Jim Conroy | Does America have more political turbulence now than it did during our crazy college years?
No question in our survey generated as lopsided a response. Or as much angst.
77% say the turbulence is more worrisome now. Just 3% say it was worse in the 1960’s. The rest rate the two eras as equally turbulent.
And here’s a sampler of responses. They reflect a range of perspectives, but one unifying theme. We’re pretty freaked out!
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Then the disruption was coming from us. Now it’s coming from a malign collection of wannabe authoritarians who are in government and in power.
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Then there were some serious issues, but now the inmates are running the asylum.
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I don’t think the United States will remain intact for another 20 years.
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We’ve gone from working toward a more just society to a decaying authoritarian state; a generation’s work wiped out by fascists.
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It looks to me like our form of “democracy” – which it never really was – has now failed. Money always ran things, and hoodwinking the voters was always the game, but now with Citizens United, it’s “game over.” We can see, if we look, that it’s all a fake, and we are now in a full-blown dictatorship. The Exec Branch is ignoring the Legislative and defying the Judicial. “That’s all, folks!”
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Much more conflict about fundamental values now, as opposed to policy arguments. I think we’ve learned something from the policy experiments since college, more humbled about what might work.
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Difference between then and now is, of course, that no matter how demented politicians were in the 1960s, 1970’s, etc., none of them were rampaging all-out to end democracy, as is the case with the contemptible arch-right-wing occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But problem is, his FUEL is radical policies of the law-breaking lunatic lemming liberals. Lefties: you need to dial it back. You keep taking laudable, commendable principles and diving way-far-off-the-deep-end with them, alienating sane centrist voters like me, by which you gift-wrapped White House back to satan traitor for a second term.
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Growing opposition to Viet Nam certainly made for turbulent, divisive times, but it wasn’t impossible to fall back to “this too shall pass” confidence. In contrast, today’s turbulence and divisiveness in this country feel like a real threat to our national character, and it is increasingly hard to see a way out of that.
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I became somewhat more conservative, but thanks to Trump I am becoming radical again!
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I seem to take political turbulence more personally than I did in my youth. Perhaps it is because I am exposed to more politically oriented media.
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Foreign affair issues (Vietnam) have been replaced by cultural issues.
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I was always conservative and at Yale a member of ROTC. Many of my classmates were more liberal, but I did not feel that they hated me and I did not hate them. We had good discussions about policies and politics. Now because of my support for Trump I am called a fascist, neo-Nazi, racist, deplorable and garbage.
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If I answer this item, I might incur a libel suit. So I’ll remain silent on this item.
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Pretty bad now, but then I remember every meal at Calhoun disintegrating into shouting matches.
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Issues I was concerned about in the late 1960’s have been mostly resolved favorably. Issues I never thought of (e.g., climate change, gun control and right-wing autocracy) appear more threatening than the issues of the 1960’s.
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We had a dog in the fight (the draft). We Yalies were mostly nonviolent, except, perhaps, SDS. BLM and Antifa are the new Brownshirts, and are clearly quite violent – a clear contrast.
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We now have an administration totally dedicated to demolishing the constitutional order and forming a hereditary dictatorship. Then, we knew the system would survive.
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Now we have a wacko would-be despot who has shaken the world order beyond comparison in my lifetime, leaving most of us befuddled and helpless. Then we had a sense of purpose and “rightness” and a community of support and actions for change, not that we saw all the change we hoped for.
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Much more extreme now. Presence/influence of social media has promoted differences rather than bring us together.
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Much of society no longer values facts, and way too many people get “news” from non-factual sources.
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Now – lack of compassion, respect for others, patience and kindness. The fear buzz causes finger-pointing instead of listening.
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There are more evil/stupid people in America than I thought.
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Turbulence was performative when we were at Yale, but there was no real threat to the established norms or values. “Revolution” was not a real possibility. Now all bets are off.
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The worrisome nature of things has gradually increased over the years of social complacency until the extinction of our species has become all the more possible.
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Why is everything so cruel?
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Wild then, wild now.
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Off the charts in this moment. F’ing ridiculous.
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Yikes! Help!
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Additional Comments? The floor is open.
We spent our four years together during the vortex of the Vietnam War. As a foundation for our get together at the end of this month I suggest we watch the Netflix series: “Turning Point: the Vietnam War.”
We spent four years together in college during the vortex of the Vietnam War. As a foundation to our get together at the end of this month, I strongly suggest we watch the Netflix series: “Turning Point: The Vietnam War.”
As Louis Brandeis wrote back whenever: “We can either have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Income and wealth disparity are our ruin. In our Yale days maximum federal income tax bracket was 70%, down from 91% in the ’50’s. Now it’s 37%, and the wealthiest among us pay as little as 3.4% of their income to the IRS. The result: oligarchy and abandonment of a value placed on “the common good.”
History has moved on. During the 1960s we were still in the late stages of the postwar economic boom, which significantly raised living standards for most people in the U.S., and for many abroad. Most Americans felt their lives were getting better and as a result politics were not so polarized. Now most people feel their lives are getting worse and they’re angry. Politicians like Trump in the US, Le Pen in France, LaFarge in the UK and the AfD in Germany are symptoms of that anger. They’re not the cause of it. Make life better for ordinary people and polarization will dissipate and demagogues lose support. But why can’t governments in any of the richest countries of the world make life better for ordinary people? That was the question I raised in my earlier post on governance, and I believe it is at the heart of this question as well.
The 60’s had two significant issues (the war and race), but also largely had political stability away from those two issues. Young people felt it acutely in the 60’s, but many Americans did not. Now everyone is feeling it, everything has been shaken loose in the attempt to take society back to the 1880’s, and that includes all of the institutions we thought were sacred in the ’60s – even democracy itself. Is there any real comparison? You tell me.
While we had serious divisions in the late ’60s over the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and the breakdown of an archaic social hierarchy, our elected leaders worked within established guardrails (for the most part) to resolve our differences. Today, those guardrails seem to have vanished as we have elected an autocratic and unrestrained despot as President, along with a spineless Congress, which permits him to try to do what pleases him. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of a slow but steady change from relying on the powers of the electorate in our decision-making to relying on the powers of the almighty dollar, with the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court cementing this change. To the extent the electorate still has some sway, it has been corrupted by the ability of each person to select their own truth. We may yet get back to our founding principles, but only because our despotic President is also sufficiently incompetent to undermine his cause.
“If you remember the ’60s, you really weren’t there.” –attributed to Charles Fleischer. At the time, I think many of us saw things in fairly dire terms, but less so now in retrospect. Now, without question, the country is in a turbulent and risky state. Many of us to the non-violent left of center are baffled and worried that so many fellow citizens are so spooked by the threats of universal health care, same-sex marriage, secular public education, etc., that they feel compelled to arm themselves against us.
The only worse time in our history was 1860, after Lincoln’s election, and we know what happened a few months later. It amazes me that anyone in our Class (and, alas, there appear to be two of us) supports the fascist psychopath in the White House.
The times right now create anxiety. The separation of powers are threatened in the US. Truth is dissolving around the world. Our astoundingly rare garden of a planet suffers from human excesses.
I urge classmates to fill out the survey. It is wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and witty. Perhaps because I am none of those it did not take me nearly the hour Jim Conroy and Paul Taylor suggested it would. Maybe get a glass of something nice and settle in at the best part of your day; it could be a nice experience. I’ve found catching the results of these surveys over the years some of the more vivid parts of our reunions. Thanks to Paul and Jim.