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Edwynn -> RE: Polar Apposite? (4/14/2012 4:53:26 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Moonhead
Punk was a '70s thing, surely? You always get these whiney Noo Yoikers bitching about how the Sex Pistols based their career on ripping off godawful New York comedy bands like The Ramones and Patti Smith Group, after all. You can't get a lot more '70s than that...
Yes, I know it started then, but in the latter stages. Not something I would rate as emblematic of the entire decade. It seemed to come into full flower in the early '80s, but I wasn't really into it much so what do I know. Most people would rate disco as being what the decade was about, but that is false also. Fact is, the five successive five-year periods from 1955 to 1980 were all unique and quite distinct, things since then seeming to proceed in more serial fashion.
In any event I'm not one to proclaim any era as being better or worse than another, generally. But it was impossible to not notice the '80s relatively sudden change from the previous atmosphere of gradually improving understanding and better relations among previously disparate and formerly antagonistic groups. For example, from police harassing hippies, and rednecks beating them up, in the late 'sixties to writing them at ticket for having a half ounce of weed and the rednecks toking in the 'seventies, etc., the decriminalization environment, Vietnam was over and people were universally happy about it and assuming that sort of thing would never happen again, etc. From the 1980s forward the change then was to a seemingly determined mood of self interest, domestic political and social antagonism, international antagonism, gradual but determined dismantling of the regulatory structure that had been built up and refined over decades, merger and acquisition/leveraged buyout frenzy, junk bond frenzy, etc.
And yes, as alluded to here in the thread, the regulatory structure I'm speaking of started in the New Deal era and was adjusted and refined over a 50 year period, and corporate power and concentration of wealth had been diminished accordingly, product safety was something that could actually be counted on, a far better situation for the populace as a whole than had ever existed before. The middle and latter stages of that period saw the most important final stages of addressing the civil rights issues that had been dormant for many decades, which made 'the populace as a whole' more ... whole.
I don't know if it was Roe-Wade, more women lawyers and professors, too many people acting civil towards each other, or what- but something crawled far up somebody's skirt, and something snapped. So then, as pointed out, we've been in backlash mode for thirty years now.
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