Do you think the current era of American history surprasses the 1960s in terms of turbulence?

About the same?

It's about the same. C'mon. This three dee dimension is all about suffering.

I think it’s worse today because a lot of the anger and violence made sense.

Today it’s like Biden’s laptop and Hillary’s emails and QAnon and anti-drag queens and then on the other side it’s the fight for pregnant men and Latinx and blackwashing and waiting until babies figure out their own gender.

It’s all madness. George Floyd era made sense. It was a storm of years of frustration from the black community plus lockdown of Covid and it created a shitstorm.

But everything else is just madness.

I’m sorry I meant to say the anger and violence of the 60’s made more sense than what’s happening today.

R4 you wouldn't say the repeal of Roe vs. Wade was something worth getting angry about? Or all of these insane antigay laws the Republicans are passing?

R5 But that’s not why people are angry. The Democratic Party had to literally publicize the repeal Roe w. Wade to make it a thing. These dumb ass hoes didn’t even know it had occurred. But I bet they watched The Voice.

R5 There was no anger. Where was it?

R6 Exactly.

The madness of the right is what overturned Roe vs Wade which is my point.

And what makes no sense is there was no real anger from the left about it.

R3, the madness comes from people like you who obsess over stuff like word "Latinx" or the .0000001% of athletes who are trans

Maybe care about things that actually affect more than 12 people

And yeah I don’t mean people are angry at Roe vs Wade, I mean people seem way angrier thinking drag queens are brainwashing children, which is madness.

R8 I didn’t know Latinos were 8 people

I would say 1960s were probably the most turbulent in the United States since the civil war and more so than today. You had four major American leaders assassinated, kicking off the decade with that of a President. You had an unpopular war sending off a loved one of just about everyone in America to either die or come back fucked up. On top of that you had race riots and bombings. People might be mad now but MOST of it is expressed balking at a computer screen.

^ oh and widespread real poverty (the kind without a gov’t supplied data plan). Things aren’t the best now but being the drama queens we’ve become, it may seem worse, but it’s not.

The 60s were WAAAAY WORSE!

Try THREE assassinations for starters! JFK, MLK, RFK. FIVE, if one adds Malcolm X and Medgar Evers!

THE VIETNAM CONFLICT!!!

The police riot (official govt term) at the 1968 Democratic Convention! Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner! Altamont! Tate-La Bianca!

Don't get me started.

R10, most Latinos do not care about the word Latinx. Only white Republicans do

It’s worse now — because of the Supreme Court.

Why can't people like the OP seem to tell the difference between "worse" and "worst?"

Potato potahto

More riots & protests in the 60s

More mass shootings now

I think the 60's were pretty bad politically, but it was worth it because the music was so good.

The article is about 2020. 3 years ago. Time stands still in the DL crypts.

Of course the sixties were worse, are you kidding? Wake me up when the regular political assassinations start back up.

Things aren't even really all that turbulent today. The country is divided, yes. But things are not turbulent. Which is mainly because the government makes sure that everyone has JUST ENOUGH to keep them from heading out in the streets to march with revolutionary intent on their asses. That was the lesson the government took from the sixties. Food stamps and unemployment checks.

I wasn't alive in the 60s. I wouldn't know.

It’s not as dramatic as having a string of assassinations was. But, now it seems like the end of the country as we’ve known it is a real possibility. The Republican Party has become a threat that can, and probably will, end our democracy, impose theocracy on the country, and install a dictator-type figurehead. The states are passing laws designed to do this now as a roadmap for what they want to do nationally, plus passing voter suppression that will make it impossible to vote them out. The gun violence is at an insane level with several massacres is public places every year, and the politicians won’t do anything about it despite the will of the people. Propaganda has turned half the country into irrational lunatics. All the social progress of the last century is being rapidly erased.

The 60s were turbulent time for sure, but I’m not sure it felt as hopeless as today as I wasn’t there. This feels like the end of the road.

Well I was alive. It was worse for young people because of the draft which directly affected their lives. But society did have some structure to it. People today are less affected by the government but seem more scattered on an emotional level. In the 60s you were changing a society with alot of rules. Today the US structure seems pretty weak.

It used to be more difficult to be radicalized. Kooks had to mail away for nutty conspiracies or at least seek out odd books in the dark corners of libraries.

The 60's had idealism; women's liberation, gay liberation, the civil rights movement etc. I say it seems more right than wrong (with the benefit of hindsight).

Today, all I see is nihilism. Me-too movement and black-lives-matter, dehumanizing transgender and non-binary policies, turning victimhood into a virtue rather than rising above it.

And frankly, I'd rather see a politician or two assassinated than a schoolroom of kids being shot up.

The boomers of the 60s are todays's Trumpers and "anti-wokesters" so the results are very predictable, and predictably anti-trans, the real reason for this thread. Every thread on DL now is some trojan horse for the conservatives here to beat their drums about trans people. So tiresome.

Gotta love the posters who see a problem with "movements" but say nothing about the problems that caused those movements. These same exact sentiments were said about gay people in the decades following Stonewall. So disappointing to encounter them on a formerly gay website turned fully conservative.

R7 That’s because the whole culture of the left has changed. This I will defend the Democratic Party because one thing for sure they republicans have been dumbing down the culture for decades. I will say at least Dems do care about education and the future. I will say this there was outrage but just from the usual political operatives and Uber academics. There was no real cause to arms from who you would expect: regular working women. But because of identity politics so many of these women are now Republican, at least culturally. Though around the time midterms came around many regular Dems did a dam good job of scoring political points and getting regular women to become impassioned.

The 1960s was America at its greatest. Yes it was turbulent but you had a strong middle class with unionization to protect workers rights. Women, Black people, Asians, Native Americans and gays fought and obtained their civil rights which were denied to them since the foundation of this country. I think it went to shit in the 1980s and really hit by the 2000s. We just had more TV and internet and other gadgets to distract us.

Weren’t average people more prosperous then? Some of that would help alleviate the feeling of doom.

It’s worse now because the art is absolute dogshit. The 60s were a time of amazing and radical art - music and film especially. Being different and creative was actually encouraged. Now it’s all about the common denominator of what sells to retarded teenagers.

Most of today's turbulence is being caused by faux populists: straight, wealthy, white men upset that their unrivaled positions of power and being able to commit any crime unfettered by any laws or repercussions, are being challenged by lesser beings. See: Trump,, Donald; DeSantis, Ron; Jordan, Gym; Cruz, Ted.

The interesting thing is violent crime actually decreased tremendously since the 90s. So it's mostly safer today plus video surveillance helps catch people. It's harder to just run away to a different state and start a new identity. However the alarming factor is while most violent crimes decreased, mass shootings skyrocketed.

So we have to fear getting caught up in a deadly shooting rather than being robbed by gunpoint or captured by a serial killer. And mass shootings are far scarier because unlike thiefs or serial killers/rapists who target certain people. Shootings can affect just anyone in proximity. That is one factor of today makes it so grim. In the past, you could just avoid assault by staying out of the slums. You can't go to a movie or go to school without fear of gun violence. Scary.

No comparison. In the 60's we murdered our politicians today we murder our children.

Both times are bad but comparing them is like comparing an orange to an apple. Two totally different things. The 60's was a fight for something that needed to be changed. I distinctly remember thinking after the last assassination, is this ever going to end? Are those we need going to keep being assassinated?

Today's fight is about idiots who can't think for themselves so they are allowing other idiots to think for them.

[quote] Being different and creative was actually encouraged.

You obviously did not live in the 60s. The US was most conformist and oppressive after WWII through the 60s. Hippies and the so-called countercultural movements of the time were considered existential threats. Look at the 1968 Democratic convention.

The thing that is horrible about modern times is the push to send us backwards, to a time before legalized abortion and homosexuality.

As time goes on things *should* get better...so I feel like its worse now considering the advances we should be making.

[quote]That was the lesson the government took from the sixties. Food stamps and unemployment checks.

And an over-educated populace that was not only aware of their rights but aware of history. The dumbing down of the populace was an important factor in governing it. Starting in the late 80s through the 90s with Married With Children, Beavis and Butthead, stupidity was at first a joke that became an ideal. Now the dumbest people on earth become billionaires and people see education as pointless because of overwhelming debt. Now people are wary of intelligence - like you must be up to something.

So a dumb population is easily distracted and easily led. People think there is a huge national schism - and there is, but that could also be a distraction that makes everyone feel very involved, impassioned - lives full of sound and fury signifying nothing. You feel helpless because we don’t know who to trust and we don’t know how to dig ourselves out.

America could be a failed experiment. Maybe the country is too big to be lead by a People of a million different ideas, views, beliefs. Maybe that is what we are witnessing now. We always want to compare our selves to countries with a 10th of our population like a fat girl trying to fit into a size 4. Look at the countries comparable in size and see how they are run.

R37 I’m talking about within people who were making art and culture - they all WANTED to be something different and out there and radical. The hippies didn’t really do anything.

EVERYTHING is worse now.

r41 it only seems that way because we are old. In the 60's we were young and thought we could handle anything. I might have chosen to be living thru the 60's but I don't remember signing up for this stint. It'll all be over in a few years and in 50 years young people will go thru something again ad will be asked, was this time harder than what they are going thru now.

At least when we emerge it will have changed things for the better, it just a matter of arriving there.

[quote] most Latinos do not care about the word Latinx.

Spoken like a white liberal airhead.

[quote] The thing that is horrible about modern times is the push to send us backwards, to a time before legalized abortion and transsexuality.

R44 = delusional queen.

Dream on, cunt.

R41 Right I’m sure many of them were sent to clinics to cure their homosexuality yet they pretend like the past was so bliss. Ghetto youth were not slamming you in lockers or firing you from jobs for being gay. Your boomer brothers and peers were.

R3 are people Trans’ing babies?

I have lived enough of my life to take the attitude that, if the country is going to implode then I am excited to see it happen during my lifetime. At least I can say I was an American when being an American was awesome. Now, that ended sometime around 2001, but who gives a shit. Bring on the implosion.

I wonder how many people posting here know that you could be arrested, fired from your job and evicted from your apartment for just standing and talking in a bar with other gays in 1964 in almost every major city except NYC, SF and LA.

Was Hair like a documentary?

I'd say the Civil War era trumps both.