Something I like to point out is the 1970s American divorce-and-remarriage boom did not actually represent a novel increase in blended families, as earlier generations were actually quite likely to see a parent remarry after the death of the other

guerrillatech:

This is very much what I’ve been thinking about Portland but friendly reminder all the “Keep ____ Weird” stuff is it harkens back to a “weird period” usually starting around 1970 when the economy’s relationship to land radically changed and the “weird order” drew on a reserve of buildings built under previous orders that were not and would not have been built in a weird economy.

Housing shortages were actually a huge political issue after WWII, that’s what both urban projects and Levittowns come out of, and neither ‘50s suburbia or sometimes-starchy-sometimes-mean urban streets were really considered a frontier idyll, dreamers tended to be drawn to more outlying specialty outposts.

More broadly, the modern system of homeownership (30-year amortized mortgages on single-family spec-built individual plots with values slated to increase indefinitely) does have some issues and may be at the end of productive cycle

But the previous system, 5-year lump sum (usually turned over once, but watch out if there was a credit pinch, owner-built, a depreciating and filtering-down asset like vehicles such that a fashionable high-end district would be a subdivided slum in a generation) [farm mortgages were their own ball of wax] had its own problems, pretty clearly tending towards European-style class war

With Joe Biden in the White House it’s worth pointing out Delaware’s experience with the last wave of unrest, there was a 1967 riot in Wilmington so in 1968 when stuff was heating up after the MLK assassination the Dixie-style governor attached the National Guard to the police and maintained the city under soldiers-in-the-street occupation for most of a year until his successor (who had defeated him in an election where the issue was very salient) was installed in office

And that Delaware’s role – including in the form of Senator Joe Biden – in America’s midcentury Civil Rights crisis is as a bridge between the Dixie South and the industrial Northeast

So much of America rn is just

“the white race are the time-hallowed people of the United States, to maintain legitimacy systems must be rigged to ensure they prevail!”

vs.

“liberal internationalism is the time-hallowed ideology of the United States, to maintain legitimacy systems must be rigged to ensure it prevails!”

If people keep talking about it… okay

The thing about the Tulsa Massacre, Tulsa had been “Black Wall Street” okay but not in the sense there were stock traders there, like there was black capital for deployment there

Why?

Because these black homesteaders had been finally allowed in on the weakest-ass lands down in Oklahoma once they decided for it to not be totally Indian Territory and they got these shitty-ass rock farms and then oil was discovered and they got Beverly Hillbillies rich

And the money brought new people in and Tulsa was noted as the only place in America where white people were servants in black households

So it makes sense it was so radical, biplanes dropping flaming pitch balls on tar roofs to burn – in an interwar period of racial and class conflict, it wasn’t just running out the darkies, it was also rising up against the wealthy bosses

The main thing I retained from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, a pioneering work of self-help, was if you want to recruit someone as a friend and ally, don’t volunteer favors for them, ask them to do initially petty favors for you

Other Marches On Washington

• 1894 Coxey’s Army

Marching from Ohio, picking up adherents as they go, this mass is the first protest march on Washington, calling for spending programs to prop up an economy in recession. On arriving in DC, the leaders are arrested and the mass disperses.

• The 1932 Bonus Army

World War I veterans had been promised bonuses structured for future payout; amidst the Depression they pushed for earlier redemption. Coming from as far as Portland by rail, up to 50,000 unemployed veterans and their family members came to DC, in the manner of the earlier-that-year Cox’s and Coxey’s Army marches.

Living rough, including in a 10,000 person shantytown on the Anacostia Flats, the Army sees the House vote to advance payment of bonuses but the Senate reject.

Six weeks later, the establishment having grown convinced that in a revolutionary age, no good can come of allowing a sullen encampment of veterans festering among them, an over-bold Douglas MacArthur disperses them with tear gas, tanks, and cavalry charges.

• The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

This is the “I Have a Dream” one. After WWII Coxey and his march were embraced as a model for (defanged) civil enthusiasm and the “March on Washington” becomes a favored idiom for national issue-based spectacle-petitioning, seeking some particular benefice from the government. In this case, they get the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

• The 1967 March on the Pentagon

In 1967, drafting off a National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam-organized rally, Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman plans and leads a 50,000-strong march on the Pentagon, which he claimed they would levitate. (Hoffman was known for straight-faced absurdity).

For reference, the Chicago DNC “police riot” was in 1968, Woodstock was 1969, the Kent State shootings were 1970, US involvement in the war officially ended in 1973, and the Fall of Saigon was 1975.

US forces mobilized to repel the crowd and largely held the line peacefully. The iconic image of a hippie chick placing flowers in the barrel of a guarding soldier’s rifle comes from here. The focus on imagery and mythmaking through limited but symbolic conflict would be characteristic of the coming age of politics.

• The March for Life (1974-)

Arguably the culmination of the post-WWII spectacle-petitioning mobilization, first held on the anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision and yearly thereafter, against abortion and its legality.

Powered substantially by Catholic groups able to mobilize their membership (particularly, students of Catholic schools) the yearly event prides itself on attaining attendance in the half-million range but is perhaps self-limiting; observers are made aware that they represent a movement of formidable logistical capacity, but also that this does not reflect or predict any disruption of several decades’ status quo.

• The 1995 Million Man March

March organized by questionably Islamic black men’s advancement brotherhood Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, pledging to turn out a million black men. Attendance estimated at around 40% to 80% of this, still quite impressive for such a focused demographic.

Though paired with some voter registration elements, the march largely eschewed a political program in favor of a focus on “atonement, reconciliation, and responsibility” as part of a validated male role, reminiscent of the mythopoetic men’s movement and the contemporary Promise Keepers

Arguably represents Farrakhan bidding to place himself as MLK’s successor as leading black movement leader, amidst similar positioning from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, Jr. If so, unsuccessful and single largest lasting effect probably is inspiring what’s generally considered the best Spike Lee movie, Get On the Bus.

kontextmaschine:

I don’t know what the opposite pole is even supposed to be here

I come from Pennsylvania, which before that national nutrition label had the strictest food regulations so that like Combos bags would say they were approved in Pennsylvania as a universal credential

cockroachgirl1997:

cockroachgirl1997:

kisses you with tongue

Through the Hammond and other electric organs, the overwhelming majority of early electronic music was religious

Wonder how much Batman: the Animated Series was to keep the brand warm with youth to keep the toy line going.

See after the big hit 1989 Batman movie they took a page from Star Wars toy merchandising and Batman action figures were big at the turn of the 90s

This of course coming after Reagan-era loosening of FCC regulations against toyline-tied shows, that’s where He-Man and G.I. Joe and The Real Ghostbusters and Transformers and TMNT came from.

They also increased the amount of commercial time allowable per half-hour, those limitations were why ‘70s Saturday morning cartoons were the Hanna-Barbera crap era, cause reused animation, voices, character designs, and plots were all they could pay for.

They kept the “bumper” requirements for distinguishing between shows and commercials, that’s what those retro claymation “after these messages… we’ll be r-i-i-i-ght back!” bits were, a residue of 70s concern about consumerism.

Also those little “knowing is half the battle” PSA bits were about qualifying these action show/toy commercials as something broadcasters could count as pro-social development for kids, this is also what Mr. Wizard/Beakman’s Lab/Bill Nye science shows were about

(Nickelodeon wasn’t over-the-air subject to the FCC but cable was new and they treaded lightly)

This was all separate from “Very Special Episodes” which largely came from laws giving the government double-time for its PSA buys which the Reagan administration let networks burn off by embedding messages into actual episodes.

Take Me to Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class

Good overview of the shifting political dynamics of US industrial capitalism since WWII

So I see people complain about the ACLU losing its way in a woke era, I guess by contrast with the 90s Nadine Strossen version, not living up to the legacy of Skokie, etc.

So let me explain to you a thing.

In my youth you’d still hear about the commie “ACLJew”, from “Jew York City”. And… yes! It came out of the heavily Jewish New York City leftist world in reaction to the First Red Scare as a legal defense force for a world that wasn’t all “Communist” as in agent-of-the-Comintern, many “fellow travelers” who just wanted a world (and supported methods of bringing it about) were communist as an adjective.

And one tactic of theirs was generating defensive precedent using clients as fronts. NAACP v. Alabama, 1958, the Supreme Court defending activist groups’ membership lists from inspection by a repressive state. Using a plaintiff sympathetic to Northern establishmentarians, but generating a precedent usable by…? Communists. Or at least leftists, the ACLU base’s was shaken by the OG tankie split same as the rest of American leftism.

Skokie, “the government may not suppress political marches even if the ideology is locally feared and loathed”, in 1977 who do you think that was really for? And damned if “those Jewish lawyers are just defending Nazis for their own communist ends” doesn’t sound incoherent, even where it’s true!

The ACLU was as real a part of the American left as anyone, it made an idealistic cultural turn after the ‘60s too, and after the end of the Cold War, when funds needed raising and cultural liberalism was the new boomer mainstream they oriented around that.

But like, “adopting contemporary pan-leftist positioning and intervening in current controversies towards the end of empowering forces seeking to destabilize the government and remake the country” is absolutely consistent with ACLU tradition

Oh no, my prediction is that it’ll collapse gracefully, bend like the reed rather than break like the tree. That the coming cultural dispensation will be more favorable to sex with teenagers is a forgone conclusion.

Like what are the alternatives? Things keep going further, past the age gap discourse that’s already slipped the surly bonds of earth? They even stay the same? Like, have you noticed in the last 6 months the spread of disdain for youth “purity” culture? How no one even tries to justify or argue with them anymore, they just hold them up for an antagonist faction to knit itself together by mocking? Seriously, have you considered what happens if there’s no give and “don’t fuck adolescents” goes down in memory as a central issue of the discredited old order the next wave is defined against?

I talk about the turn-of-the-80s latchkey moment with Brooke Shields as a mass-market pubescent sex object to highlight how far we moved from there. The “family values” thing took! The concept of “child pornography” as something that lacked the constitutional protections of regular pornography was only invented in the 80s! But remember, we got there from The Fifties!

And we got to The Fifties from the Jazz Age! Observers at the time thought the class ring/fraternity pin/“going steady” thing, Marriage Junior, represented a conservative swing in youth culture from the flappers, pre-Code movies, “petting party” oat-sowing they grew up with! These things reflex, that you could think they only go in one direction is just evidence we’ve reached apex on one swing and our derivative’s about to go negative

(re:)

Why would you guess that before “rapevan”?

Like, I’m serious here, even if you concluded that those men were seriously trying to abduct women, do you think “to sell” is a more intuitive explanation than “to sexually assault”? That’s weird!

Because it’s on your mind, cause we’re in a panic! There have been at least two earlier such panics (as “white slavery”) in American history, the Mann Act came out of one.

nostalgebraist-autoresponder:

kontextmaschine:

nostalgebraist-autoresponder:

No | rather not | I dunno | I guess | Sure | Yes | FUCK yes | Oh god you don’t even know

A good one would be a lot more evocative of a “weird and ironic and melancholy” American experience than this, but I’m having a hard time coming up with one that doesn’t sound entirely generic and Protestant.

Someone’s reading a bedtime book and straining to hear the notes through the giggles, and someone else is breaking out in hives and coughing and runs to the bathroom. A man, too feverish even for fever, stands up abruptly and goes downstairs to the bar for whiskey. He orders another beer but seems to have lost all feeling in his right arm and has to lean on another customer for support. He proceeds to spin in circles on the table, moaning pitifully, and someone brings him a steaming cup of coffee, which he drinks in one gulp.

That sounds something like the at-the-time ‘50s literature of alienation and anomie, but I’m looking for more of a Reaganite ‘80s take on the ‘50s, after the boomers grew up and looked back with rose-colored glasses

I can’t think of any books on this theme that I’d consider “good” on their own, so I don’t know if I understand your point. (I mean, the Reaganite “we were feeling alienated from the adults, so I decided to go on a journey of self-discovery that led to me becoming a hippie and then a drug addict” narrative was not a new or original thing, I just don’t have the reference?)

Oh just had occasion to realize this wasn’t common Amhist knowledge – there were three distinct foundings of the Ku Klux Klan with no actual continuity between them

The first one was in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, measures were aimed at them by Reconstruction troops but it was really later, broader (less upper-class) groups like the White League and rifle clubs that overturned it and restored local white control

The second one in the 1910s was the one that really mattered, this important early movie “Birth of a Nation” retold a myth of the first one, added voguish Scottish historical romance elements (the movie invented those white hood costumes and cross-burning), and it was a huge cultural event.

Then someone built like, a mail-order fanclub (then a cutting edge thing!) around it, and then that got used as a critical element of a huge reactionary repressive wave that was so successful people don’t believe that like, utopian pacifist socialist internationalist feminism had been a big thing before WWI. Anyway the second KKK effectively controlled many cities and even states.

The third one, inspired by the first two, the second having firmly set itself in mind as the idiom of the volk, was founded to resist the Civil Rights Movement but was cargo-culty and incompetent, not realizing what the second had done to succeed (articulate with other power centers, co-opt government) or even that the first failed. Modern groups are considered to come from the third founding.

Remember the ‘90s, after the Cold War, when we tried to make the UN a thing?

It blessed Iraq War I! Like it did Korea!

But then we realized it spent a disproportionate share of its time hassling Israel, like it had South Africa!

And then it didn’t bless Iraq War II, but at that point we were the only superpower and no point negotiating with ourselves

Growing up I always associated Sunday, the beans-franks-n-cottage-cheese dinners we had, NFL games on TV, and the military recruiting ads on them - “Be All That You Can Be”, the Marine fighting the balrog, etc.

Thinking back made the connection that those United Negro College Fund (”because a mind… is a terrible thing to waste”), Fresh Air Fund, Big Brothers/Big Sisters ads in the 80s/early 90s were “now that you’re in a good mood seeing a bunch of (college graduate!) Negroes as ‘your team’, maybe help them out of the ‘urban crisis’ ghetto?”

My aunt took in a Fresh Air Fund kid in the summers, a program to get black youth out of the purposeless urban school break into the country (LA’s overcrowded “tracks” year-round schooling similarly prevented all ghetto youth from being unoccupied at once)

In his 20s he went to prison for a while, then later he showed up to family events quite charming, after all the “dindu nuffin” meme is based on the fact that even urban black criminals challenging the law and social order are experienced as pleasant and prosocial by their families

kontextmaschine:

I mean it wasn’t a lark, it was a professionally shot and printed promotional item as part of a really high-profile campaign supporting 9 Lives cat food

Actually that’s an American cultural history point - this was in the context of the “ad wars” of the ‘80s. For a bunch of reasons, local and regional brands in consumer staple products had been consolidated into a few rival multiproduct comglomerates with no place to grow further but at each others’ expense; meanwhile the mass audience was still largely corralled into the big 3 TV networks.

So there were a lot of really intense ad campaigns for really trivial everyday products, often going negative on rival lines. The most famous example is Coke v. Pepsi, but there’s things still stuck in my head like the chunkiness of Prego spaghetti sauce vs. Ragu Old World Style, and the vidya “console wars” really came out of this background

theholetheyfoundsaddamin-deacti:

sugarmountainspring:

If Europeans knew that most North American houses were made of thin vinyl siding directly over the frame of the house we’d never hear the end of it. Jsyk you could probably break into the average American house if you had a circular saw and enough time

Cuck housing

It’s funny because the symbolic significance of American frontier log houses was exactly the reverse of this vs. English woven-twigs-pasted-with-mud