Transitions

Over the course of almost seven decades on this earth I’ve seen countless transitions in our society.  Some are memorable, some are laughable, and others are best put behind us.  Let’s review.

I was born at the beginning of the 1950s.  We were at war again, this time in Korea as we faced the threats we envisioned from communist expansion.  Here at home, we had Senator Joseph McCarthy attempting to improve his political fortunes by rooting out the communists in our nation.  For some context on this, in the 1930s communism was all the rage among the social elites of Hollywood and the Ivy League.  Joe played on the fears of the nation and the threat of nuclear war to ruin the lives of many good people in an effort to root out the threat of communism to our society.  As we learn in our history various industries created “blacklists” of people who had voiced their support of communism in the pre-WW2 era and during the war when the Soviet Union was an Ally.

In 1952, the nation elected retired General of the Army and President of Columbia University Dwight D. Eisenhower to begin a period of relative calm, albeit with frequent nuclear attack drills at school.  We, as a nation, began to put Senator McCarthy behind us, but its damage had already been done and those identified as communist sympathizers were ostracized.  There also lurked, just below the surface, the issues of racial discrimination and abuse of the minorities in the nation.  We had a large standing military with permanent bases in North Africa, Europe, and the Far East.  The great transition of that decade was the gradual replacement of the New Deal generation leaders in positions of power under Roosevelt to the young Turks who had served in the World War.  Names like Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and John F. Kennedy began to emerge as power brokers on the political stage.  The 1950s are characterized by critics as a “gray decade” where there were no great social upheavals, but that is a false characterization.  The men and woman who had won the World War were busy building their families and chasing the American Dream.  They began the migration of families into the suburbs that continue today.  At the same time, the NAACP successfully challenged the standing policy of “separate but equal” that made the Negros second class citizens despite the amendments specifically passed after the civil war to create a state of equality.  For the record that judgment was “Brown v Board of Education.”

With the election of John F. Kennedy, we see the passing of the torch from one generation to the next.  JFK and his wife were the clear favorites of the social elite and the media fawned over his rise much as English storytellers celebrated King Arthur and Guinevere.  In fact, with his inauguration, Washington DC was crowned the new Camelot.  For three years we had TV tours of the White House and common people across the country strove to emulate the new King and his Queen.  What the media and the nation didn’t pay too much attention to was the role the FBI played in suppressing political dissent and racial equality as J. Edger Hoover kept track of people he deemed dangerous.  Also, the President seemed to stumble from one crisis to another in his foreign affairs.  First, he approved, but failed to support, an invasion of Cuba, then we had a confrontation with the USSR over placement of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Ballistic Missiles in Cuba (in response to ours in Turkey), next the beginnings of the racial struggles of the blacks in the southern states and his rather slow reactions to condemn the political leadership of the states, which were predominately Democratic.  Like Arthur, his reign was destined to be cut short, but the movements of the time went forward under Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Under President Johnson, we saw an increase in civil rights protest and violence in the South, but in Washington, the Republicans supported the President and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by roughly a 70% to 30% in both houses.  With a few exceptions, the nay votes were mostly by geographical rather than party lines.  The sixties also saw the development of more violent extremism in civil protest over the war and civil rights.  The baby-boomer generation was coming of age, but not yet prepared to replace the generation of the depression and world war.  In fact, it would be another 30 years until that the Greatest Generation would pass the mantle of the Presidency to the baby-boomers.

As the 1960s progressed we heard a lot about the peace movement, but as today the name was mostly an illusion.  The members of the movement weren’t all that peaceful, in fact at times they were violently anti-war.  Despite them, my generation created some great music as we moved away from the swing and country music of our parents into rock and roll and rockabilly of Sun Records, the Motown sounds of Detroit, the harmonies of the Jersey boys and West Coast surfer and car groups, and then the English invasion.  Along the way, the President, Secretary of Defense and his political advisors thought they could micromanage a war and the Asian communists would cooperate.  That war cost LBJ any hope for reelection in 1968 and brought us Richard Millhouse Nixon and the beginnings of the open media condemnation of a particular politician/political party.

One of the things an unfunded war, a race to the Moon, and the great social experiments (the Great Society) of LBJ did was to fuel an economy where inflation began to skyrocket.  By the time Jimmy Carter assumed the office of President we saw interest rates on loans and mortgages routinely sitting in the mid-teens, and prices rising on almost a daily basis.  The government, under Nixon, Ford, and Carter attempted to get control of this issue by setting price controls and price guidelines.  From my perspective, they seemed to do very little to actually improve an economy that saw the large manufacturing enterprises of textiles, clothing, steel, and automotive begin to move their plants overseas where the labor was cheaper.  This was all done with the approval, or benign consent, of the government (both Congress and the Executive) who gave little concern over the individual lives that would be impacted.  

In the 1980s we saw the President enter into a period of deficit spending as he began the process of rebuilding and modernized the military, which had borne the brunt of government spending cuts as the previous administrations had diverted funds to social program and attempted to gain control of a stagnant economy and growing inflation.  The Reagan administration’s position was if you could encourage the expansion of industry the money would ultimately trickle down to the poorer workers.  Of course, this was branded as foolishness by those who knew better but had never been responsible for actual job creation. By the end of the decade, President Reagan had won a cold war that had been going on since the end of the Second World War.  The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of trying to match the economic power of the U.S.  In 1990 we had moved from a world of competing superpowers to the last remaining superpower.  It was a position that would not last long.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, we began another transition as we sought to downsize the recently bolstered military to divert funding to social programs.  Unfortunately for Iraq they misread the tea leaves and thought they could gain the oil of Kuwait while we were distracted.  I suspect they thought the same old dual superpower standoff would protect them.  They were wrong.  What they presented was the perfect tank war the US had built its conventional military to fight.  They used Soviet tactics and equipment and we had Air-Land Battle doctrine we had trained to for almost 20-years.  It wasn’t even close.

The next transition was the 1992 election where we passed the mantle from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers.  I think anyone looking at governments over the next 30ish years would be dismayed at how poorly the Baby Boomers have handled the governing of this nation.  Whether it is the relaxed sexual standards or the loss of faith as a central basis for morality, we have been less than brilliant at setting a course for the nation that offers it hope for success.  With the ascendency of the Boomers, we have brought with us all the ME ideas that have led us, as parents, to demand participation awards for just showing up.

In the 90s we saw the further refinement of personality politics where the faux moral outrage of one political party fueled the impeachment efforts and division of purpose.  It was to become the springboard for the personality politics we enjoy today.  I can only assume it also serves as the basis for today’s faux moral outrage of the other party since as Newton discovered for every force exerted on a body there is an equal and opposite force. (3^rd law)

Along the way, we have discovered a new enemy fueled by the fundamental Islamic faith, whose followers are willing to die to advance the visions of their faith.  I am not sure how this new zealotry will continue, but the terror networks they create are next to impossible to destroy by conventional state diplomacy.

What my generation passed along to its children is, unfortunately, disrespect for civil discourse and the impressions that only those who agree with you are worth listening to.  We see these lessons every day in the new electronic global village our technological skill has created.  It is an environment our children have grown up with and are much more skilled at manipulating than its inventors of my generation, but it seems to be working differently than its inventors imagined.

We have also indoctrinated our children into the belief that youth have a unique wisdom that surpasses that of the older generations.  Perhaps that comes from the same place as the participation trophies?

As we approach this upcoming election it does not appear the boomer generation is ready to pass the torch or Gen X/Millennial crowds are all that ready to assume it.  What is clear though we have transitioned from an age of cooperation within government to one of open hostility between opposing political beliefs.  Serving their own interests, the media is happy to engage in rumor-mongering rather than factual reporting if it serves to further their corporate and personal political agendas.  In an electronic age speed rather than accuracy is the standard for most news outlets.

I wonder, what and when will be the next transition?