My bad America

Yesterday’s column ended with me saying we had nostalgia about earlier days, signifying the column itself was nostalgia, and nostalgia is always sentimental and golden. 

Even as I wrote the column, I knew I was turning a blind eye to some of the bad things about “my” America, the America of the 1950s, mostly.

Starting with segregation, and not just in the South. 

Loyal (liberal) subscriber Naomi Brownstein was kind 😳 enough to summarize some other facets of earlier American life:

“When homosexuality was a crime, punishable by jail time. 

“When upstanding, professional Black people could not buy a home in their desired neighborhood simply because they were Black. Legally. 

“Jews too were denied access to homes and jobs of their choosing, like the famed Main Line with ‘restrictive’ real estate agreements. Legal. 

“Qualified women were denied jobs because they were women. Legal. 

“Ditto, people with disabilities, many who could not even ride public trans because there were no reasonable accommodations. 

“A Senator named Joseph McCarthy terrorized people because of their political beliefs and devastated lives. Legally. 

“True, we didn’t have metal detectors in schools. That was before the Heller decision and the NRA’s relentless pursuit of flooding our streets with guns. 

“Before the Right Wing outrage machine and fearmongering turned our political opponents into enemies and needy people, especially those of color into free-loaders.”

Well, Naomi, I see in the last paragraph you couldn’t resist going political and making exaggerated claims, but I won’t argue them here. I applaud you for remaining here and standing your ground, while many other Lefties have fled. 

I will add, from another liberal friend (this one a lurker) that in the early days of credit cards, women couldn’t get them without a man signing off on them. Taliban, anyone?

You mentioned exclusions against Blacks and Jews, but let’s not forget Hispanics and Asians.

In addition to discrimination against minorities, we had discrimination against majorities, women, that continue in earnings today.

So, we covered race, religion, nationality, gender — anything else?

I am glad all that is on the table because it gives me the opportunity to declare, this was America’s past.

No intelligent person will deny it.

No rational person will say nothing has changed.

But yet the woke act as if this were 1922, or 1822.

So when I look at “my” old America, and America today — with Black billionaires and mayors of major cities, with openly gay people elected to public office, with trans people practically bragging about their orientation, with female governors and CEOs, with Hispanics and Asians prominent in American life and culture — you may begin to understand why I pay so little attention to what are called “microaggressions.”

Ooo, someone looked at you the wrong way?

When I was a teenager they were lynching people!

Someone used the wrong pronoun?

When I was a teenager, gays were routinely beaten to death.

When I was a teenager interracial marriage was banned in some states.

They now account for more than 10% of all marriages.

There has been a massive social, political, and economic revolution — mostly peaceful — in America since I was a kid.

I welcome it. My generation led it.

But the social change has also brought a sort of neo-fascism with talk police and thought police. Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board. Are you kidding me? 

College campus, once the fertile soil for creative and oddball beliefs, the birth of the Free Speech movement, now elevates people’s feelings over others’ right of free expression, and students “of color” demand separate dormitories, lunchrooms, and graduation ceremonies.

Is this what my generation expected when it marched for equal rights? Didn’t the U.S. Supreme Court rule that separate could never be equal?

I am always willing to admit the bad things about America, the things on our to-do list.

I challenge critics to list the good things about America.