Today I read an article about when Ronald Reagan was shot many years ago. The article stated that during the Reagan presidency there was a higher degree civil political discourse and American's just got along better than today. While I don't recall every detail during that particular time it makes me think our anger toward each other is noticeably higher today than back then. Or perhaps social media makes our anger towards each more for public consumption than ever before?

Was there ever a time when American's got along with each other?

Please move to the politics forum.

My post isn't driven with politics in mind. I'm more interested in a perspective of any particular time when it seemed as though we were more at peace with each other. Not politics.


Please move to the politics forum.

Well at least we aren’t at shooting presidents level?!?

Certainly there haven't been any suggestions of doing this by any entertainers?

I think that this is an interesting question that not necessarily is a political discussion but involves politics. I am 51 so I remember when the parties still worked for the common good and compromised for the interests of the common good of the country even though it may have not been on the best interest of the party. Nowadays, it seems the only objective is to completely oppose the other side. A republican could propose the democratic platform and the demos would vote against and vice versa just because the other side proposed it . It is a very scary time for our country and our future and I don't know the answer as people seem ok with this.

I’ve been reading Steven Pinker lately, and he finds the same thing: We have experienced increases in health, education, civility, longevity and other significant things over scales of years, decades, centuries and millennia. A recent book is, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.” Here’s one of his Ted talks titled, “The Surprising Decline in Violence.” I encourage all to watch it. https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence

I was in college during the Reagan era... There was no social media then and therefore there was no way to share political views or really anything else for that matter.

Even today, people don't openly discuss politics during in-person encounters and that's all we had back then.

I think there is a strong argument that social media actually reveals who people are and what they think, although such viewpoints are often offered in a negative light, as is human nature when sitting at a keyboard vs. face-to-face.

So, you could say there has always been strong disagreement on many fronts, it's just now you can see it openly. I'm not sure that's a bad thing although it can sometimes manifest in a lot of anger and hostility. At least people are being honest instead of pretending or not expressing themselves.

For those who say there used to be the 'good ole days' in America I can't but think if television (late 50's/early 60's) shows gave a false format that things were peaceful and loving. If you consider TV shows like; Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith, etc. you might get the idea that we all got along beautifully. Those shows absolutely stayed away from topics that were hot buttons for that time period. That was then....this is now. I do have concern that the accessibility to spout out hate and lack of personal restraint to temper anger while online is not creating a better America. Instead I have concerned we are a more emotional volatile America.

For those who say there used to be the 'good ole days' in America I can't but think if television (late 50's/early 60's) shows gave a false format that things were peaceful and loving. If you consider TV shows like; Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith, etc. you might get the idea that we all got along beautifully. Those shows absolutely stayed away from topics that were hot buttons for that time period. That was then....this is now. I do have concern that the accessibility to spout out hate and lack of personal restraint to temper anger while online is not creating a better America. Instead I have concerned we are a more emotional volatile America.

It was all a huge lie.

Here's a great example: In real life Mr. Brady was gay and died of AIDS and Greg and Mrs. Brady dated. I knew Peter (we both lived in Manhattan Beach for a while) and he was a complete douche bag.

This is why I generally think it's better that people understand the realities of what people think rather than just pretend to get along.

The book "Tribe" by Sebastian Junger posits that we have strayed from our tribal tendencies and as a result are less happy because of it. Hard times make us share struggle and forces us to put aside our differences for the greater good.

I don't think the old days were necessarily better but our past was often framed in the context of large wars that had been just fought. That sort of thing will make people bond over a common cause.

Just something to consider. Great book.

^

Yes, nothing brings people together like a common enemy.

The simple fact is that now certain groups are trying to create that very thing in order to unite them around a particular party or movement. And that's exactly what is causing this unprecedented internal division.

If there isn't an enemy or real struggle, that just creates a vacuum to be exploited.

^^^
And exploiting divisions through social media is exactly what the Russians have done. It’s amazing they picked up on all this and turned it into a political strategy.

^^^
And exploiting divisions through social media is exactly what the Russians have done. It’s amazing they picked up on all this and turned it into a political strategy.

Thanks for making this political. :doh:

It was all a huge lie.

Here's a great example: In real life Mr. Brady was gay and died of AIDS and Greg and Mrs. Brady dated. I knew Peter (we both lived in Manhattan Beach for a while) and he was a complete douche bag.

This is why I generally think it's better that people understand the realities of what people think rather than just pretend to get along.

Way to go, Greg. Mrs Brady was pretty hot.

Much of Old Media is in its death throes. We're still adjusting to this new "internet" thing, and nobody knows how it's going to work out. Cable news providers are fighting tooth and nail over a shrinking market, and it's getting really ugly. We've already seen how newspapers are dropping like flies, and we all know they are reacting poorly to the presence of New Media.

The strategy that's been working so far is to take an extreme position and rile up your own shrinking, but loyal, fanbase. A small group of people who watch all the time give better ratings than a large group that kinda watches sometimes.

24/7 cable news is really only something that has come about in the last 20 years. I don't think it'll last another 20.

So what we've got today is that everybody is good and pissed off. Everyone is mad and that translates into ranting on Facebook and stupid blog posts and things like that. And here comes the Millennial generation, and they've never experienced anything but this environment, and they're the groundbreakers in social media, so of course all this discord rolls over into that. But I don't think this level of animosity is really sustainable. I think people's interest is going to wane. We're going to burn out on a lot of these issues and just quit talking about it. A lot of the most vocal people today are college kids with nothing better to do than freak out over nothing. Eventually they'll graduate and have to get real jobs. They'll settle down and become involved in their own lives. Feeding the kids and paying the mortgage gives you less time for campus protests.

We've had periods of unrest before. I don't think things today are as bad as they were in the 1960s or 70s. The country survived that. It'll survive this. But what do I know? I'm just an unmotivated, cynical Gen-Xer.

^^
THIS is what I was hoping to learn from other people. I want to hear other perspective. Thank you for sharing!

Say what you will about the Selective Service (draft) that was previously in place, but it gave many a common bond that vanished when it did. I think a mandatory 2 years of service either in the military, Peace Corp, or VISTA would give everybody a common shared experience that would help break down some of the tribal barriers. I also think it should not be limited to males that aren't going to school, or don't have kids, or have bone spurs, or other disabilities that do not rise to being considered unemployable. It should be both sexes. Opposed to war or violence due to philosophical beliefs? There are PHS hospitals, and other entities where you could do the service.

Say what you will about the Selective Service (draft) that was previously in place, but it gave many a common bond that vanished when it did. I think a mandatory 2 years of service either in the military, Peace Corp, or VISTA would give everybody a common shared experience that would help break down some of the tribal barriers. I also think it should not be limited to males that aren't going to school, or don't have kids, or have bone spurs, or other disabilities that do not rise to being considered unemployable. It should be both sexes. Opposed to war or violence due to philosophical beliefs? There are PHS hospitals, and other entities where you could do the service.
I’m a big supporter of this idea

For the record - by the accounts of both people - saying that Barry Williams (Greg Brady) and Florence Henderson (Carol Brady) dated is a pretty big reach. He had a crush on her, asked her out on a “date.” and so she took him to dinner (he wasn’t old enough to drive yet. It happened once. She was 20 years older than him and had zero interest. He added the tidbit in his book to help sales.

On the other hand, the story that she caught crabs from the mayor of NYC was apparently very true. :D

In the 60s and 70s, the overriding issue was the Vietnam War, getting out and trying to get everyone back to work. Today, everything is political. You can hardly breathe without politics becoming involved. Race is politics, TV is politics, concerts are politics, church is politics, sports has become politics. The right elects a man who can't be easily descibed as a half-nuts President yet the left embraces first, a closet racist and socialist and then runs a woman who is as crooked as Putin for their candidate. My phone has become political, advertising is political, my mail, my social media use and even my neighborhood is political. Corporations have been deemed humans so they have become political. Animals now have rights and lawyers in some communities and cannot be owned by humans. We can't say certain words for fear of offending someone who wants to be something else but wasn't born that way or doesn't believe that way. We have to avoid any gender reference, disavow the 2nd amendment, run our governments according to the church, tax everyone for everything they are worth or the polar opposite where government can't adequately operate. We have corporate criminals who never do a day of time for crimes yet get golden parachutes as punishment, we have 18 year old gun control advocates who get offended when someone critcizes them and yet, weild enough power to get most advertisers to remove adds from the TV show of the person who offended them. We have students at colleges across the country who have actually been granted "safe-zones" from conservatives and men and white people.

Yes society is more angry today because every single f-ing thing that is seen, said and done is either political, or offends someone and is therefore, political. Try going on the politics forum right here on this site and hold a rational political debate about a subject without 6 or 7 people immediately demeaning you and go straight to name-calling their political foe of the day.

No, some of us may not like Hilary. Others may not like Trump. Many of us didn't like either of them. Trump most certainly alienated some people, but the level of bile, hatred, viscious rumor-creation and mongering - hatred that has been spread not just to Trump himself but to anyone who supports him. Hatred that has created groups like ANTIFA who feel justified in violence and are tolerated in some communities.

You think there is more hatred and animosity today than 30, 40, 50 years ago? Darn right there is.

People cry how we need to comminicate and talk things out yet as soon as anyone opens their mouth to communicate, they are immediately labeled, called racist or homophobe or offends someone and has millenials trying to get them fired and whining how they don't feel safe around certain other people.

Thank you for the rant.

I'm old enough to remember that the Vietnam War was very, very polarizing... Maybe as much or more so than the polarization we now see in this country. There was a lot of "love it or leave it" rhetoric, that protesters were unpatriotic, etc.

And at the time, history's darling JFK beat the villainous Richard Nixon only by what was then the thinnest margin in a presidential victory.

Yet, people remember that time very differently and even as Camelot.

I would suggest that the past always seems rosier than the present and at the very least there was a just the appearance and assumption that there weren't these great divisions in the good 'ol days.

For the record - by the accounts of both people - saying that Barry Williams (Greg Brady) and Florence Henderson (Carol Brady) dated is a pretty big reach. He had a crush on her, asked her out on a “date.” and so she took him to dinner (he wasn’t old enough to drive yet. It happened once. She was 20 years older than him and had zero interest. He added the tidbit in his book to help sales.

On the other hand, the story that she caught crabs from the mayor of NYC was apparently very true. :D

Odd thing to nit-pick when the central point was that the Brady Bunch represented a type of family utopia which was a complete and utter lie and greatly contributed to the illusion that things were much better then than now.

I would suggest that the past always seems rosier than the present and at the very least there was a just the appearance and assumption that there weren't these great divisions in the good 'ol days.

Never more apparent than after a shooting... Everyone talks about these "Good old days" when we beat our children and said our prayers in school.... Then I ask exactly when was this time when we weren't killing each other because even one of the first stories in the Christian bible is about a brother killing a brother.


Odd thing to nit-pick when the central point was that the Brady Bunch represented a type of family utopia which was a complete and utter lie and greatly contributed to the illusion that things were much better then than now.

We're both Mike and Carol widowers? I know Mike was but do they ever say how Carol became a single mother of 3? If it was divorce, or even worse at the time childbirth out of wedlock, then there was some darkness there for an era when the D word was almost as bad as one of the 7 dirty words.

Odd thing to nit-pick when the central point was that the Brady Bunch represented a type of family utopia which was a complete and utter lie and greatly contributed to the illusion that things were much better then than now.

Not trying to nitpick. Just setting record straight on something that has taken on a life of its own and achieved urban legend status.

Odd thing to nit-pick when the central point was that the Brady Bunch represented a type of family utopia which was a complete and utter lie and greatly contributed to the illusion that things were much better then than now.

Brady Bunch never seemed to me to represent this idealic and naive viewpoint of America as much as say Andy Griffith show and Leave it to Beaver and such. I mean, it overlapped All in the Family, and other such shows. Happy Days and Welcome Back Carter also overlapped, and had very different viewpoints of American life. I think by the start of the 70's TV was more of a mixed bag than it used to be.

Now, the Brady Bunch did lead me to believe it never rained in Southern California when I was a kid.

I found this an interesting read this morning. It speaks to the difference between then and now as far as the "bots" are concerned. People may have been just as polarized, but the automation part of the discourse is interesting. OKCtalk standing in contrast to this btw. I appreciate the divergent points of view on here instead of the tribalistic tendencies of other mediums.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/opinion/2018-hals-odyssey-to-reality.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Here is another example of how Americans did absolutely not get along better in the 60's and 70's or really any time else.

Few people realize that until the Supreme Court FORCED states to comply, that even in 1967 (I was in 2nd Grade) that in Oklahoma and 15 other states it was still a FELONY to marry outside your race.

In other words, even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which effectively ended the practice of open segregation and employment discrimination -- again it took a LAW to force that social change), a very large percentage of the country still thought it was a perfectly good idea to put people in prison for the simple act of a white person wedding someone of color.

Let that settle in for a minute.

It's not like people finally woke up and realized how outrageously horrible this idea was (in 1967!!!) and changed the law, they were FORCED to change them due to the famous decision in Loving v. Virginia (the subject of a recent movie, BTW).

And then realize that when a law like this is forced upon states and its citizens that ideas behind the previous laws don't suddenly change. There are a lot of people still alive who thought then and still think now that such things are wrong.


You could make a very, very strong argument that divides such as this were far more deep and pronounced in the past, there just wasn't social media or other ways of everyone being able to express themselves in a very public way.

I think one thing that has changed is tolerance and respect, and setting aside that everyone may not have your exact views. I remember when my Grandparents didn't like some things about the closest neighbor about 1/8 of a mile down the road. Betty and Bud were their names. Even though they had different interests, views, and beliefs on some things, they never maliciously attempted to damage or hurt them, as they were still neighbors. If Bud needed some help or heavy lifting, Grandpa was there, and it worked the other way around as well. They were still friends, but they weren't best friends and set the items they didn't get along about aside, to better each other and help when it was needed.

That is pretty much gone... We all post things on here sometimes, and someone comes back in regard to not liking my comments or point of view (and I do the same sometimes), and that is perfectly fine, we are different individuals. I bet if we all met in person, we may be able to find something that we do agree upon (politics, weather, food, Pete's wonderful drone pics, etc...), and perhaps we could concentrate on that instead of bickering and being at permanent odds with each other.

I have a friend who is an atheist, and I am a Christian... I don't try to change that about him,and he doesn't try to change that about me. We tolerate each others different views, and respect each others decision. What we have done is found common interests and hobbies we both like, and we get along. I would help him any day of the week, and vice versa.....

^

I still think that is the way when you are are talking about in-person dealings. A good number of my friends -- including my best friend -- and I profoundly disagree on many sensitive topics but we are still good to each other and I usually just politely change the subject when it comes up.

I would suggest that it just appears people don't along now because of social media and 24/7 news channels that spend much more time in angry opinion than real news.

Especially the rise of shareable memes and posts on social media. People just forward them along constantly, without verifying any information, and passing along more untruths. It's a much more enhanced less filterable version of the emails my crazier relatives would forward to me. I had so many folks unfollowed and hidden on Facebook that it's not funny.

Thanks for making this political. :doh:

I’m assuming you’re arguing that my post was partisan because this entire thread is about politics. My post wasn’t partisan at all. Russians strategies online strategies to use social media to create division are well documented.

This comment actually points to part of the problem... I made a simple statement of fact with no political connotations... yet, someone still found a way to view it as partisan. That facts have become partisan is part of our “post-truth” reality. Of course, misinformation and propaganda have always been around (see yellow journalism), but social media has made it more complex, amplified, and participatory. We curate and pass on misinformation in new ways.

I’ll finish by saying that respectful deliberation is difficult. I’ve been working on it for years and I still make mistakes. But, more than anything, it starts with people really willing to listen and learn from each other.

Thanks for making this political. :doh:

I’m assuming you’re arguing that my post was partisan because this entire thread is about politics. My post wasn’t partisan at all. Russians strategies to use social media to create division are well documented.

This comment actually points to part of the problem... I made a simple statement of fact with no political connotations... yet, someone still found a way to view it as partisan. That facts have become partisan is part of our “post-truth” reality. Of course, misinformation and propaganda have always been around (see yellow journalism), but social media has made it more complex, amplified, and participatory. We curate and pass on misinformation in new ways.

I’ll finish by saying that respectful deliberation is difficult. I’ve been working on it for years and I still make mistakes. But, more than anything, it starts with people really willing to listen and learn from each other.

Most of the "measurables" would indicate this is one of the most peaceful and cooperative times in US history. Now, if you try to measure words on the internet (which is basically infinite), you may not come to the same conclusion.

And while not monumental (as in Pete's example above about interracial marriages), I see incremental changes happening fairly rapidly without the threat of force/law. I attribute a lot of this to the same thing that seems to indicate all the hate...the internet, or another way, a more free flow of information...useful information.

Most of the "measurables" would indicate this is one of the most peaceful and cooperative times in US history. Now, if you try to measure words on the internet (which is basically infinite), you may not come to the same conclusion.

And while not monumental (as in Pete's example above about interracial marriages), I see incremental changes happening fairly rapidly without the threat of force/law. I attribute a lot of this to the same thing that seems to indicate all the hate...the internet, or another way, a more free flow of information...useful information.

You know this is right. I could never imagine 30 years ago, certain churches flying rainbow flags out front saying "all are welcome." Politics are unfortunately more polarized but I think the middle has never been more unified, even with their differences.

Unfortunately, the poles seems to get the most attention and drive elections.