The writing on internet news sites is atrocious. Riddled with poor grammar, poor knowledge and misleading headlines. But it costs less to employ these net savvy youngsters and few people ever hold them accountable.
Even on this forum, the spelling is frequently horrible. As much as Wevsus and I disagree, at least I know what he is saying and he can spell. There, their, they're and many other seem to be beyond the capabilities of too many. It reminds me of the joke about spell checker where if the paragraph is read aloud, it makes sense. If you read the words actually written, oh well.
Red, do you remember another hotbed period of time when demonstrations, both peaceful and physical were not unusual? When common people with little education but lots of energy and awareness, actually changed the world? And more importantly, do you remember the remarks made about those people? I do. It was the period from 1964 to 1972.
It would be difficult to not remember, especially since I wasn't (still not) wasted all the time. I agreed with some, not with others. MLK made sense to me. Watts residents burning their homes (rented or not) and then complaining they had no place to live was beyond my sympathy. There were definitely changes that were needed. I didn't always agree with the methods.
Why I am shocked by this thread is that the remarks have resurfaced. Same ignorance, same blinders, same dogma. It is just rather depressing to see that our response to change, evidenced in demonstrations, doesn't seem to change much in our country.
"These people are basically unemployed, selfish, lazy, ignorant, sexually promiscuous, dirty, unfocused, racist, anti-semite, socialists who want a welfare society that robs from the rich and gives to them." I cannot tell you how much I heard those kinds of comments related to civil-rights demonstrators and about the DNC protests in the late sixties.
One of the results of the 60s is the entitlement society: I exist, therefore I deserve to succeed. I won't even apologize for saying I don't believe that. Everyone deserves a chance to succeed but everyone does not deserve guaranteed success regardless of effort. Yes, luck helps. Luck can be influenced by attitude and effort. My grandfather succeeded as a Polish immigrant when being Polish was not a good thing to be. He saw the value of an education (and learning English) for both himself, my grandmother, and his sons. True, you couldn't tell he was Polish across the street. As soon as he spoke, you knew he was not born in Kansas. I saw the entrance
and academic performance standards lowered at the U of Delaware in order to accommodate "minorities". I saw that as lowering the value of my degree. Those students needed to go to Junior College and get the credentials to get into a 4 year school. It only took my brother, who scraped through High School, one summer in the oil patch to realize he needed to become a better student. He was, and still is, a terrible test taker but he did a few semesters at (then) TJC and eventually got into TU. He graduated as a Mechanical Engineer. Why is that path so wrong for minorities that didn't get the proper preparation in High School? I remember seeing "Colored" signs on water fountains and restrooms on trips from Philadelphia, PA to Florida to visit my grandparents. My parents said that was wrong and needed to be changed. I didn't know many black people growing up but the ones I did were fine people. The local pharmacist, a few kids in high school, some people at dog training school. I also read weekly about the (usually) black kids in Philly killing someone gang style. I don't know if it was drugs or turf related. Where I am going is that there were a lot of confusing signals. I believe in civil rights but some of the solutions were probably not the best that could have been chosen. I lost a summer job to affirmative action but I survived. Another poster on TNF occasionally complains about losing his Pell grants but he survived and got his degree. Hopefully the kids that got my job and those Pell grants succeeded when they otherwise could not have.
"They totally misunderstand: economics, the failure of all systems but our own, the superiority of job creators vs labor providers, that they too can rise from obscurity and poverty by simply following the rules and conforming, that wealth is to be idolized as the true route to happiness, that this entire fiscal mess should be laid at the feet of Obama, Democrats and Liberals in general, and that they are being led by crazies and extremists whose goals are the destruction of capitalism and the glory of mediocrity. " Cain leads this group doesn't he?
Sounds a bit like you are reciting the self defense liberal dogma now.
My favorite from the period that I remember was from a CBS man on the street interview, "I've noticed that most of these McGovern supporters seem to be longhairs wearing sandals and riding bikes. That's just not America"
Today, different words but same meaning.
I was not a McGovern supporter but not because his supporters were "longhairs". I just truly disagreed with his politics, even as a 20 something. My dad was not particularly fond of me growing a beard in the late 60s but he grew to accept it. (My grandmother never did.) I never had really long hair but for my dad's generation, it was long.
Curiously, the physical and economic growth of the middle class in 64-72 was concurrent with the highest taxes on the top tier incomes.
Actually, JFK cut the top marginal rates significantly. There were loopholes out the wazoo. I don't know what the effective overall rates were. Nathan seems to be good at finding that stuff.
Edit: typo fix, missing "were"
