Must we be nostalgic about the fifties? Pervasive influences are at work. We are not left to our own devices and nostalgic impulses do not flow as they will. They are not mirrored in their variety by the mass media, but rather squeezed into narrow channels. Nostalgic for something, we are given the 1950′s suitably packed for instant consumption. Instead of falsifying the past each in his own nostalgic way and doing nobody else any harm, we have had the mass media falsifying everyone’s past and doing truth, at least, a disservice.
Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody. Why should people in the twilight of their lives care about Howdy Doody when a banal puppet gave them headaches at the time? Click for image…
The hey-day of the House Un-American Activities Committee and its ongoing hunt for Communists in the government and the arts. Ultimately, hundreds were automatically presumed to be guilty rather than innocent, and guilty too, of nothing more than holding minority political views. In short, as a result of their terror of Russia and Communism, a substantial number of Americans turned their backs totally on the basic precepts of their own Constitution, toa degree that prompted writers such as Fred J. Cook to speak of the fifties as “the nightmare decade,” though in just, Communism has been somewhat displaced by the current War on Terror and an equal betrayal of the spirit of the constitution.
—”Death Valley Days” (1952) TV Series—An era where industrial age entertainment was king; ROnald Reagan could churn out product without ever dismounting from his horse…click for image source…
America’s policy of containment of Communist aggression wherever it might occur let to the Korean War in the summer of 1950, a “police action” that lasted for slightly more than three years and resulted in the death of more than fifty thousand United States servicemen. The vast majority of the American people had little interest in the Korean War, however, for, perhaps to a degree justifiable, the fifties were a time of great selfishness in the country. As far as the average American was concerned, he’d done enough sacrificing for the national good during World War II, and he was eager now to get on with such peacetime pursuits as amassing enough money for a house in the suburbs, a small television and a car…( to be continued)…
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