught up with the US of A. The irony is that if only the country had embraced diversity we'd be in a GREAT PLACE right now.

When the recast Darrin on Bewitch.

A lack of war to focus the people with. Sure, we have had Vietnam, Iraq Kosovo, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua Argentina and Chile but no good real wars.

Yes, I’ve always thought the Kennedy assassination gave the country a nervous breakdown.

The 1-2 billion dollars worth of damage caused by the blm movement. With no one held accountable. That’s the day this country died for me. Because people were so lost in their faux victim insanity that they destroyed things that had literally nothing to do with it.

r20, put down the crack pipe, Klan Granny.

R20, while you’re correct in thinking BLM came after the ‘50s, I think OP meant to say that America started to fall apart more immediately adjacent to the 1950s.

Meanwhile if you want to see a perfect example “faux victim insanity” may I refer you to the news coverage from 1/6/2021? Or perhaps, a mirror?

Who said the country was ever together?

The 1950s were a blip of rationality and genteel behavior but there were plenty of very ugly undercurrents. Prior to WWII life in the US was fairly difficult, even brutal, depending on your race and income. And are you including pre Civil War America? Because that time was morally abhorrent.

The United States have always been turbulent - it's 50 small countries holding hands. It's a miracle that it actually works as well as it does.

The fat Latino mass immigration! The US has taken in too many shitloads of shitholers.

Racism was a lot worse in the 1950s. In the South, they weren't allowed to vote. In many places in the US, not just the South, they were kept out of "white" hotels, restaurants, theatres, swimming pools, schools, colleges, even restrooms and drinking fountains. Of course, country clubs - I don't think even white Jews were allowed in country clubs, unless they built their own, in Hollywood (and elsewhere).

And McCarthyism - the 'red scare' - and Hollywood blacklisting many who wouldn't name-shame their pals.

It was shit for women, too, who were discriminated against in education and the workplace. Domestic violence wasn't taken seriously. In some places, women were not allowed to get birth control, even as late as the 50s, and it was even illegal at some point, but maybe that was earlier - not sure on that - but of course, abortion was a back-alley phenomenon.

And gay rights? Don't make me laugh. Even in the more progressive UK, brilliant code-breaker Alan Turing was forced to undergo hormone treatment - and because of that, committed suicide, because he was gay - it was illegal! - in the early 1960s.

Still think things fell apart AFTER the 1950s? We owe so many of our rights to the rebellion against the 1950s and earlier times that happened in the mid to late 1960s.

[quote] The usual suspects : Capitalism & Racism

Yes, those things that certainly weren’t a factor before the 60s.

We were in a post war high. “Let’s give all the poor dumb GI’s a college education and a cheap house in the suburbs,” “Let’s test to find our brightest kids and promote them into the elite university system,” “black people fought for our country too, we should treat them just a little less awful.”

Then the unintended consequences started showing up: a better educated, less desperate populace willing to ask questions, young people in universities demanding a stop to the stupid war machine, black folks asking for real integration into society, things kicked off too hard.

The powers that be (especially Republicans) changed strategy 180°: fatten them up with HFCS and palm oil, dumb them down in school, distract them with passive, massive entertainment choices, and financially enslave them through consumerism and the student loan system, and we’re back to the 90s — the 1890s. They won’t try that shit again.

The GI bill was not available to African-Americans, in many cases.

The Vietnam War tore society apart. Kind of forgotten what it did because everyone understandably wants to forget it.

I attribute it to the intense partisanship when the Democrats’s Solid South began to dismantle. Up until then, you had parties with very wide tents, with conservative Democrats & liberal Republicans. That’s been replaced by ever-increasing tribalism.

I was about to say basically what r27 said but miss r27 saved me the problem.

Many of the problems typically cited — counterculture, the Vietnam war — only became critical problems because more people had more resources, better education, etc.

[quote]What Caused the United States to Fall Apart After the 1950s?

The Frug

[quote] I think OP meant to say that America started to fall apart more immediately adjacent to the 1950s.

I did. I can link today’s problems back to the Reagan and others but people seemed quite content in the 1950s, at least from a financial standpoint. Then the 60s happened and all hell broke loose. I’m curious what set off the events of the 60s.

R27, thank you.

History books in Borisland omit the 60's for some reason.

The bargain we used to have with corporate America and with business in general was lost to greed and self-interest. They no longer pay taxes and no longer play a responsible role in the communities where they operate, if they operate here at all. They no longer feel any obligation to their workers. It trickled down to the point where everything's a drive-by.

What the hell makes you think it was all that great before the 50s?

The US was built on greed and the subjugation of certain peoples. It’s just claiming the white middle class now.

The chickens came home to roost.

[quote]The Vietnam War tore society apart

A lot of individual events have torn American society apart over the years: the Civil War, Prohibition, the Vietnam War, McCarthyism, Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, MLK assassination, 9/11, the world wars, the so-called Indian Wars, 1929 stock market crash and following Depression, Watergate, the Bonus Army being attacked.

Then there were the smaller but still traumatic individual events: Kent State, Iran hostages, Galveston hurricane, SF fire, Dred Scott, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Teapot Dome, the Dust Bowl, the Cold War and nuclear fears, Lusitania, Challenger.

Then there are the long-term problems and sociocultural movements that have caused long-standing conflicts: gay rights, abortion, women's suffrage, civil rights, Cold War, gun violence and school shootings, veteran's rights, education.

There's more, but the bottom line is that the country goes through individual traumas every few years, all while navigating long-term problems like racism and loss of (and definition of) rights. At the same time, a government more concerned with big business and capitalism than the individual citizen, all sorts of attacks from foreign countries, a cohesive movement to reduce (if not eliminate) education for most people, loss of a free and nonpartisan press, and the usual conflicts between the secular and the religious have made these traumas impossible to deal with on a nationwide level.

A nation can only handle so much before it collapses under the weight of all this. For generations, all we've done is whitewash the facts, put a bandage on problems, and then try to forget they ever happened. That's why you don't know about the Bonus Army. That's why we elected a corrupt Republican as president just six years after the last corrupt Republican had to resign because of his crimes. That's why people think the only real problem facing us is fat people who eat too much high fructose corn syrup.

Wealth ended because the era of cheap oil ended. Too many hands grabbing an ever-shrinking resource. Peak oil plays a role in the downfall of the USA, too.

OP- Our standard of living in the United States peaked in 1973 so I would say things didn’t really start to fall apart until about 1980.

Boomers, they ruin everything.

Selfish me, me, me gen of the 60's as Hippies lead to a backlash election of conservatism in the 70's resulting a B grade actor being elected as President. Also known as Ronald Regan, he won with overwhelming electoral collage votes and was the first to link the religious right with the Republican party. Thus the slow downside of American society began. Closing down the mental institutions and releasing them into the streets, removing solar panels from the White House and cutting rebates for it's use, embracing big oil and gas, building nuclear power plant, embracing corporate America, fireing 13,000 Air Traffic Controllers for going on strike, secretly selling arms to Iran, denial of a new pandemic among gay men call AIDS.

We are a very young country and are always growing, and hopefully learning some things along the way. Countries that are thousands of years old still have problems. There is no Utopia on earth.

People need more security. Pensions kept people working for a company and allowed them to retire and enjoy something of their lives. Now it's fuck you. We will pay you what we want. You're on your own. We will lay you off whenever someone even predicts business might dip. Every penny goes to stockholders so nothing is saved for a rainy day for the company. It's falling apart in my opinion. Look at California. That is the future. Overpriced real estate that only the elite can afford. Rampant unchecked crime. Homeless people living on the streets in squalor. Mentally ill folks walking the streets suffering. Immigrants flooding in hoping for scraps. Sex trafficking. It's just a cesspool of mismanagement, greed and stupidity.

It was due to conservatives destroying the New Deal. Worker wages, benefits, and rights have fallen like a rock since then while the rich have gotten massively richer.

The USA got better over a few decades. What is OP going on about. USA was defect apartheid until the late 60s!

Nostradamus predicted most of it, if only you all listened!

He predicted the rise and fall of the Kennedy brothers and even the World Trade Center being destroyed.

Nostradamus died in 1566.

Unchecked, psychopathic capitalism and warmongering aided and abetted by the corporate media.

[quote] What the hell makes you think it was all that great before the 50s?

Nobody says it was. But affluence after wwii led to a very large generation of children who were better educated and not so tied up in earning for their families. They could spend more time thinking about things other than where their family’s next meal was coming from.

A lot of the time we focus on the increased number of young people who were college graduates. But the even more important number is the number of people who graduates from HIGH SCHOOL. Historically (believe it or not seen from 2022), high school graduates has always been a minority in America. They were still in 1960. By 1970 a majority had graduated high school. This is an enormously important number. Why? People no longer needed to drop out after the required year or two in order to help support their families.

A person with a fifth grade education can be fairly easily coerced to go off and fight a war for corporate interests, especially if his living standard in the military might be higher than back on the farm, or in the slum. A person who is in college and grew up in a suburb might be somewhat harder to convince to go die for General Motors or Morgan Guaranty.

This is why the rightwing hates education so much, by the way. An educated populace is harder to enslave.

I don't think we "fell apart" after the 50's." I think we started our downward spiral due to many factors: For me, as I look back, it really did accelerate with the election of Ronald Reagan. The Republican Party we have today turned down this path when they elected him. Then we have advances in tech. We have the internet. We have telephones with cameras, we have social media. All of it played a role. It was not as big a leap from Ronald Reagan in 1980 to George W. Bush in 2000. When he stole Florida before our eyes. But Since 2001, we have had to worry about terrorist attacks, mass shootings, (Colombine was in 1999) and a degree of lawlessness I don't recall ever seeing before. Now it's true, many bad things happened in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's. But we didn't know about a lot of it because we didn't have the technology to watch a cop kneel on a guy's neck until he killed him. The AIDS epidemic was devastating, and we had a President who ignored it. Things that happenedduringReagan, were a wake up call, in a way. We look back now, and see the markers along the roadway.

If you want to know the reason, look no further than this thread. Uneducated individuals pushing Leftist dogma and viewing everything through a “that’s racist” lense. A compromised press/media feeding the public the news with their own political slant. A know-nothing public easily led into parroting Leftist talking points and thinking very highly of themselves without any humility. There are factors that created a public like this, but that goes into a deeper level of discussion.

Yeah, R52, I imagine your well-fucked asshole is real deep.

Pull out a couple more taking points, why don't you.

Moronic troll Matt-fatso at r52 has nothing of substance to add (as usual) but plenty to say about how she hates anyone who thinks differently from her. She’s here to say unless you’re a self-hating, racist rightwing gay who consumes only rightwing propaganda from Fox and Breitbart, you’re a leper.

Meanwhile … SHE very productively spends what seems to be substantially all of her time on a gay forum trying to make her single neo-fascist voice sound like a chorus. Sad!

The US became immoral and moved definitively over to the dark side with the assassinations of JFK and MLK, and the entry into the Vietnam War.

Only they use terms like leftist and woke as pejorative terms.

Woke is the way they call you a n word lover.

Notice, how others participants in this conversation made an effort to answer the original question with some thought. They don't do this, they can't.

Magats have nothing to contribute.

R53 R54 - Lol from R52. Matt?! You’re examples of what I’m talking about. You’ll use the online world to turn snow black. Nope, I’m an actual gay who went to school and watched the world evolve with my own two eyes. I came up with this all on my own. I have no clue who you are. You could be working for a political organization or you could be the type of average schmo gay that I was talking about - no humility, just parroting what you’ve read online and patting yourselves on the back for being “so smart”.

👆👆👆Matt-fatso

George Wallace showed the political appeal of crude racism in the 1968 primaries. He lost but the idea won.

Richard Nixon refined it into his “Southern Strategy” - not quite so crude “dog whistle” racism.

Ronald Reagan re-refined it and regularized lying: the Iranian hostages, the effects of his budgets, Iran-Contra, his personifying and glorifying WW2’s “Greatest Generation” when in truth he never got closer to the war than Burbank proving that drawing people a pretty picture beats reality every time.

Almost every Republican politician/businessman/pundit and voter since then. In my lifetime I’ve seen the descent of the Republican Party into hell. They’ve brought a lot of people with them.

I am amazed at all the clueless people who have no knowledge of our history. The US fell apart, not in the 50s, but in the 1940s the day FDR died. It was a direct assault by conservatives and big business as retaliation for The New Deal which ade them PAY. Thats it in a nutshell. The also knew it wasnt a Democrat or Republican thing...they intentionally sought to break up the coalition that made it possible...the working class. Thats why the division and fearmongering. And for those that dont know, that coalition was essentially made up of Communists, Socialists and the CIO (labor unions). They went after Unions with The Taft-Harley Act in 1947...and continued the dismantling ever since. They went after the Communists in the 50s, the Socialists in the 60s. By the time the 70s rolled around there was enough damage done that business could leave enmasse in order to increase their profits. Thats when all the laws started favoring corporations over the people and our political parties were infiltrated and corrupted on a massive scale. Its also why when something catastrophic happens, businesses and the wealthy are the FIRST bailed out and we, the people are thrown crumbs and/or told to fend for ourselves. Please people, pick up a history book and read it. We keep repeating everything because nobody learns and they dont pay attention to the actual events that occur around them and in their own lifetimes.

^^^meant to add that it is also the reason that Communism and Socialism is demonized to this day...to prevent people from joining together to improve their lives^^^

The United States of America fell apart in 2001 when I could no longer achieve an erection.

When women stopped wearing foundation garments and men stopped wearing hats.

The rightwing has been trying take down the US since 1861. After the brief cessation in hostilities while we fought WW2 thr rightwing started right up again with the McCarthy hearings and it’s been nonstop fake news since then.

LBJ hated the Kennedys with a passion. Then JFK was killed in the capital of Johnson’s state, leaving LBJ president. Yet nobody thinks it isn’t more than a coincidence. Jackie knew. She stood next to LBJ to make sure her husband’s blood was photographed next to LBJ when he took the oath.

“I want them to see what they’ve done.”

For the vast majority of people, the US was doing exceptionally well through the 1960s.

The down turn happened in the 1970s but most continued to do well and live well.

The 2000s ...9/11, 2008, the rise of social media etc marked a great decline.

R64 uh...you do understand that LBJ was a Democrat?

First, the United States has not fallen apart. We're doing better than we were before the 1950's. We have enormous challenges, no doubt, but the idea that this was a panacea before the 1950's and it isn't anymore is total hogwash.

Even in the more progressive UK,

The UK was never progressive, where do you think Americans got their Puritanism? American society is basically British Anglo saxon society.

[quote][R64] uh...you do understand that LBJ was a Democrat?

And very much a New Dealer. Probably more than the sons of Joe Kennedy were.

[quote] R64] uh...you do understand that LBJ was a Democrat?

Uh, so what?

He was a southern democrat. He was a democrat because that’s who got elected in the Bible Belt. He felt he should be president, not the Kennedys and hated the Kennedys. LBJ was not suited to be president, as we all saw once he got into office and fucked up Southeast Asia.

“My opponent is a crazy warmonger who will make Vietnam worse.”

Proceeds to make Vietnam…so …much…fucking…worse.

r67...spoken like a true Libertarian jackass

r67...spoken like a true Libertarian jackass

ussr propaganda and infilitration of activist groups and politics following the decades of anti-communist hysteria and governmental overreach?

Wait, are you really going with the J Edgar Hoover "explanation" r73? It was all communist agitators turning our nice, passive Negroes into wild-eyed uppity activists?

R69 is correct. And before we canonize FDR, who was a very good POTUS, who was effective, please know that in order to get his New Deal legislation past and put into effect, he had to pander to racism. All t he NEw Deals programs pandered to and re enforced Jimm Crow, in both North and South. This was important. because by doing it he furthered the institutional racism that prevailed. And JFK, while decidedly a Liberal, pandered t o the racists in the South and in Congress, and delayed Thrugood Marshall's appointment to the Appeals Court for more than a year by cooperating with the notorious Senator James Eastland (Who was implicated in the murder of Leo Frank back in the day. Talmadge too.)

Eastland was every bit as bad if not worse than Mitch McConnell. Think about that.

True, r78. Worse, or maybe just more public. After all, no Southern Senator in the 1950s felt the need to even pretend not to be a vicious and virulent racist.

R71 and R72, go fuck yourself to death, Happy Fingers.

r75 Actually, I was thinking more about trying to illustrate the parallels to today because trying to explain something to people that are disconnected from it requires having a reasonable reference point. Now, you could argue that instead I'm minimizing the propaganda of today and that tomorrow we'll view you as simplistically as you do now.

the real highlight for that was more the transition into the 70s, where we saw radicalism move closer to the extremes we witness today.

It wasn't limited to the u.s.s.r, of course, there were many foreign influences as well as domestic... individuals and pundits, too, names largely minimized in history textbooks. . . much like other racial, ethnic, religious and cultural groups caught between (or outside) the black/white divide. And now they're reissued as either being politically adjunct to whiteness or blackness based on modern stereotypes and historical revisionism, minimization.

I was presenting but one avenue that holds truth but is only one piece of a greater and far more complex whole. . . as there are multiple issues and much of it varying because of multiple varibles... it's very difficult to narrow it down in such a broad and general question, is it not?

So, instead we mostly focus on the wider pop culture, entertainment media and national politics for such narratives than the personal and partial.

Actually, a lot of the people pushing extremism in the 1960s were FBI plants and other government plants. Apparently, at least according to Thom Hartmann who I tend to trust on things like this, the guy hollering loudest for the most violent action was almost always the FBI plant.

[quote] The GI bill was not available to African-Americans, in many cases.

It was. GI Bill was a federal benefit administered by states. As with everything else in Amerikkka a white man only had to extend his hand to get one.

Southern and other states created monumental obstacle courses for Black GIs. So it would require multiple re-applications, many of which were "lost", and years of follow-up. Visiting offices and sitting and waiting all day to speak to someone who'd gone home at 1pm. Only to be denied time and time again for some stupid reason. For most, the process was not worth the paltry reward. This country will NEVER be able to make amends for its evil deeds.

Radicalism is sending terrorists to the nation's capitol and try to make yourselves POTUS for life.

OP is nostalgic for an America that never existed.

r82 that, too... but now we maintain a good faith relationship with the fbi because they're going against our political enemies and admonishing them in any way for any reason is to be called out as a traitor.

OP is asking a question, if you don't care about the subject there's no reason for you to be here.

Most people here answered his question in their own way except the magats who can't answer.

Magats do not have the brain material to spare for this discussion.

[quote] OP is nostalgic for an America that never existed.

Indeed. The idyllic America was just a mirage. Imagine the horror if we had a 24 hour news cycle in 1956

r87 Who exactly are you responding to?

I'd assume it's a reference to my post about the problems of general questions.

There are many reasons that converged on a single point. We could argue that it was largely because of the establishment of the nuclear family and the rise of a majority middle class...

we could reflect on what wwii did for American society, in particular, minorities and women... by way of education, employment and opportunities that weren't afforded to them prior... and the conflict when the war was over, with the govt and society desiring to return to the status quo

Letting Rosa Parks stay at the front of the bus.

Hit dogs holler.

r90 = Clarence Thomas.

And hey, if it makes you feel better, they did arrest her.

The US was doing very well after WWII because it taxes the wealthy at high rates (up to 95% of the top margin of wealth) and letting in tons of immigrants to work the new economy.

Then the racist restrictions on immigration and emphasis on lowering taxes on the rich, combined started killing the American Dream

r87 I could tell you that my own family weren't formally recognized as citizens until 1969 and yet were not "illegal" and would fit into a designation (which the specific label varied from state to state) of colored people and yet not black either.. that's an element of history that is highly glossed over in education and public acknowledgement. I could get into the details of why but that would require understanding treaty agreements between the indigenous tribes and the govt as well as to what befall people that weren't considered "negro" but neither considered white or even hispanic, which resulted in my maternal grandparents being segregated to "mixed" areas and rural isolation or say my paternal grandparents having their businesses and properties seized and never returned. . . to which there has been a scattering of recognition to denial.. sometimes one year after the next, going back and forth.

some of this can be simplified to the one drop rules, paper bag tests and jim crow...

Similarly, we could reflect on prosperous black towns... that only gained public acknowledgement in the last decade.

This is not the best format for said discussions.. . . it is difficult to gauge how knowledgeable anonymous people may be about the intricacies. . . and many would likely find it irrelevant or too insignificant to the larger picture. Or perhaps even hostile to something outside of what is considered common knowledge. Or even hostility, frequently, I've found people feel as if it minimizes the struggle of broader movements in which wer'e supposed to feign unity because of shared struggles.

Reaganism, deregulation and privatization on steroids

Off on a tangent about colorism.

The people allowing it

Did America really fall apart? The World Wars gave America international prominence in the first place. It's not like we were a country with amazing world influence and lifestyles prior to that.

Which people r97? A lot of people had gradually come to the decision to reject the old order of white straight guys running everything and everyone else shutting up about it. That really was the essence of all the upheavals in the 1960s.

R60 for the win! FDR was do despised by moneyed interests for the New Deal they plotted to assassinate him. They have systematically used every option available to them to dismantle any benefits to the masses, including turning the masses against each other. They want a modern-day serfdom.

By people we mean just you r99

I’m not saying that everything fell apart from 1960 up through today. What I’m asking is how a prosperous period for the majority of Americans post-WWII ended in the 1960s. What got the ball rolling. The endless riots and bloodshed of the 1960s was not what you saw in the 1950s. Something changed. I was curious what started it. The assassination of JFK seems to be something people point to all the time. It was one assassination after the next after that.

I also asked if what was happening in the US in the 1960s was also happening in other Western countries. Europe was pretty devastated after the war, no? I hardly ever read or see much about the 1950s or 60s in Europe aside from trying to rebuild. Did they have their own hippie revolution?

The pill.

[quote]I hardly ever read or see much about the 1950s or 60s in Europe aside from trying to rebuild. Did they have their own hippie revolution?

You should probably read this, OP.

[quote] The pill.

Actually, it's a very interesting thought.

As women entered the workforce, to devalue their work, companies paid less to their positions, much less than when those same positions were held by men. Previously, men would routinely be promoted from secretary to higher jobs. Once women became secretaries, that became a dead end job.

Once companies realized how much profit they could make, everyone started getting paid less. Thus, when previously, only a father had to work to afford a middle class life for his family, now both parents had to work.

R105 You know that is a very interesting point you made. I'm surprised it doesn't get more analysis from scholars.

Very interesting r105.

I do know women have always had to work outside of the home. Women in my family were widows and had to work outside of the home.

America falling apart was DIRECTLY related to the cancellation of the Paul Lynde Variety Hour. And PARTIALLY related to the cancellation of the Captain & Tenille Variety Hour.

"The Center Square: How Paul Lynde Held a Nation Together."

^^^^^^^Bingo

Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Date of birth: August 4th, 1961. Place of birth: Kenya, Hawaii

Any questions?

I also mentioned the pill. No doubt that changed a lot of things. Women didn’t have to be tied down with children if she didn’t want to.

one reason among many is we don't have a shared culture anymore. It used to be that everyone basically watched the same programs and was on the same page about how the united states should look. The 60s were chaotic but a lot of good came out of it too like the civil rights movement. College opened up to many people of color and there is a much bigger black American class today. There still needs to be an improvement. The biggest problem with humans is that they are so tribal and don't really like diversity, unfortunately. The culture probably is changing too fast for many people. And I blame social media. Too many uneducated people spew out opinions when they mostly don't know what they are talking about. The young are really uneducated. IJ also blame Reagon.

^^^black middle class

Conservatives are invested in keeping people uneducated and deprived of good health. It's not that these are not priorities to them, they're a goal.

Jet Engines spraying chemtrails

The passing of the Civil Rights Laws and the constant attempts to tear it down since that we see even today

Touch tone dialing. No more dialing the phone with a pencil.

Anti-communism propaganda

The banning of MSG

Anti-communism is a good thing, R119. Communism is totalitarian, it is a dictatorship. What we want is a social democracy. Anyone pushing communism doesn't know anything about what communism is. In the 20th century, it killed at least 50 million people directly. They killed anyone with a different opinion

True, r118. Stonewall switched to a touch-tone pay phone and the rest is history!

(In fact, the first brick was thrown at the new phone!)

Anti-Communism is a red herring, and you r121, are the one who needs to learn what Communism is. Youre buying into the rhetoric. Yes, Communism has its flaws, but those usually come from the intervention of political beaurocrats taking over. (see Russia). Capitalism is the true totalitarian dictatorship...and we see it pushed towards that ultimate goal daily.

The Internet, which accelerated this after the dotcom boom.

Pre-ubiquitous internet, people would have to interact with others in their communities and find consensus. Now, people can isolate to reinforce their world-views, increasing ideological divides and fomenting tribal mentalities. You especially see it today with Gen Z, who grew up post-smartphone, making the Internet more accessible than ever. They are some of the least tolerant persons you will ever find.

Places like DL are a dying online refuge, wherein we have to read all of you bitches' nasty replies. We cannot self-select or hide them (FF aside), which is how the internet used to be everywhere with usenet and bulletin board style forums. You'd have mods with heavy hands, but there were other places. Now everything is engagement-based ala Reddit, which encourages groupthink and restricts exposure to differing perspectives and viewpoints.

R123 every communist country became a dictatorship. The best kind of government is a mixture of the free market and socially liberal. We are living in a hypercapitalist country and of course, that is as bad as it gets. But total communism is equally as bad. They always turn into dictatorships as the 20th century proved.

[quote]What I’m asking is how a prosperous period for the majority of Americans post-WWII ended in the 1960s.

Post WWII prosperity did not end in the 1960s.

What are you talking about? Where are you getting your data from?

Between 1960 and 1970 average wages nearly doubled. Inflation rose, but it rose much higher in the 70s.

The 1990s were also another very good decade of economic expansion and prosperity.

In the early 70s, there was an energy crisis. Texas oil peaked and we had to rely on foreign oil.

We pretty much sucked for most people pre-50s and post-50s it all fell apart because the updated American Dream was subsidized by the New Deal and the G.I. Bill aka government giving money and services to help out the public. For some people that too much like communism, for others they didn't like the idea that minorities, with their gains in civil rights, would be receiving that help more equally than before. The people in power who didn't want more equality used those petty feelings to stop and reverse progress.

Also right after the war, we were the only country that was still intact. We didn't have to rebuild the country and we ended up with all the manufacturing and all the spoils. The rest of the world finally caught up.

Things were so great in the 1930s and 1940s? 1860s?

[quote]The 60s were chaotic but a lot of good came out of it too like the civil rights movement. College opened up to many people of color and there is a much bigger black American class today.

And yet, the wealth gap between black and white Americans today is the same as it was in the 1960s. In 1965 the out-of-wedlock birth rate was 25% among black people. Today it's over 70%. Incarceration rate up. Etc. Many markers of wealth and prosperity for blacks are worse or not much better than they were decades ago.

Sunny Hostin

R130 No but they weren't ever great for anyone who wasn't rich. The whole history of humans is marked by the rich exploiting the rest. It has been that way since the beginning of civilization. Unfortunately, that will never change. The rich always have and had the power to exploit everyone else. You almost have to go back to living in tribes and it may have been a little more equal.

The US is still running fine for upper-middle class white men.

Please stop glorifying the 50s. They were fraught with their own problems and were not kind to women, LGBTQ, or people of color.

In reality this country wasn't together BEFORE the Civil War, it certainly wasn't after, it was still two separate schools of thought and political divides and remained, much the same since then. Sure, the industrial revolution and technology solidified some of the GDP and output but, pyschologically, the country hasn't been together for at least 162 years if not longer. All the modernism in the world and globalization has only made it more apparent that there are two camps still, in the US.

It's not all that complicated.

The rest of the world. Europe in particular were still rebuilding from WW2 - the Brits had rationing for much of the 50s (ended in 54)

Countries like India, China and even Mexico were still pre-industrialized for the most part.

So we dominated the world economy and could afford to pay blue collar workers high wages without damaging our competitiveness.

And thus the growth of a large middle class that blurred into the upper middle class.

It also allowed us to expand our university system so that more kids could go to college and there was high class mobility as middle and working class kids were able to get degrees and enter the upper middle class. (The Clintons are excellent examples of this.)

Then the rest of the world caught up.

Many American companies had stopped innovating because they were not hungry and did not have much competition.

They found themselves losing out to overseas competitors who had low-paid labor forces and made products where the market valued price over quality.

So jobs started to get shipped overseas

Weaker companies got bought out

Those high paying jobs for high school grads disappeared.

Now we are back to where we were in the period before the Great Depression.

There is a tiny upper class, the 0.1%, there is an upper middle class - the top 15%-20% and then there is everyone else -- the poor and the working class who make up 80% to 85% of the population.

They no longer mix, the way they did when Boomers were kids.

UMC kids live very very different lives than working class kids. They are on two different planets.

Many of DL's Eldergayys have limited contact with non-Eldergays and thus don't fully grasp the extent to which this is true.

But it is almost as if the world of Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens, with "gentlefolk" and everyone else.

[quote]Please stop glorifying the 50s. They were fraught with their own problems and were not kind to women, LGBTQ, or people of color.

For the majority of Americans it was a wonderful decade.

The United States was not that great before the 1950s. And the situation for gays, women and minorities has been better since then.

What WAS better in the period from 1950 to the early 1970s was extraordinary rates of economic growth and low rates of income inequality. Since then we have seen modest rates of growth and rising income inequality, some of it self-inflicted by our own economic policies (Reaganomics).

Austerity politics ^

The late 60s broke up norms and traditions. It was basically a cultural free-for-all, good or bad.

[quote] And yet, the wealth gap between black and white Americans today is the same as it was in the 1960s. In 1965 the out-of-wedlock birth rate was 25% among black people. Today it's over 70%. Incarceration rate up. Etc. Many markers of wealth and prosperity for blacks are worse or not much better than they were decades ago.

I am not sure of your 'statistics' but wouldn't they be the same for whites, intra-racially? Among whites hasn't the wealth gap widened dramatically? Isn't the incarceration rate higher? Isn't addiction more prevalent? More births out of wedlock?

R140 yeah, I remember. Some of it was good and some of it bad, but a lot of changes happened during that time. Changing generations often make big differences. That is happening now too with technology.

Rap music and the glorification of thuggery.

I was born in the late 1970s, so the whole 1980s was my childhood and most of the 1990s was my teen years. When I look back on that time, I think it was the second half of the 1980s when the world really felt like it was on the verge of change. Look at some of the big historical events of 1985-1989: AIDS crisis, Challenger, Chernobyl, Iran-Contra, Reagan leaving office, Tiananmen Square, Berlin Wall falls, Czechoslovakia revolution.

[quote]The United States was not that great before the 1950s.

No, you are quite wrong.

Tell us about Europe during the two World Wars.

Or the situation for the average person in Russia, China and elsewhere.

Why were hundred of thousands of people immigrating to the US during the early part of the 20th century?

Simplistic answer but addictive drugs.

R143 is the Klan Granny. These people think rap music and video games cause violence. They aren't bright people

Gay men are insisting things were better in the 50s?!!!

When sodomy laws were on the books and homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. When gays were thrown out of the military and Federal jobs.

That's what you want to go back to?

R137, what majority of Americans? Well off white men?

Baby boom. Ever hear about what happens when you put too many rats in one space? Things get ugly.

R145, objectively, it may always have been better to be here than virtually any other place, but that doesn’t mean life here was pleasant. There’s usually been some serious chaos going on here. Most people’s “memories” of the past are heavily reliant on old movies or TV and therefore cleaned-up and censored.

[quote]I am not sure of your 'statistics' but wouldn't they be the same for whites, intra-racially? Among whites hasn't the wealth gap widened dramatically? Isn't the incarceration rate higher? Isn't addiction more prevalent? More births out of wedlock?

All of the statistics are out there.

From the Economist:

"...in 1962, two years before the passage of landmark civil-rights legislation and the Great Society programme, the average wealth of white households was seven times greater than that of black households. Yet after decades of declining discrimination and the construction of a modern welfare state, that ratio remains the same. The mean of black household wealth is $138,200—for whites, that number is $933,700."

And yes of course incarceration rates, out of wedlock births etc have risen fo whites, they are not as much of a significant percentage as they are for blacks.

This from the Washington Post:

R124, the old conservatives who rant against Gen Z are the least tolerant people you will find. They are more likely to be against gay marriage. They're the ones trying to ban LGBT books and books about race due to moral panic.

R124 is against groupthink....which is why he's at the Trump rally insisting that we need to ban Critical Race Theory

Same things as anywhere else, OP. Look it up

The biggest jump off the cliff for the USA was the election of Ronald Reagan. The chasm between rich and poor became larger than ever as his policies led to corporations holding absolute power over government. Reagan signed away media accountability and the Fairness Doctrine was flushed down the toilet. Hello Fox News!!!

New Coke

The draft and the Vietnam war.

A lot of this is true. So many good points being made.

I am not a Klan Granny at all. I do agree that music glorifying being an asshole is kind of bad for kids. It just is. That stupid Megan The Stallion (does she know stallions are male?) singing about serious sex? That's just not great for middle school kids to listen to. Girls need to be taught the difference between pretty and sexy (okay, I'm going off on a tangent). As a society, we need to do something about single mothers. I mean, I considered it when I was younger and didn't know if I'd ever get married. I totally get it. But it screws up the family economically, and it cuts a lot of men out of the picture. We have to decide something about this, but I don't know what the solution could possibly be, because I totally see all sides of it. But yes, that lack of shame is a big part of it. It used to be shameful to get knocked up before marriage. Now no one cares at all. Does anybody have suggestions or ideas?

Obviously things are better for minorities and women and LGB people and all combinations of those groups. Health care is better. Like, amazingly better. But we're all getting fat and then there's fat acceptance and what do you do with that?

I'm the one who once said that it all went down hill when women stopped wearing hose and men stopped wearing ties. I know this is sexist as hell, and ties are filthy and hose is bad for the environment. But I had to stay slim so that the hose was comfortable. We had some standards. No one gives a shit about anything anymore. We've all just let it all go.

Finally, on the East Coast, there is not such a severe class difference. My current family is very middle class, but we can do whatever we want. Yes, we are white and that helps. But we are close to museums and parks and battlefields and everything. We go to Disney, we go to the Met, we walk around the Institute for Advanced Study woods, we do what we want. My kids are not deprived, except that we have a tiny house with one bathroom. We would go to Europe but I don't fly. I have a graduate degree, my husband has a high school degree. The public schools here are probably better than in most of the country, so we're not really missing out. I don't consider us to be upper middle class or lower middle class, we are middle middle class.

Yoga pants are basically thick pantyhose.

R159 I guess you're in a nice part of NJ. I was away for years, am back now and it really doesn't feel much different than it did 40 years ago.

R151 It was better for white middle-class families. You all make it sound like all men were alcoholic wife beaters. That was not the case. Women stayed home with their kids; most people could afford a 3 bed 2 bath house, and many had two cars. We took two-week vacations every year and it was especially idyllic for kids. People started striving for more and more and women went to work. I sometimes think it was better when women could stay home and raise their own kids even though I am a feminist. But I never wanted that life or kids. I bet a lot of women if they could afford it would go back to that. Kids today seem to have a lot of instability. A lot of the teenage boys are floundering

We all know money is the root cause and we all also know that the ruling class control how money is distributed. Ever since the script changed with Reagan, the ruling class has been outright stealing wealth out of the hands of the people who work under the guise of freedom and the American dream. The people have all allowed it, though US propaganda is world class so you can't really blame them entirely, but good god do Americans need to wake up and get focused.

The free love/sexual revolution, the assassinations of the Kennedys and MLK, the Vietnam War and the deceit and corruption behind it, the drug culture, its a mixture of toxic soup contributing to the downward Spiral of American civilization and its influence in the world. The upcoming elections of 2022/2024 will be a major Turning point indicating where we are headed... Next stop: Oblivion. :-/

[quote]The draft and the Vietnam war.

100%

The price of energy went way up after the oil embargo. In the 50s we were still using Texas and the price of gasoline was .5 cents a gallon because they had a lot of gas wars and usually not more expensive than 8 cents a gallon. In the late 60s, I had a VW and used to put 50 cents in and drive all over the place.

R158, the draft is terrifying, especially to people like myself who have teen sons. I do think we need something to bring everyone together though. There should probably be a year between high school and college when everyone has to do some kind of public service job. It could be in the armed forces, or it could be paving sidewalks, or working with old folks, or something.

R161, I live right next to a very nice part of New Jersey, yes. My town is VERY diverse though. I can't afford the "very nice" town, unless I move in with my mom. But she won't let me use her toilets.

R162 It was common for 25 year old couples to buy a home. Have a car. Have a kid or two. And do it all on one paycheck.

Compare that to today.

People had secure union jobs. Benefits. All without a college education. If you went to college, you did it without 10s of thousands of dollars worth of debts.

Small towns had main streets that were bustling. No crime. I remember it.

Travelling by train, bus or plane was pleasant.

There was decorum. Gentility in the public sphere.

And of course there were social issues yet to be resolved...we know that... but for the majority of Americans, there was much to celebrate.

R168, I agree with almost everything you said but some of that was more than 25 years ago. Maybe we could relocate a lot of the migrants to small towns to make them vibrant again. Local shopping and stuff.

You're totally right about decorum and gentility. Those are totally gone. Then one day you're wearing pajama shorts to the grocery store. People don't go to church so they don't every dress up. I don't know how it could be fixed.

It's weird, and OP does really get to a big question: why should so much prosperity and security lead to so much upheaval? It's not like the 30s. It's not like there was this big economic collapse, which of course led to so much crazy change here and Europe. It was so much more insidious. Of course, under the surface, the happiness wasn't always so happy. If I believed in an actual devil, I would see him there, offering his splendid little deal: all this decorum and prosperity and serenity in return for just one little thing: total conformity. No deviation allowed. Be happy being the norm in every way or suffer the consequences. Accept it all, accept all the little compromises, all the little oppressions, all the little injustices, because look at all you get as a society.

Eventually, too many people just couldn't accept all that.

R169 What I wrote was in reference to the 1950s

Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide

Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law

Rock and roller, cola wars, I can't take it anymore

Ozzie and Harriet

Father Knows Best

Leave It To Beaver, et al

The unbridled proliferation of nuclear weapons, capable of utterly wiping out humanity.

The stark realization of the latter and the JFK assassination ignited America and woke it up from its 50s era dream-state delusion—an extraordinarily vacuous decade where the new medium of TV rapidly became the opiate of the masses.

The 60s became a collective awakening out of that, but the decade quickly perverted itself into a morass of out of control social upheaval and a civil war of sorts against the so-called “establishment”, the vanguard of it being led by extremely idealistic young people who had nothing substantive to offer in its place. Woodstock was a bubble, not a utopian model. The Vietnam War, of course, more than anything else, really fucked things up, too.

The 70s ended up being one long morning after, medicated by a metaphorical hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you hedonism to cope with the aftermath.

1980 came barreling down the hill with the Iran hostage crisis, runaway inflation, and the looming loss of the American Dream. Ronald Reagan came running right behind it, telling everyone that their woes were the result of the prior 20 tumultuous years. He got elected, and the rest, as they say, is history.

This is, of course, a rather facile analysis, but sometimes there’s a strong spine of truth in simplicity.

You all keep identifying the [italic] symptoms[/italic]

The [italic]cause[/italic] was as I laid out in R139

The US was able to dominate the post-war economy for much of the 50s and 60s because Europe and East Asia were rebuilding and the rest of the world had still not industrialized.

Once that changed we could not hold on to our dominance and the money that allowed us to maintain a highly paid middle class disappeared.

Period,

Reaganomics was an attempt to react to those forces and keep US companies competitive. Ditto Clintonomics, things like NAFTA

Dressing like "slobs", songs about Wet Ass Pussies, opioids, even the massive wealth gap between the top 15% and everyone else are just symptoms,

There is room for correction-- CEOs can stop taking such large salaries and pay workers more, tax rates on the very rich can go much higher, universal health care, etc. -- but the underlying condition--that we no longer dominate the world economy as the only economic superpower--that is not coming back.

Trumpism is in large part a reaction to what is essentially (to put it in medieval terms) the peasantry being given a taste of the lives of the lords and then having it pulled away from them, never to return. That's why it is so popular with old people. They want to go back to a world that will never exist again.

And R159, like many in the top 15-20% I suspect you are unaware of your relative affluence because you are at the lower end of that category and just see people all around you who seem to be making a lot more. Remember that the median household income in NJ is 85K which is not paying for a Disney vacation unless you somehow put it on a credit card and pay it off over time.

Lots of people blame RayGun for causing so many rifts.

RayGun was definitely a precursor to Drumpf, he was a racist and a homophobe, yet wasn't as in-your-face as Drumpf. RayGun definitely brought Evangelicals to the forefront.

The racism, the homophobia, the xenophobia, the hate of women and the religious fanaticism were always bubbling under with the Reich Wing. Drumpf simply gave his MAGA maniacs the OK to be vocal about it. To literally take to the streets.

His "American carnage" bullshit was exactly what he was all about. Drumpf was the destroyer in chief. There was no "American carnage" during Obama's presidency. There might have been problems, but nothing like what Drump's presidency caused.

btw, some MAGAts think Obama "did nothing during 9/11", those morons actually think Obama was president then.

Lots of people blame RayGun for causing so many rifts.

RayGun was definitely a precursor to Drumpf, he was a racist and a homophobe, yet wasn't as in-your-face as Drumpf. RayGun definitely brought Evangelicals to the forefront.

The racism, the homophobia, the xenophobia, the hate of women and the religious fanaticism were always bubbling under with the Reich Wing. Drumpf simply gave his MAGA maniacs the OK to be vocal about it. To literally take to the streets.

His "American carnage" bullshit was exactly what he was all about. Drumpf was the destroyer in chief. There was no "American carnage" during Obama's presidency. There might have been problems, but nothing like what Drump's presidency caused.

btw, some MAGAts think Obama "did nothing during 9/11", those morons actually think Obama was president then.

R113, you missed the point of this thread. No one is asking about today. The question was, what cause the US to spin out of control in the 1960s after the 1950s. The 1960s only.

[quote] The free love/sexual revolution

What kicked that off? Was there a leader of that movement?

Would anyone really want to be transported back for the 50s? Things are overall much better today (medical technology, etc).

However, I agree that a certain dignity and civic pride was more predominant then. People delayed gratification and acted like responsible adults. Having children without the means (financial and emotional) to care for them was not taken lightly. I am constantly astonished that women are stupid enough to have a child or children they cannot afford and then wonder why they live in poverty. We are all responsible for ourselves and unless you have an inheritance or win the lottery, that means putting in the work to develop marketable skills to launch a build a career. It doesn’t make for a flashy TikTok video, but it’s the truth.

But now, everything is a prop or showpiece for vulgar social media: Babies, illnesses, plastic surgeries, expensive clothing or cars, violent confrontations, even customer-employee disputes in stores. Social media has turned its users into sour, neurotic, irresponsible, oversharing eternal teenagers.

Also, it seems like people litter more than they did when I was a kid in the 80s. I will never understand the desire to make ones surroundings uglier or more squalid.

R174 We live below the NJ median income. My husband bought the Disney Vacation Club with his brother about 16 years ago and split the points. So we pay dues on that but yes we do stay in Disney. We don't go into the parks every day of vacation, maybe three days. We live fairly frugally most of the time. We are totally Middle Class.

Oh yes, it was much better being homosexual in the 50's. You got all the sex you wanted in prison.

The 1950s weren't some golden era, unless you love racism, misogyny and homophobia. It's weird and a bit suspect that OP chose that starting point. It's a conservative point of view.

The real downfall started with Reagan's election.

Fluoridated water

R181 Have you ever spoken to gay men who lived through the 1950s? In the 1970s, I knew quite a few. None of them were ever hauled off to prison. Certainly bad things happened. But life for many...depending on their circumstances... was as fun as the life I was living.

It was all on the down low back then.

Where were you living r184? Where were these other guys living at the time? Was this San Francisco? Hollywood? I think there were pockets where gay men could survive and thrive, but most of the country I'm guessing it was generally furtive and dangerous (although some may have liked that thrill of it). Not that that's entirely changed of course, but I think there are a lot more places now where gay people and gay couples can live happy, open lives.

"Caused" is too strong; but various factors [italic] facilitated [/italic] the disintegration of not-necessarily benign traditional family ties and social attitudes, some of them not what you'd expect to hear as an answer to OP's question: For instance, [italic] Mad Magazine [/italic] was not only funny--it also at the same time opened the eyes of young people to the casual hypocrisies and fallacies of American society. I know that it had a major impact on how I looked upon authority and supposed "obligations" in the 1960s when I was at an impressionable age.

Donny & Marie Osmond during the 70s.

After WWII, the 1950s were a forced resumption of "better times." It worked out well for white, middle class men. But everyone else who'd been shoved back in their corner and told to shut up wasn't happy. Black people weren't happy with segregated lives and low opportunity after risking life and limb in the war. Women, who'd been able to be productive with work outside of the home, were fired and told their sole job was to make a home and raise children. (White women, mainly, Black women usually didn't have the luxury of staying home, they had to work, usually in white people's homes.)

Prosperity gave some people more time to think about the society in which they lived and whether it should be changed. The U.S. got involved in Korea and then Vietnam. These wars did not seem to be as necessary as WWII and draft exemptions were easier to obtain, at least for Vietnam. Wealthier, usually white young men were getting educational deferments while poorer white, Black, and other minority young men were being shipped off to Vietnam, which bred resentment. There were changes in opinion about drug use and sexual activity because of the Pill and some SCOTUS rulings about privacy. During the summer of 1968, there were massive riots in France, so this unrest was not limited to the U.S. Obviously, this was a complex phenomenon and there were many reasons, but these are some of the main ones.

R181

In the 1950s, a gay man could lose his job, a gay student could be expelled -- there were gay witchhunts all the time, sparked by homophobia but also because being gay was linked by politicians like Joe McCarthy with communism. Arrests were made everywhere. Tab Hunter was arrested shortly after he arrived in Hollywood. He went to a party with gay men guests that was raided. Years later, the arrest was unearthed and there was a story in Confidential Magazine. Homosexuality was still listed by the medical establishment as a mental illness.

R190

The reference should have been to R184.

The Cold War, spurred a bunch of social and political changes—some good, many bad. A lot of proxy wars and proxy causes stemmed from the Cold War.

The narcissism of the Greatest Generation and Boomers after them.

The US boomed in the 50s as other countries had to rebuild after the destruction of WW2. But eventually they caught back up.

Dick Clark.

To the Moon, Alice.

The mass media - particularly movies, tv and radio. Change was going on LONG before the internet or social media. The boomers were basically the first generation to have tv. That's why they had all the Vietnam War protests - Vietnam was the first televised war. That's why premarital sex started becoming more common and less taboo in the 60s and 70s.

Repeating R136 because you all are making this far more complicated than is necessary:

The rest of the world. Europe in particular were still rebuilding from WW2 - the Brits had rationing for much of the 50s (ended in 54)

Countries like India, China and even Mexico were still pre-industrialized for the most part.

So we dominated the world economy and could afford to pay blue collar workers high wages without damaging our competitiveness.

And thus the growth of a large middle class that blurred into the upper middle class.

Then the rest of the world caught up.

While r136 simplification is somewhat acurate, hes forgetting the part where it was all intentional. It was payback for FDRs New Deal that made the rich pay...higher taxes, higher wages, benefits, etc. Remember also, when those companies left for the low wage workers so they could increase their profits, we not only allowed them (the GOP), we facilitated it. Its a lot more nuanced than r136 simplifies

Did you not study history? America was gangbusters after WWII because all the war happened in Europe and Japan. So the sole manufacturing location was the US. We made everything. Jobs were plenty, people were making babies everyone was happy...well okay not everyone. Black people fought in WWII but were still second-class citizens at home, so that little social bubble was rising up. Add to that, manufacturing came back to Europe and Japan, China was emerging as well. Suddenly cheaper products were being made overseas. All those houses and cars people bought needed gas and fuel oil and prices were rising. Social unrest, the free love of the 60s and the anit war movement. The 70's and disco and drug use. The old establishment was losing it's grip so the pendulum swung backward. Conservatives took over in the 80s with Reagan painting democrats as Liberals, a bad word. Teh Dems failed to pivot until Clinton.

[quote]What Caused the United States to Fall Apart After the 1950s? Was it the assassination of Kennedy?

Kennedy was assassinated in 1963

Ive studied it extensively. And fyi...it was intentional...and it started the day FDR died. the destruction of the unions, the expelling and demonizing of Communists and Socialists, the destruction of the "left" all took place in the late 40s through the 60s. Its also been ongoing for the past 70 years. Theyve done it right in front of our faces too...and we let them.

Well if you ask me ......

The photos below illustrate the current state of the US.

Our democracy is at risk, unfortunately, many are ignoring this fact. The Orange Carnival Barker brought these maggot-brained fascists out of the woodwork.

[bold]People with functioning brains had better start paying attention! [/bold]

We alway acknowledged the problems the USA had...... fuel shortages, immigration, political corruption etc but never did anything about them.

R200-- you have about a half dozen posts about how this was all "intentional" as payback for FDR and the New Deal.

Perhaps you can point us to some books or articles that share this POV, or is this something you've cooked up on your own?

Can you also tell us who is leading this conspiracy--clearly the movement as you describe must have had a leader.

r204....if youre too lazy to learn about anything that happened before you were born, thats your problem. Its not my responsibility to educate you. Youre a grown ass adult. All you have to do is pick up ANY book about the New Deal and how its been dismantled to know what is happening and who is responsible. It also doesnt take a rocket scientist to know bad the working class had it in America, how we overcame and flourished, and how it was all taken away. Its all profit and power driven. Its also why we are in the state were in and, news flash, its not going to get better any time soon. Ask yourself, why is it that the middle and working class declined at the same time they started cutting taxes for the rich and corporations...a decline that is directly parallel to those tax cuts. Rather than refer your simple mind to having to pick up a book, Im linking video...its not long, that explains it all in simple terms...watch and learn, THEN pick up a book to get more specific details...

And btw...I dont mean to be an ass about it, Im just tired of talking to a wall when it comes to our history, which everyone SHOULD know, even if it was suppressed to keep people stupid.

So your "source" for all this is a Marxist professor named Richard Wolf, author of "Understanding Marxism."

[quote] Wolff rejects capitalism, which he claims holds workers “hostage to capital’s needs and drives.” [8] In its place, Wolff supports implementing Marxism. [9]

[quote] Wolff has at times criticized the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, claiming they did not represent a true implementation of Marxism, which, he claims, has never been properly tried. [10] However, he has praised the “Bolivarian revolution” seen in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, and his successor Nicholas Maduro, that has resulted in dictatorship. [11] He places much of the blame for the breakdown of the country on “long-nurtured alliances among Venezuelan capitalists, US capitalists, and the comfortable upper middle classes (which) provided easy routes to fund and provoke anti-government agitations, conspiracies, campaigns.” [12] He has expressed hostility towards U.S. foreign policy actions in Venezuela, referring to it as “imperialism.” [13]

r206 There are others who hold the same positions. I only used that video because its laid out in simple terms and is easy to understand. That you choose to single out "Marxist" shows your ignorance. There is not one thing he said that is incorrect. Pick up a history book sometime instead of being led by the nose by the powers that be that want you to tow the line and remain complacent. History is a strange thing and much can be learned from it...if you pay attention.

The United States started going tits up a few decades before the 1950s (when they gave women the right to vote.)

Nixon and Reagan. Nixon was a paranoid racist shit and Ronnie was a thieving, racist moron who sucked up to the truly rich and gave them whatever they wanted ie: lower and lower taxes and social program cuts. Reagan was the beginning of the end.

Reagan

The post war 1940s and more so in the 1950s it was all about staging and props and keeping up appearances. It was all about the way things seemed. Everything was help up by tape and nails, it was all fake, and the veneer couldn’t hold into the 60s/70s. Things didn’t change so much as they were just revealed.

That’s my retrospective take on it all.

[quote] There are other Marxists who hold the same positions.

r213...absolutely clueless and the reason we are where were at now.

To heavy of a focus on nonissues. Pre WWII we had open borders with Mexico. People came in, worked and went home. Post-WWII we shut the borders down. Same with fossil fuel. We all know it is terrible for the environment. We could have switched decades ago to plant-based Diesel, Solar, and Wind, but nope we let big oil fund our politicians. Look at what he have right now. Elon Musk, the biggest maker of electric cars, which are hated by the GOP, is a fucking Republican.

W&W R214. I'm so sick of these morons screeching "Marxism!" anytime you try to improve the lives of working class people. We live under a vile system that rewards the wealthy with more wealth and punishes the poor for existing. If I'm a "Marxist!" for pointing it out, so be it.

No one is screaming "Marxist" R216. This is not Flyoverstan

The guy is a self-professed Marxist and has written numerous books on the topic

And ??? So what if he is ? There is not one thing he says that isnt true. Marxism is a philosophy and it benefits and elevates the working class. Are you that brainwashed by Capitalism that you dont recognize what hes saying to be the truth ? I dont know what you do for a living or how much you make, but I guarantee you that there are a lot of working class people who work full time, 40 hours a week, year round, and they cant maintain the basics like housing , food, and childcare. Actually its 35% of the country. Thats right...over 1/3 of this country is fundamentally poor. Its not because theyre lazy, or uneducated.

People without the mental capability or financial means who breed uncontrollably and produce hordes of societal-draining brats.

R125, Total communism is NOT just as bad as what we have in present day America, it is MUCH WORST.

Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya.

Oops wrong thread

Fiat money.

May 1968 was a quasi-revolution in France. It was a movement throughout the first world countries. Vietnam War contributed to it in the US.

[quote]No one is screaming "Marxist" [R216]. This is not Flyoverstan

Says the moron screaming "Marxist!" all over the thread

[quote]The guy is a self-professed Marxist and has written numerous books on the topic

WE DON'T FUCKING CARE. We aren't Fox News viewers like you.

R221 & R222, I loved thinking for a moment that you thought Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya caused the downfall of the United States though. But I couldn't figure out how.

The merger of White supremacy racism and the Evangelical Christian Churches.

R210 so the 6 Presidents since Reagan were helpless and unable to effect change over a 35-year period?

r228...all you will get are excuses such as "Congress was the opposing party" and other iterations of it. The reality is that both of our political parties are beholden to their corporate donors. Its evident in what laws have been passed/repealed, and by what weve witnessed deteriorating economically, socially and politically. Republicans believe in HARSH Capitalism...i.e. they could care less what you think about it...suffer. Democrats believe in a gentle Capitalism...theyll throw you some crumbs to make you think they work for you and that youre getting something in order to placate you. In the end the only ones that benefit are Corporations and the wealthy.

and tellingly R229 3 of the post Reagan Presidents were Democrats and 3 were Republican two of whom only served 1 term each.

R68 i don't think so. I think if anything America ( and it's problems) are more a reflection of specifically scotch irish mores than general British culture. And we have a lot of unique pathologies not seen in Great Britain as a whole.

I agree R231. Especially the south. Scotch-Irish and the "border" people in northern England who had endless skirmishes with the Scots - and with each other. Just a feisty Hatfield v McCoy disposition, but very in-group clannish. The Presbyterian Church didn't make the kind of itinerant-preacher efforts that the Baptists, and to a lesser extent, the Methodists did. So the church and the clan system - basically a tribal outlook - combined to become our pesky evangelicals, who could doom this country. I think 90% of them voted for Trump.

The decline of the US started with "win at any price" conservatism in the 1970s

Of course you could say the decline started when Kennedy advisor Walter Heller insisted on cutting taxes on the rich, giving the rich the means to corrupt politics

All of America’s greatest cities were BURNED TO THE GROUND in the 1950s.

R226 well, those incessant S Sweeney posts sure aren’t helping our culture!

They weren't able to make change since Reagan because the right-wing achieved a media monopoly in the 80s. Read "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky. It explains what happened.

R237 Haven't read Chomsky but I have an explanation: the Dems are weak and ineffectual

When has America ever NOT been “apart” unless you are white and wealthy?!

Religion/evangelicalism.

Television

Mixture of pretty much all the above, I think.

Feminism.

First of all it did not and has not fallen apart, especially in the post war period. The OP’s question is ludicrously simplistic and betrays a complete lack of American history knowledge. Much of the 19th century was much more voluble (ever heard of Dred Scott and the Civil War, or slavery?) and then of course there are the 1890’s into the early century when we were more or less saved from ourselves by the progressive movement. Todays problems are a mirror of the 1930s. Did you go to high school or college OP. Lordy it is depressing how clueless many are in 2022.

Unfrosted Pop Tarts

That would be frosted pop tarts r245....the originals were unfrosted.

R238 there has been a real conspiracy on Madicon Avenue to give Dems and liberals generally an inferior product when it comes to ads.

Southerners who keep fighting the civil war and evangelicals. Where’s the CIA flinging opiates in their neighborhoods when you need it?

Religion poisons everything.

Speaking of GI Bill - the families of Black WWII Veterans certainly have a good case for reparations. Just like Japanese Americans. I am sure they could win (could have won) a case and I'm surprised nobody has brought one.

The most obvious and easiest case for reparations would be the insurance claims that arose after the massacre in Tulsa. They're still on the books and never paid.

Word

Religion .......we were on the right path but we dumbed down our education, pushed god ( one god of course) and are heading back to the 1600s

R253 that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard. Please look up Madeline Murray O’Hare. She successfully got religion pushed out of the education system.

This country never fully recovered from the assassination of JFK.

Crazy Christian preacher stuff night have something to do with it. Too much influence on politics. Most other western countries gradually moved away from religion and church culture. That a con man like Trump could influence the masses in such a drastic way has a lot to do with people's adherence to religious teaching, which doesn't really promote critical thinking and judgement based on reason.

Really R254? Religion, mostly the fucking Xstians, have takin this country downhill. We are so dumbed down and getting worse. Yeah, if you believe your almighty can solve everything, you stop thinking on your own. So what happened, the religious slime end up having say over all of us, what to read, control our bodies, tell us what we can and can’t read, what our children can learn .......but this is the dumbest thing you have heard...go pray me away and see how well that works for you

Religion can ebb and flow - look at Iran, look at Russia.

In our country, it's growing more extreme if not more widely followed, if that makes sense. Maybe what they feel is the move away from religion is what has made the believers who are left get more militant and extreme.

I lived through the 60s and 70s in the Deep South, and other than Pentecostals and other whack jobs - that were widely recognized as the fringes - religion had become sort of pro forma. You might have gone to church but you didn't take it seriously - it was to dress up and meet up with your friends.

Now people down here feel under attack and billboards everywhere are all about Jesus and abortion and "Are you going to heaven or hell?" shit. There was none of that before. I think it started when I was in college - I remember some of my friends liked to watch the PTL club and laugh at them.

Now they're laughing at us.