[extropy-chat] can't second guess history

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>

>> Well, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "repressive nightmare,"
>> but widespread housing discrimination, so-called "miscegenation" laws
>> (in some states), lynchings, outright discrimination against gay
>> people (just about everywhere), unequal rights where women were
>> concerned, prayers led by teachers in some public schools, de jure
>> segregation in the Southern states, unequal access to law schools and
>> medical schools (and the like), hardly any diversity in politics,
>> movies, television, books (other than the WASP model), illegal
>> abortions (out of necessity) - coupled with no really effective birth
>> control, no real undertanding, concern or protection against corporal
>> child abuse and sexual child abuse, no protection for women against
>> sexual harrassment in the workplace, the McCarthy witch hunts ...
>> will this do for a start?  Of course, not every family was
>> "repressed" (especially if they conformed and/or were of the "innie"
>> variety), but the repressions - and many nightmares - were cruelly
>> real for many, many people.
>
> Outside of the McCarthyism, everything else you speak of existed long
> before the 50's. In fact, it was the 50's when all of these things
> started getting questioned.

I never said it didn't.  I was comparing the 1950s to the way things are 
now - the 1950s were specifically brought up.

And, no, the 1950s decade was not when these things started getting 
questioned - all these things were being questioned *long before*. 
Television was bringing America "home" to viewers like nothing else (and one 
can compare the effect television was  having to the "threat" posed by the 
Internet to the USSR before Glasnost).   America simply needed to clean 
things up at home, as the burden of claiming to be a free democratic 
country, yet observing de jure segregation for many of its own citizens 
(along with the garden variety de facto) was getting to be too much to 
handle.  Civil rights legislation was necessary to save America's reputation 
(and in subsequent yearts, many other groups got on the 
"we-need-our-rights-too" bandwagon; with the advent of The Pill - even women 
could finally get uppity and start calling the shots).

> As for McCarthyism, it is now a proven fact that all of McCarthy's
> accusations were accurate. The release of the Venona files in the last
> decade document who was and was not a Soviet spy, and documents the
> fact that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations specifically
> suppressed this evidence because it implicated their own people (Alger
> Hiss and Harry Dexter White, among others). The only outrageous thing
> about that issue was the fact that Democrats were able to get away with
> their histrionics and treason.

I never said they weren't accurate, did I?  But you're not saying the 
McCarthy trials weren't a travesty, are you?  The McCarthy trials were a 
witch hunt, pure and simple - painting even uninvolved people with a broad 
"red-and-atheist" brush (and, while the floodgates were open and paranoia 
ruled, letting in some bad legislation).

Olga