The Good Old Days
Do you suppose that 20 or 30 years from now anyone will refer to these times as “the good old days”? Every decade in American history has had its problems, but the current one seems especially fraught with chaos. Rampant crime, runaway inflation, a border that leaks like a sieve with undocumented, unskilled, and unknown bad actors crossing by the thousands. This Nation is in a position of profound weakness. It isn't that our enemies are strong, it is that we are vulnerable, and we don't really know what we stand for, or what we should do.
The current government is led by a weak, diminished old man who can barely read what his minders put on his teleprompter. He proved that again in his latest Oval Office address. Joe Biden has not inspired this Nation to greater heights, nor has he inspired confidence in the direction he is leading the country. Doubtful that he’ll make these times remembered as the good old days.
Think of a time when kids could ride their bikes ‘til dark without their parents worrying about where they were or who they were with. Or a time when your daughter could go to the women’s bathroom and not run into a guy wearing a dress. How about a time when we had two pronouns for the species, he and she? Maybe the good old days were when someone took a knee at a football game, it was to pray and not protest the National Anthem.
The good old days might have been when a part of the Nation didn’t have a nickname for an industrial region of the country. A region now called the Rust Belt where you can now find thousands of shuttered factories. That’s where America used to make steel, cars, appliances, and televisions. The last TV made in the United States was by Zenith in Melrose Park, Illinois in 1999. A vibrant working class was evident in these midwestern towns because the vast majority of what Americans consumed was Made in America. Good luck walking into Target and finding anything made in America. Walmart for all intents and purposes is the retail arm of the Communist Chinese government. Even the food products are from heaven only knows where.
Were the good old days when we had only three major networks television channels, PBS plus one or two local channels? They signed off playing the National Anthem at midnight, and after that all you could watch was a goofy looking test pattern. The national news was not so obviously slanted, and only lasted a half an hour. The local affiliates then, were heavy on the weather, high school sports and car accidents. We didn’t have a constant diet of gang violence and drug crimes coming into our living rooms day after day. According to the latest Gallup Poll, 68% of Americans don’t trust the national media, broadcast or print.
What about popular music? Today’s generation is growing up with some really awful tunes. Can you imagine 30 or 40 years from now, a couple listening to oldies radio, turns to each other and says, “Honey they’re playing our song”, and the title is “U’s A Hoe”? With the exception of Taylor Swift tunes, the forever a 15-year-old, most music made today is hard to understand or listen to. Whatever happened to the music made by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, the Temptations, Queen, the Beatles, or The Rolling Stones. A lot of today’s entertainers are revisiting The Great American Songbook because there is such a dearth of composers who can write listenable songs.
Problem is that if one longs for the good old days, you become marked as a clueless troglodyte who is locked in a nonexistent time warp. While there is no such thing as a time warp, nevertheless that doesn’t stop society’s reprobates using your longing as fodder for unrelenting criticism. So, what is the resolution to this national malaise?
Perhaps the easiest solution is to declare that these are the good old days, ignore the nincompoops in government, avoid dangerous areas where crime is rampant, take self-defense training and buy some old vinyl. Then again folks could wise up, band together, fight to restore America’s world strength, our civility and rule of law by throwing out the politicians who have turned this Nation into a country on its way to becoming a third world shit hole…and don’t get upset if you’re accused of wanting to make America great again...it’s not just some populist slogan, but a noble goal for every citizen.
Personally, I vote for the latter, sooner rather than later.