Back in time for the OT political thread [WeirdDave]

A couple of weeks ago we had some fun with the “kill or cure” thread. This one is a little different. If you had to go back in time and live your life out at an earlier point in American history, where would you go and why?

Rules

1: You go back and stay for your natural born life. No popping back and forth. You may take your
family with you.

2: You will occupy a similar socio-economic niche as you do now. If you're a mechanic and you go back to the wild west, you would be, say, a farrier. You don't get to go back and be president unless you are president now. The exception is if you currently posses some skill or talent that would be applicable in an earlier time (I want to be a laudanum addicted whore in a saloon in Tombstone, Az! Well, OK, I suppose any female has the equipment to do that).

3: Why do you chose the time period that you do?

4: What would be the negatives of the chosen time and place?

5: What would be the positives? ( If you have 100 grand and want to go back to 1975 and lend it to Bill Gates to fund his start up, knock yourself out)

6: No intentionally changing history, although incidental changes are inevitable, IOW you can't go back intending to kill Hitler or the like (that was the other thread. I do have to say that in my choice I'd be enormously tempted to hunt down Horkheimer, Marcuse and the other members of the Frankfort School and run them over with my big old post war Chevy before they could ferment the counter culture movement).

I think I'd go back to 1946/47ish. America at the height of her power. Sure, the cars would drive like boats, medicine would be primitive, and the casual racism would be horrifying. Air travel as we know it hadn't evolved yet, and there would be no internet. 3 TV channels if I was lucky. OTOH, social mores would be much better than they are today. People were politer, and abortion was a shameful, underground aberration. Fathers were expected to be responsible for their children, and the nuclear family was the norm. I'd be living in an America confident in itself and it's inherent goodness, and that's enormously appealing compared to the sad remnant that survives today.

Open thread.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:05 AM

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