When WAS America great?

Is the current lawlessness different than the riots of the 60s? I think so but I'm open to persuasion.
Back in the 70s in NY there was a black out. An acquaintance spoke of it as being a terrific night of looting. But it was a thing. It didn't by itself, change NY. It got back on its feet. Today feels different. When you see these crowds rushing into stores and stripping them bare when there is nothing even inflaming going on and businesses are bugging out where this is happening?

Example story:



The 60s also weren't the 50s. The 50s were characterized primarily by non-violence. Even the Watts riots lasted only 6 days. They did culminate, as I wrote earlier, with the left's destruction of the black family, the social disenfranchisement of black men save some tokens made wealthy (not all ADOS, such as Obama himself) and an immigration policy that seems bent upon replacing them.

I submit black people had a better trajectory toward political, social and economic advancement in the 1950s than today.

 

I agree with that.
Racism was still an issue, but once the 'Great Society' programs began, it marked the beginning of the downfall of the black nuclear family, and with it ethical and moral values.

 

Which along with the idiotic confiscatory tax rates and Jim Crow is why I don't consider the fifties a golden age. I think our best is yet to come but we can't get there with the current DC power structure and it's insipid DC centric world view.

 

So, in your opinion, a President that breaks the law can still be a "near great president"?

And I ask this question as someone who was a fan of Reagan. I voted for him, twice.

 

All those great states does shave a penny off the 17% inflation that has developed since Biden took off. Neither inflation, nor gas prices are "down" each is 15%-20% higher than when Biden took over. Thanks for the great demonstration of blindingly loyal. DemDroid verbal diarrhea

 

I hear you but the 50s were kind of special for most Americans including non-whites. Unions were big back then. I am not saying it was fantastic but there were jobs and people did have better incomes than before all across the spectrum.

 

Wasn’t there a significant number of white people angry about lawful desegregation in the 50s? Also, the Korean War was kicking off, the Red Scare, McCarthyism, constant lynchings among all the other race-related violence, the Klan still being prominent, interracial marriages were mostly illegal, the Lavender Scare, and again the entirety of the Cold War

 

See, when you claim the 50s were characterized by non-violence then that’s clearly a lie because, as I stated multiple times in previous posts, there were race riots and all kinds of racial violence like lynchings.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States

 

So you want to add the 60's. The country's descent wasn't very mature yet so I can go with that. The civil rights act was probably the best legislation in U.S. history. The 60's also had one of the worst - the Firearms act.

 

The 50's were the last era when people actually cared about one another and helped one another. That went away in the 60's and has worsened ever since. Now we cancel each other - the opposite of the 1950's. I can't help but think that you didn't live through the 50's.

 

I am surprised NB at the divergence between your title and your OP. While the US did indeed set a remarkable departure from monarchies with its founding, it simultaneously endorsed slavery as an institution and forthwith proceeded to conduct basically a genocide upon the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent. So much so that Spainard and Portugese invaders are comparitively much less lethal toward aboriginals under their invasions.

 

Please don't call someone a liar for disagreeing with you. It makes you seem unbalanced.

Thank you for the link. While individual line numbers don't tell us everything as a single line might describe a much larger riot than another line, it is of note: 1950 has 5 lines. Look at the other decades.

And I'm writing of trajectory. I think things were headed in the right direction in the 1950. What undermined that trajectory? Today? Illegal aliens who appear to be meant to replace Americans, black Americans included and they know it now, can beat cops on video and be free to victimize others with no cash bail. They are coming by the 10s of millions. They've legalized robbing stores as we see in these crazy shoplifting crowd storming videos.

If things don't change, if we do not recapture what was best in the 1950s, my predictions:
Stores will continue to bug out from black communities leaving it very difficult for them to obtain their needs. Hope they like the government cheese.
An over-class will continue to do all they can to destroy the middle class, making ever larger portions of the population dependent upon government crumbs.
Nose counting racist bigotry will rot our institutions making the private sector ever more obedient to a fascist government that will tell private individuals who they can associate with.
The quality of our public education institutions will decline. But they'll teach our kids lots about the joys of anal sex, going gay, getting abortions, how to get your dick cut off, sterilization, double mastectomies and why they need to import illegal aliens to replace us.
At some point, economically, the US will collapse and a ruling elite will tell us we now own nothing but better like it or else. Death camps, gulags and killing fields. No need for expanding Medicaid for all. The government will simply provide everything everyone needs. You just have to get in line. A long line.

Summary? The 1950s were a time of growth, hope, a surging middle class with expanding opportunities. Today? Feels like we are on our way to the ovens.

 

The OP question presumes that America was ever great.

 

All true but I am trying to explain how the mythology of being great has been supported by selective memories. Yes, it was better for most than in the past and yes, it was still a long way from being "great".

 

I don't work for Britannica, I would not know.
As you said, they been around since 1768. They have a history of credibility.

 

Great, good, bad, terrible, are all subjective to each individual. Perhaps even to some small groups.
Rankings show a standing against other countries.
There's dozens and dozens of areas that make people happy, angry, sad, etc. So what is or isn't great is further muddied.

...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/united-states

 

Some people still wish for the lockdowns caused by the pandemic as they must think those were the best of times.
Why?

 

There's a saying about the roaring 20s. Nothing about the 50s.
So, based on that alone, I have to go with the 1920s.

No, it was never special in this country for non-whites. It never has been a special place to this day for non whites.

Redlining decimated non whites and their communities. And that started in the 1920s.
...
History
Further information: Sundown towns and Racial covenants
The specific process termed "redlining" in the United States occurred on the background of racial segregation and discrimination against minority populations. It had its origins in sales practices of the National Association of Real Estate Boards and theories about race and property values codified by economists surrounding Richard T. Ely and his Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities, founded at the University of Wisconsin in 1920.[15] With the National Housing Act of 1934 the federal government began to be involved in the practice and the concurrent establishment of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining


I was alive for neither of those 2 decades. So I can only go by what's written in historical terms.

 

But whites were all kind and gentle. To each other.

 

Whites helped whites. And no other color of people.

So, whites were ok. No one else. Lynchings come to mind. Speaking of cancelling people.

 

This thread is why the entire MAGA concept is total baloney. Sure some folks did great in the past in comparison to others but we have always had winners and losers and for most of our history, the losers outnumbered the winners. We can paint the 50s anyway we like but the reality was white men with a GI bill behind them, a union job and a decent education did great while their women were captives of marriage, minorities were segregated and treated like dirt and while Ozzie and Harriet goofed around the house once a week, the reality of most families was quite different. When was America Great? Depends upon which group you ask doesn't it?

 

I think that the term "bug out from Black communities" is very misleading. It implies that the stores are unfairly leaving these areas, which is not the case.

When shoplifting takes away all of your business income and leaves you with losses, a merchant has no choice but to leave. Assine bills, like the one in California which allows people to steal $950 per visit cannot continue. The mark-ups for most retail businesses are low already with stiff competition coming from delivery services like Amazon. A business cannot simply keep giving goods away and continue to function.

If the Black community wants cast blame, they need look no further than their own citizens who have turned shoplifting and organized raids into an illegal enterprise. They should also blame public officials who sanction such activities with no bail laws, lax district attorneys who won't prosecute criminals, calls for defunding the police and laws that prosecute police for the tiniest infraction.

Progressives think they are well meaning, but their policies are just as destructive as the rules they created in the 1960s that broke up Black families.

 

It has had both times of greatness and ongoing repercussions of its embrace of genocide and slavery, imo.

 

When I think "bug out" I'm thinking of a combat term meaning you need to surrender a particular ground to adversaries as the area is either lost or will cost way more than it is worth to hold.
Posted earlier:

 

I posted to you what historians have called different decades. Somewhat.
And there's a decade called the roaring 20s.

No other decade has been called that. So based on that, the 1920s seemed to be a leader of which era was best/great.

MAGA, off topic, is not total baloney. It's white America woke. Because they don't wield the power they once enjoyed systemically.