When I went to my professional school, a local tavern had dimers night once a week, a year later it was quarter beers. The ravages of inflation.
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stan the corgi wrote:
When I went to my professional school, a local tavern had dimers night once a week, a year later it was quarter beers. The ravages of inflation.
As a black guy I'd probably say now.
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As a woman who loves marathoning…after 1984
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ih8brandon wrote:
I would say the sweet spot to have been born is the early 40s.
Righttt the period of Jim Crow when black people were treated as 3rd class citizens, barely better than animals. I'm sure they think this was a great time in America as well. SMH
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TFFL wrote:
Runner10287 wrote:
That I’m gonna go with Comiskey Park on July 12, 1979.
https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.832000,-87.634000&q=Disco%20Demolition%20Night&_ext=EiQpgOrn+X7qREAxk+jSdJPoVcA5gOrn+X7qREBBk+jSdJPoVcA%3DGive me 10 cent beer night instead. I would have loved to have been in my 20s in the 70s or 80s.
So true.
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1900 if your last name was Carnegie or Rockefeller
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Which "native Americans" are you referring to? The Siberian refugees, perhaps?
I was born here, so I am a Native American.
The Indians were not the first people here.
Liberals are the main people referring to the Indians as "Native Americans". They refer to themselves as "Indians" and laugh at the silly liberals.
"New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America""19,000 year old Virginia Flint Knife came from France"
http://atlanteangardens.blogspot.Com/2014/03/19000-year-old-virginia-flint-knife.html
The European implements are thought to be from the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia and preceded Clovis."Scientific tests on ancient DNA extracted from 8000 year old skeletons
from Florida have revealed a high level of a key probable
European-originating genetic marker. There are also a tiny number of
isolated Native American groups whose languages appear not to be related
in any way to Asian-originating American Indian peoples.".The Clovis are thought to be from the earliest Asian migrations.That's just a drop in the bucket.
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Steve The Addict OFFICIAL -----^^^^^ wrote:
Well if you're a big pharma scam representative who's a coddled liberal communist, then perhaps it's right now.
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.
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History will not look kindly toward the present times.
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Right around the time James Brown was inspired to write and record his smash hit "Living in America." It had to have been great to make him write that.
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It's hard to say. Politically, FDR and his New Deal politics was maybe the last time a president was truly for the common man. After FDR died, many New Dealers were witch hunted as communists and destroyed politically. Thanks to the CIA and Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was so much worse than Trump but Trumps sway with the Republicans absolutely reminds me of McCarthy. But it's not like Donald Trump is working with the FBI like McCarthy was working personally with J Edgar Hoover.
Honestly, I can't speak on how it was before I was born. I would just be speaking ignorance. I think the best time was 90s and 2000s.
A negative turning point for me was 2012 when they implemented algorithms to facebook and youtube. This seems to be when people started really resenting each other based off of beliefs.
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Right now is the best. Its actually so good that people have all their needs met and are discussing never before heard aspects such as "cis male", "trans", "binary", "gender fluid"...
Maybe early 2000s when the dollar was stronger but its a tossup
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ih8brandon wrote:
I would say the sweet spot to have been born is the early 40s. Too young for WWII and too old for Vietnam. You got to live through American dominance throughout the world. You had air travel, best health care in the world (penicillin had been discovered), rock music, two cars in every garage, a roaring economy, low interest rates, great job prospects, one income per family got the job done, the pill, and free love. When you vacationed in Europe, people still respected what our country had done for them versus the Germans. Globalization had not destroyed pensions and early retirement and American manufacturing, you had social security and medicare. We could have used statins and better blood pressure medicine, but a widow maker heart attack was quick and decisive better way to go than most.
Probably 2019.
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Born in 43 here. Brought up rural, went to a one room schoolhouse, used my skis to get home. Was not too old for Vietnam but joined up in 61 at 17 and was out at 20 and “inactive reserve”. they tried to get me to re-up, another stripe and a new tech school, jump school, become a forward weather observer. Even at 20, I knew I wouldn’t last a month in-country. Perks of the 60’s? I got to ride a motorcycle all over the country with nothing more than a fork lock. When I started college, I could no longer afford to ski so one day in April, I went to watch the finish of the Boston Marathon. Amby Burfoot. Jogging was cheap, I was hooked.Got to run in a lot of countries, enjoyed my life. Course you have to work and I did a lot of that. What a fortune to have been born in America.
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Of course, it totally depends you you are/were. For most white middle class Americans and Europeans (others, get your own thread) the answer is WW2 to JFK shooting. You could argue to, say, 1966, but things were wobbling. This includes both men and women (sorry feminists). I lived the latter part of that and happiness/optimism was never better.
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ExcellentPostYeah wrote:
I've reflected on this since the early posts and now it's hard not to conclude that there has been no "best" time in America. From before we became a country the founders were utterly steeped in industrialized slavery and desired completely unfettered capitalism. The whole thing is tainted from the outset, something most Americans have been trained to gloss over.
So, we can claim triumphs, including helping the allies win The Great War and WWII. We projected the bulk of power that blunted the Soviets thereafter. However, we also supported many dictators and overthrew elected leaders in multiple countries. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan proved disastrous. The citizenry has never fully equalized power with capitalist oligarchs, nor modernized our political systems, such that in 2022 we are the only industrialized western country without universal healthcare and our social safety net is the most meager in the western world. We've also never even begun to come to terms with slavery or quelled the traitorous southern (and now midwestern) states.
I think the best thing we can say about the US is that it has proven to be a dynamic place, a country of extremes. Extreme progress coupled with abject poverty. Extreme systemic racism targeting freedmen and their descendants, while proving extremely good at absorbing white people from around the world. Extreme income disparities. Large landmass that features multiple climates and geographies. Diversity driven by waves of mass immigration. The US has always been a country of "I'll get mine and you can go f-ck yourself." Now, if you actually get yours the US can be a land of dreams come true. Otherwise, it is a place and culture that will be happy to watch you drop dead in a ditch.
^This was an excellent post. I encourage anyone interested in this type of topic to read Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart” about how American society has changed, polarized, and decayed over the past 50 years. He focuses solely on whites so as to avoid PC trouble.
Those with big brains were vacuumed up into higher education and higher incomes and rich zip codes and for them, life in the USA has never been better. For everyone else, not so much. I see this in my own family as I’m sure many of you do as well: Born 1980. Boomer parents. 20 cousins. Those of us with big brains (3 of us) were multimillionaires before 40. The rest are living worse—economically—than their parents, will probably never be homeowners until inheritance, etc. One chronically unemployed. One dead to opiates. Despair. A few of the Boomer parents now Trumpers. Shameful.
Crushing income inequality. White Boomers had it best. No student debt, no unaffordable health insurance, no housing insanity. Black and brown folks and their systemic struggles are probably at an all time low, but they are of course subject to the same crushing economic picture with even less resources. The hard truth is that there is no country of blacks and browns that enjoys peace and prosperity superior to USA. The nations my wealthy liberal neighbors point to as utopias are either homogeneous Asian or European. No easy answers.
The world is nuanced and complex. We are living through a time of corporate kleptocracy where most can’t compete. SCOTUS accelerating anti-democratic trends. Zealous morons on the right and left getting whipped into frenzy by social media. Still lots to be thankful for, and lots to improve.20 -
The neighborhood aholes didn’t set off fireworks all night for once this year around. So right now ain’t so bad. For now.
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Runner10287 wrote:
The neighborhood aholes didn’t set off fireworks all night for once this year around. So right now ain’t so bad. For now.
The dumbarses in my neigborhood went until 1AM. I so wanted the fireworks to explode on their arses and burn down their houses and cars and them.
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Bad Wigins wrote:
Right around the time James Brown was inspired to write and record his smash hit "Living in America." It had to have been great to make him write that.
James Brown didn't write Living in a America. That was Dan Hartman.
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Old folks talk about eating a hotdog and seeing Willy Mays play the outfield. Today we can watch Joey Chestnut eat more than 60!
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