Letters to the Editor
Zootsuiter
Published Letters: 13 Editor's Choice: 2
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We've come a long way down since Eleanor Roosevelt
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gary's point about how narrow the field of allowable public discourse is now is right on. I happened to watch a PBS bio of Eleanor Roosevelt only a day or two ago. During FDR's administration, she consorted with known Communists and was unapologetic about it. She went on TV in the 1950s and said that the developing world is suspicious of America because of discrimination against colored peoples at home. Can you imagine Rosalyn Carter saying that?
It sometimes seems to me that the modern conservative movement has been dedicated to reversing the New Deal, a point Paul Krugman made in his book, "The Conscience of a Liberal." At least one feature of the Depression Era was the widening of American politics to a more European spectrum on the left. While FDR and the New Deal were really seeking to combat that, they didn't demonize the left (that I know of) the way that Reagan and his followers have. Obama is really just another victim in a long list of decent people made to look nefarious.
Totally off the point, Eleanor Roosevelt was scheduled to make an appearance at a meeting on racial justice in the Nashville area in the 1950s. The FBI warned her not to go, that the Klan was planning an attack and they couldn't (wouldn't) help her. Undeterred, she went by herself, was picked up at the airport by another elderly woman, and they drove to the meeting with a pistol sitting between them on the front seat. Can you imagine Hillary doing that? Or really, any politician today putting their life on the line like that?
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Humbug on the blue meanies
[Read the article: Through a bong, darkly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1960
*Blacks in the back of the bus, facing lynching, often physically barred from voting
*Women stuck in the home, in stereotyped roles, underpaid, subject to men's sexual whims
*America involved in a steady series of foreign adventures to protect narrow economic interests
*Nuclear war a threat
*Little to no concern for the environmental consequences of economic growth
*75% of Americans smoke cigarettes
1970
*Legal segregation dead
*Women on their way to a much more equitable role in society
*Antiwar movement has erected a series barrier to impulsive invasions of foreign countries that largely lasts until current administration
*Momentum builds toward various nuclear treaties that have lessened the threat of global nuclear war
*Environmental movement has taken first steps toward holding business and government responsible
*Smoking begins sharp decline
Talk all you want about narcissistic hippies, etc. The '60s changed the world, largely for the good. I was there, and it really happened. If you want to go back to Jim Crow, a world where women have limited opportunities to contribute, where patriotism is defined as saluting the troops on their way to invade somewhere and so on, go right ahead.
Me, I celebrate the '60s. Definitely not sustainable or even a model for the present. Whatever the flaws, though, it was a time to admire and learn (something) from.
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Have you ever been in a small town in PA?
[Read the article: The rubes and the elites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I lived in Allentown, PA for five years back in the '70s, a small city surrounded by smaller towns and cornfields. 60 miles from Philly and 100 miles from Manhattan doesn't begin to describe the distance, a distance, btw, many residents rarely if ever travelled.
I'd say Barack Obama shows a lot more awareness of what life is like there then Michael Lind. I worked as a machinist there and Obama pretty much described many of the people I worked with, people who's relatives were run out of the coal fields by automation and the workings of the markets, who were losing their jobs as European and Japanese companies finished recovering form WWII and became very competitive in the '70s.
I won't bore you with dozens of anecdotes that fit Obama's comments like a glove. I will say that people I worked with were not homogenous in their views. Some were exactly the gun totin' Real Americans he describes. Some were more skeptical of the powers that be. Some were even radical. And guess what, you can believe that maybe American corporations and American politicians bear some responsibility for the mess you're in and also think foreigners -- or Blacks or gays or whatever -- are bad for you. Millions of people do.
Obama is right -- everybody knows what he says is true. You're not being any less "elitist" by trying to paint dysfunctional ideas as genuine or authentic, or by painting communities that have been wellsprings for conservatism as somehow misunderstood progressives.
Two countries, urban and rural? Of course, every modern country is like that. For the last 200 years, urbanites have been shaping culture, economy, and many other parts of modern life. There's a reason for that.