On Jul 31, 1:14 pm, StoneMeThenBurnMe
yahoo.com> wrote:> On Jul 31, 7:59 am, Day Brown
hughes.net> wrote:
>
>
>>> There's really no way to nail down when the American Golden age
>> started. there's no single political figure like Augustus, nor seminal
>> event, like the defeat of the Persians at Thermapolye, to say just
>> when the power & glory shifted.
>
>> The empire never had defined borders either. American artifacts, art,
>> culture, and language dispersed far beyond its own borders, in
>> different amounts in different regions at different times. Parts of
>> the empire have never yet had American boots on the ground, and many
>> pieces of what came to be thot of as its culture and imperialism were
>> actually assimilated from somewhere else.
>
>> Just like English, which it took in so completely that people forget
>> that it ever came from England. Or the American space program,
>> designed by German engineering. Or Jazz, which traces from African
>> roots. Rock & Roll began on the radio in Helena Arkansas with "The
>> King Biscuit hour" on a black station. Which is still on the air.
>
>> Saying just when it ended is likewise ambiguous. Even from the
>> beginning, there were prophets of its doom, ranting about its
>> depravity & corruption. But there did come a time around the turn of
>> the 21st century when the masses no longer felt that the next
>> generation would be better off.
>
>> The arts also reached a post classical, baroque era when much of what
>> was done was the reworking of earlier forms. Pieces of visual or audio
>> were spliced together as if what was presented was something new.
>> Prominent figures were no longer judged on their own terms, but always
>> compared as if they were a newer version.
>
>> No matter how advanced the footwear, everyone knew the heros had clay
>> feet. Modern monuments, architecture, & houses either looked
>> rediculous, or like faux fronts on earlier forms. Entire communities
>> were reconstructed from the rubble and populated with people dressed
>> in period wardrobes practicing period crafts like a permanent movie
>> set.
>
>> Part of the effort to reclaim and restore the past was going on
>> because they had no future to build. Men walked the streets in 3 piece
>> suits that could have been picked off the rack from earlier era with
>> nobody noticing the diff, just as Romans ran around in the same togas
>> worn in the days of the republic rite up to the day the barbarians
>> were at the gates.
>
>> The end of the Golden Age didnt look anything like the novels & movies
>> produced at its height that tried to describe the future. The most
>> popular works at the end of the age had nothing to do with the future,
>> and everything to do with some mythic romantic past. The more mythic
>> the better.
>
>> Nobody knew when the Golden Age would end. But there was a common
>> sense, that whenever that was, it would be, quite literally, "that
>> day", a single 24 hour period when the proverbial shit would hit the
>> fan. And just like everyone alive remembered where they were when they
>> heard about Pearl Harbor, or Kennedy's assassination, or 911, they are
>> equally sure, that if they live long enuf, they'll remember TSHTF, and
>> where they are when they figure that out.
>
>> They know also that only the nut cases have a plan of what to do next.
>> Not that whatever that plan is, make sense. But if they live long enuf
>> after that day, they know they'll be telling stories to whatever young
>> make it about some of the marvels they experienced.
>
>> Like gatherings of thousands at religious crusades, sports events, and/
>> or rock concerts. And the Great American road, driving powerful autos
>> to these events, or any other, at any time, any where, even any
>> distance. All day past fields so vast the crops filled monumental
>> grain elevators that took weeks to fill, and months for 100 car trains
>> to haul away to ships that fed a hungry world. Which now starved.
>
>> And all nite, following the white line for thousands of kilometers,
>> blinking in the lite of gas stations pumping coffee by the barrel all
>> nite long, then going back on the blacktop with monster trucks that
>> you knew could snuff you out with a bad move at any time. The whole
>> age was always, for all of them, on the hairy edge of disaster.
>
>> There was always an element of denial, that they could drive by the
>> scrap yards full of all the wrecks that had already filled coffins,
>> but only see the bent metal without thinking what it meant. Even
>> shattered glass on the pavement only resulted in worry for a few
>> minutes about a flat, rather than why the shards were there in the
>> first place.
>
>> There was, despite the fact that it was always full of the very latest
>> in shaped sheetmetal, a kind of timelessness in the American road.
>> There was the timelessness of any long journey, that every place along
>> the way seemed like every other. then the timeless hypnotic sound of
>> the machinery, and the sound of the radio playing recordings that went
>> all the way back to the beginning of the Golden Age.
>
>> Twards the end of the Golden Age, the music, which'd always been
>> crafted to appeal to the young, no longer had the young creating it.
>> Rather than singing or reciting the lyrics of artists their own age,
>> the young knew all the songs of previous eras, and went to concerts
>> played by old men.
>
>> The concerts themselves, with string players and drums were as fixed
>> in form as a religious ritual from antiquity. The same drugs, with new
>> names, the same groupies, the same stupor, the same volume with the
>> same primordial beat. But young women, adoring old men, that was
>> certainly a sign of times long past.
>
> ------ YOU'RE CLUELESS ...
>
> ... the American GOLDEN AGE was from the end of World War Two until
> the Vietnam buildup:
>
> 1) Millions of veterans attended college, giving the U.S, an edge in
> technological progress and economic leadership.
>
> 2) Millions of vets and their families enjoyed unprecedented rates
> of home-ownership.
>
> 3) The Marshall Plan gave Europe hope and a leg-up on rebuilding
> afer the war. We helped transform defeated Japan into an economic
> powerhouse.
>
> 4) The U.S.'s military might allowed the country to simultaneously
> keep the Cold War cold while fighting a war in Korea with one hand
> tied behind our collective back.
>
> 5) By 1965, union and non-union labor enjoyed its pinnacle of
> prosperity; high-schoolers could set up housekeeping right after
> graduation.
>
> 6) U.S. manufacturing was the world's leader in all major
> industries.
>
> 7) Baby Boomers attended and graduated college in unprecedented
> numbers.
>
> 8) America launched the greatest highway system in history.
>
> 9) The civil rights movement finally deflated racism and its
> poisonous laws.
>
> 10) American entertaInment became a major export product.
>
> Maybe you can think of some more aspects of the "America's Golden
> Age."
11) the cold war began threatening to blow us all to kingdom come in
15 minutes.
12) the Berlin wall fell, and then the USSR, ending the cold war.
13) Aids emerged, but so did some new much more effective cancer
therapies.
Like I said at the outset, the data is ambiguous. I dont refute any of
your facts, just your conclusions. Like every other empire, at any
given time, between rise and fall, there are some bad times followed
by good, and good followed by bad, depending largely on what you think
is important.
14) The internet emerged, and with it a quantum leap in the range of
opinion well beyond what you & I have.
15) Computers & Software replaced steel & coal as the hall marks of
the most advanced cultures. China strove mightily to surpass the US in
Steel production, unaware that that ship had already left the harbor.
But now, China looks ready to emerge as the greatest power it has so
often been over the course of the last 5000 years. But the data is
ambiguous. The world's richest man got to be that way largely in the
traditional fashion, by stealing so much he got so rich nobody dared
to charge him with the theft, and trying to describe to a jury of oafs
what innovation in software programming is, is hopeless.
However, programmers are not known to be stupid, and therefore crafted
hidden access codes in their software, which got stolen along with the
rest of the program. And now, from time to time, word leaks out about
some hidden key, and with that sabotage wreaks havoc on the empire
Microsoft built.
It is reported that china is educating millions of engineers; as may
be. But programming is like chess; you dont need 40 college credits to
understand the rules. what you need, is the right kind of mind, and if
you dont have that... forget it.
the really innovative code never came from China, and while it once
came from Silicon Valley & other hi tech hotbeds in the US, now it
comes from Russia, the Baltic Nations, Finland, and Germany. Which is
where so many great chess geniuses came from. But whether that really
matters any more is a moot point.
But hey- thanx for the feedback.
