The 1950s were overrated!

[Vandalshandle]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

I graduated high school in 1964, and I NEVER experienced anything like that from 1st thru 12th - not even close.

I graduated from HS in 1969 and this guy is posting a fantasy.

Why would I lie about that? It was 1952/1953, DeKalb County, Georgia. Way before your time, kiddo.

 

[Vandalshandle]

The period of 1948 to about 1964 was a time of extreme reactionary paranoia in America. China fell to the Communists. The Iron Curtain lowered over Eastern Europe. North Korea invaded South Korea, and the war was on. McCarthy discovered how to take advantage of all this, for his own personal benefit. Nixon did, too. Russia developed the atomic bomb. Soviet spies were discovered in the Manhattan project and in Great Britain. Cuba fell to the Communists. The Cuban Missile crisis brought us to the brink of nuclear war. The Soviets put a satellite up in 1957. The Russians were threatening Berlin, and making moves in S. E. Asia. The Hydrogen bomb was developed. The official state department position was that there was a world wide communist conspiracy, headquartered in Moscow. In fact, the Chinese had already thrown the Russians out of their country, and they did not trust them any more than they trusted us. There was a commie hiding under every bed. The John Birch society was formed. loyalty oaths were required to work for the government. The House UnAmerican Acivities Committee was running rampant. Black lists were made up. Careers were ruined. The movie, "The Manchurian Candidate" came out. It became fashionable to call anyone who disagreed with you, a communist. Even General George Marshall was called out. The times were dangerous, and it was reflected in our culture. Suddenly there were dozens of science fiction movies about aliens taking over the world. J. Edgar Hoover got into the act, and wrote a book about, "Masters of Deceit". Even Rocky and Bullwinkle had to deal with Boris and Natasha.

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world. For reasons that I have never understood, the USA never did figure out that the reason that we were losing all over the world was because we were backing the wrong horses. Bastita in Cuba was in bed with the Mafia. Even JFK wanted somebody to off Diem in Vietnam. Chang Ki Chek in China was thourghly discredited by everybody, including our own State Department. Park, in South Korea, diddo.

I would not want to live through those times again.

 

[Vandalshandle]

And then, in the early 1960's, the left started to push back....

 

[Rikurzhen]

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world.

I would not want to live through those times again.

It looks to me like you absorbed the culture when you were young, came into adulthood and absorbed a different, leftist, perspective and then stopped learning from that point forward. During the entire Cold War the NSA was intercepting Soviet message traffic and this was classified. This project was named Venona. Early parts of this material has now been declassified. I suspect that you're unaware of this.

That Right Wing paranoia has basis in fact:

The decrypted messages gave important insights into Soviet behavior in the period during which duplicate one-time pads were used. With the first break into the code, Venona revealed the existence of Soviet espionage[21] at Los Alamos National Laboratories.[22] Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May, and Donald Maclean. Others worked in Washington in the State Department, the Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,[23] and even the White House.

The decrypts show the U.S. and other nations were targeted in major espionage campaigns by the Soviet Union as early as 1942. Among those identified are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Alger Hiss; Harry Dexter White,[13] the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie,[24] a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin,[25] a section head in the Office of Strategic Services. . . .

The Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one time or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies.[28] Duncan Lee, Donald Wheeler, Jane Foster Zlatowski, and Maurice Halperin passed information to Moscow. The War Production Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Office of War Information, included at least half a dozen Soviet sources each among their employees. In the opinion of some, almost every American military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent by Soviet espionage.[29]​

When the Soviets can place agents in the White House, Dept. of State and the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the the CIA, that's pretty damn impressive deep penetration. Regarding the declassification:

The dearth of reliable information available to the public—or even to the President and Congress—may have helped to polarize debates of the 1950s over the extent and danger of Soviet espionage in the United States. Anti-Communists suspected many spies remained at large, perhaps including some known to the government. Those who criticized the governmental and non-governmental efforts to root out and expose communists felt these efforts were an overreaction (in addition to other reservations about McCarthyism). Public access—or broader governmental access—to the Venona evidence would certainly have affected this debate, as it is affecting the retrospective debate among historians and others now.​

So your perception, formed when you were entering adulthood, probably needs to be recalibrated in light of the new, declassified, evidence which shows how damn thorough the Soviet spy penetration of America was in that era.

 

[Iceweasel]

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world.

Communism was a real threat, your polemics don't make it a non issue.

 

[AmericanGirl05]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

I graduated high school in 1964, and I NEVER experienced anything like that from 1st thru 12th - not even close.

I graduated from HS in 1969 and this guy is posting a fantasy.

Why would I lie about that? It was 1952/1953, DeKalb County, Georgia. Way before your time, kiddo.

Before MY time? I'm not a young woman. I went to grade school in the 50s. My husband went to grade school in the 50s. In different communities, one very, very large and one small and insular. In the Northeast, true, but in different states.

Neither of us had the dog tag experience. Duck and cover, sure.

 

[pismoe]

no duck and cover or dog tags fer me , maybe we were considered expendable , I don't know . I don't even remember being worried about any nuke . I figured that the USA could handle the problems i guess .

 

[Iceweasel]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

I graduated high school in 1964, and I NEVER experienced anything like that from 1st thru 12th - not even close.

I graduated from HS in 1969 and this guy is posting a fantasy.

Why would I lie about that? It was 1952/1953, DeKalb County, Georgia. Way before your time, kiddo.

Before MY time? I'm not a young woman. I went to grade school in the 50s. My husband went to grade school in the 50s. In different communities, one very, very large and one small and insular. In the Northeast, true, but in different states.

Neither of us had the dog tag experience. Duck and cover, sure.

I graduated in '72. I was an Army brat the entire time. I lived in the south in three states, NYC, NJ, Germany and sometimes on military installations. We never had dog tags nor have I ever heard of it.

It could be some brainstorm his principle came up with but it was not commonplace.

 

[Pogo]

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world.

Communism was a real threat, your polemics don't make it a non issue.

Sure it was.
Know what else was big then? Da bogeyman. And monsters under the bed. Now there was a real threat.

In one sense it was no different than now in that the real threat was power-bent politicians. And they gave us a stark and obvious clue that they were there every afternoon as our favorite TV show signed off. They sang, "M... I ... C... "
We thought they were spelling out the name of a cartoon character, until Eisenhower told us what it meant on the way out the door.

 

[Pogo]

The period of 1948 to about 1964 was a time of extreme reactionary paranoia in America. China fell to the Communists. The Iron Curtain lowered over Eastern Europe. North Korea invaded South Korea, and the war was on. McCarthy discovered how to take advantage of all this, for his own personal benefit. Nixon did, too. Russia developed the atomic bomb. Soviet spies were discovered in the Manhattan project and in Great Britain. Cuba fell to the Communists. The Cuban Missile crisis brought us to the brink of nuclear war. The Soviets put a satellite up in 1957. The Russians were threatening Berlin, and making moves in S. E. Asia. The Hydrogen bomb was developed. The official state department position was that there was a world wide communist conspiracy, headquartered in Moscow. In fact, the Chinese had already thrown the Russians out of their country, and they did not trust them any more than they trusted us. There was a commie hiding under every bed. The John Birch society was formed. loyalty oaths were required to work for the government. The House UnAmerican Acivities Committee was running rampant. Black lists were made up. Careers were ruined. The movie, "The Manchurian Candidate" came out. It became fashionable to call anyone who disagreed with you, a communist. Even General George Marshall was called out. The times were dangerous, and it was reflected in our culture. Suddenly there were dozens of science fiction movies about aliens taking over the world. J. Edgar Hoover got into the act, and wrote a book about, "Masters of Deceit". Even Rocky and Bullwinkle had to deal with Boris and Natasha.

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world. For reasons that I have never understood, the USA never did figure out that the reason that we were losing all over the world was because we were backing the wrong horses. Bastita in Cuba was in bed with the Mafia. Even JFK wanted somebody to off Diem in Vietnam. Chang Ki Chek in China was thourghly discredited by everybody, including our own State Department. Park, in South Korea, diddo.

Fine post Van. Didn't want to cut the rest out but just to spotlight this:

It became fashionable to call anyone who disagreed with you, a communist.

I would not want to live through those times again.

A demagoguery that lives on even now, right here on these fora. See also "Liberal" a term the same McCarthyites started polluting as part of their campaign fearmongering. Demonizing in general was very big, with the history of Naziism sitting within the reach of recent memory, and the demagogues played that card 24/7. Lee Atwater would revive the same terminology tactic in 1988 with the Bush campaign, to the point where we have people on the board right now who think that "liberal", "leftist" and "Democrat" all mean the same thing, unaware that they're buying a political doubletalk advertising slogan as opposed to a political science term.

Fine background though. You could add Latin America, another long bloody history. It's important to know where one comes from to see where one's going. And to recognize the tactics that brought those events about. That way, when the same tactics are used again they're familiar for what they really are.

"Communist" ... "Liberal" ..... "radical Islam" .... "unAmerican activities".... all from the oldest play in the book, Divide and Conquer. Because it's all about "Us" and "Them". Simpleminded times.

​

 

[Pogo]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

I graduated high school in 1964, and I NEVER experienced anything like that from 1st thru 12th - not even close.

I graduated from HS in 1969 and this guy is posting a fantasy.

Why would I lie about that? It was 1952/1953, DeKalb County, Georgia. Way before your time, kiddo.

Before MY time? I'm not a young woman. I went to grade school in the 50s. My husband went to grade school in the 50s. In different communities, one very, very large and one small and insular. In the Northeast, true, but in different states.

Neither of us had the dog tag experience. Duck and cover, sure.

I graduated in '72. I was an Army brat the entire time. I lived in the south in three states, NYC, NJ, Germany and sometimes on military installations. We never had dog tags nor have I ever heard of it.

It could be some brainstorm his principle came up with but it was not commonplace.

"I never saw it, therefore it never existed"

Think about it -- if you graduated in '72 that would be two decades later, so it wouldn't be in your time to remember. Linear time, dood.

 

[Iceweasel]

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world.

Communism was a real threat, your polemics don't make it a non issue.

Sure it was.
Know what else was big then? Da bogeyman. And monsters under the bed. Now there was a real threat.

In one sense it was no different than now in that the real threat was power-bent politicians. And they gave us a stark and obvious clue that they were there every afternoon as our favorite TV show signed off. They sang, "M... I ... C... "
We thought they were spelling out the name of a cartoon character, until Eisenhower told us what it meant on the way out the door.

A commie would think that. Everyone else knows better.

 

[Pogo]

I was just a kid for most of that time, and I bought into all that stuff. it was only later that I realized that it was mostly Right Wing paranoia responding to communists successes in other parts of the world.

Communism was a real threat, your polemics don't make it a non issue.

Sure it was.
Know what else was big then? Da bogeyman. And monsters under the bed. Now there was a real threat.

In one sense it was no different than now in that the real threat was power-bent politicians. And they gave us a stark and obvious clue that they were there every afternoon as our favorite TV show signed off. They sang, "M... I ... C... "
We thought they were spelling out the name of a cartoon character, until Eisenhower told us what it meant on the way out the door.

A commie would think that. Everyone else knows better.

Lovely illustration of post 290.

 

[Vandalshandle]

Communism was a threat in a military sense. There was nothing imaginary about the Cuban missile crisis. My former high school buddies who were in the service were put on high alert. What WAS imaginary was the paranoia that there were commies everywhere in the USA subverting out schools, movies, books, fluoridating our water, writing our newspaper articles, The communists were blamed for rock and roll music, juvenile delinquency, teenage sex and pregnancy, infiltrating our State Department and unions, etc., etc., etc. It all became so over the top that when the 1960's were in full swing, kids just naturally rejected the whole American ideal. Of course, that ideal also included Vietnam.

 

[Pogo]

Communism was a threat in a military sense. There was nothing imaginary about the Cuban missile crisis. My former high school buddies who were in the service were put on high alert. What WAS imaginary was the paranoia that there were commies everywhere in the USA subverting out schools, movies, books, fluoridating our water, writing our newspaper articles, The communists were blamed for rock and roll music, juvenile delinquency, teenage sex and pregnancy, infiltrating our State Department and unions, etc., etc., etc. It all became so over the top that when the 1960's were in full swing, kids just naturally rejected the whole American ideal. Of course, that ideal also included Vietnam.

Oh yes, forgot about water fluoridation. Fred Koch and that bunch - hard to believe now that they had followers.

"Communist" as catch-all tag got a lot of use against any political "enemy", didn't matter if it was unrelated to political philosophy. Logical connections are tossed out the window when you're trafficking in fear....

​

"A bad place for Negroes who believe in social equality". In America.

 

[Vandalshandle]

...and, of course, it was well understood in the South that MLK was a commie, and so was Justice Earl Warren. There were billboards all over Georgia with a photograph of MLK sitting in a school room with the claim that he went through formal communist indoctrination.

 

[Pogo]

...and, of course, it was well understood in the South that MLK was a commie, and so was Justice Earl Warren. There were billboards all over Georgia with a photograph of MLK sitting in a school room with the claim that he went through formal communist indoctrination.

Oh yes, I remember the "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards pretty much in the same places that had alternate water fountains and bathrooms labeled "colored".

 

[Iceweasel]

Communism was a threat in a military sense. There was nothing imaginary about the Cuban missile crisis. My former high school buddies who were in the service were put on high alert. What WAS imaginary was the paranoia that there were commies everywhere in the USA subverting out schools, movies, books, fluoridating our water, writing our newspaper articles, The communists were blamed for rock and roll music, juvenile delinquency, teenage sex and pregnancy, infiltrating our State Department and unions, etc., etc., etc. It all became so over the top that when the 1960's were in full swing, kids just naturally rejected the whole American ideal. Of course, that ideal also included Vietnam.

Some of the fear was unfounded but certainly not all. I never heard anyone blame them for all that, maybe someone did but it wasn't the norm. They were on the march and the USSR became a nuclear superpower.

To say it was no threat is just stupid, (not directed at you) people died trying to flee the communist dictatorship. If you wanted to leave here, you could.

Map - Political Systems of the World in the 1950s
For the second time in the 20th Century, the world had tranformed itself beyond recognition. With the fall of Fascism, the rise of Communism and the independence of several major colonies, over half of humanity had made a decisive break with the past. The 1950s were an era in which people tried to assess and react to the changes unleashed by the 1940s.

Two trends dominated:

1. Communism -- which had once been confined to only the Soviet Union and Mongolia -- had now spread to 13 nations and a third of humanity.
2. (Full) Democracy -- which had been reduced to a mere 9 nations in offshore enclaves during the darkest days of the War -- had now expanded to include almost half the world's population, the highest percentage in history thus far.

This clear rift between two ascendant and competing philosophies dominated geo-politics in the 50s. It showed itself in the military alliances of the times, and in the temporary borders that divided disputed territories like Germany, Korea and Vietnam.

 

[Vandalshandle]

Nixon won his first election in California by claiming that the woman he was running against was, "...As pink as her underwear".

 

[Pogo]

Communism was a threat in a military sense. There was nothing imaginary about the Cuban missile crisis. My former high school buddies who were in the service were put on high alert. What WAS imaginary was the paranoia that there were commies everywhere in the USA subverting out schools, movies, books, fluoridating our water, writing our newspaper articles, The communists were blamed for rock and roll music, juvenile delinquency, teenage sex and pregnancy, infiltrating our State Department and unions, etc., etc., etc. It all became so over the top that when the 1960's were in full swing, kids just naturally rejected the whole American ideal. Of course, that ideal also included Vietnam.

Some of the fear was unfounded but certainly not all. I never heard anyone blame them for all that, maybe someone did but it wasn't the norm. They were on the march and the USSR became a nuclear superpower.

To say it was no threat is just stupid, (not directed at you) people died trying to flee the communist dictatorship. If you wanted to leave here, you could.

Map - Political Systems of the World in the 1950s
For the second time in the 20th Century, the world had tranformed itself beyond recognition. With the fall of Fascism, the rise of Communism and the independence of several major colonies, over half of humanity had made a decisive break with the past. The 1950s were an era in which people tried to assess and react to the changes unleashed by the 1940s.

Two trends dominated:

1. Communism -- which had once been confined to only the Soviet Union and Mongolia -- had now spread to 13 nations and a third of humanity.
2. (Full) Democracy -- which had been reduced to a mere 9 nations in offshore enclaves during the darkest days of the War -- had now expanded to include almost half the world's population, the highest percentage in history thus far.

This clear rift between two ascendant and competing philosophies dominated geo-politics in the 50s. It showed itself in the military alliances of the times, and in the temporary borders that divided disputed territories like Germany, Korea and Vietnam.

"Communism" and "democracy" are not opposite (or even in a broad sense, mutually antagonistic) terms. They were certainly sold as such but that was more demagoguery bullshit designed to divide and conquer at the expense of logic. Transformed from political science terms into advertising brands. Political demagoguery and commercial advertising using exactly the same methods, learning from each other.

That's why fewer and fewer in the general public could (and still can't) rationally define what they mean. Same with "Liberal" and the latest model, the remix of the century-old "Progressive". No need to take the time to spell out definitions when you're only using the word as a grenade.