ReRuns

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday talking to a friend, he said that it seems like we’re living through a shoddy version of the seventies.

But that’s not QUITE it. It’s more complicated. It’s more like we’re living through a performative version of the seventies.

It’s like all the recasting and re-doing of classic movies and series, at this point even those that weren’t particularly successful: it feels like Hollywood is just redoing these things out of some sort of dinosaur brain memory that they were successful. However, the people in charge no longer have any idea why these things were successful or why they resonated or achieved the results they did.

So the re-casts/re-dos sound hollow and strange, and would even if they didn’t use them to push their weird personal current obsessions. (All heroes must be women and black and increasingly of some odd sexual identity! Only villains can be white!) Because the car is there, but the engine is gone metaphorically speaking.

All these redos and recastings and all are just shells of what the original was. And imbuing them with current wokeness doesn’t make them massively popular, because it doesn’t have that kind of purchase amid the public.

The left and current “Cultural gatekeeping elite” doesn’t seem to be aware of this, or aware of why they fail. In fact, each failure baffles them.

I could be snide, here, and say that it’s because this entire administration, and in fact, the entire upper-crust/controlling layer of our institutions are profoundly untalented theater kiddies, who have no creativity but love the style, and so are trying to do performance of what they think should be there, in the hopes it will work. And are forever baffled it doesn’t.

The truth is not quite that mean, but it rhymes. They are people of a certain frame of mind. In most places and most times, this would make them profoundly “conservative.” Frankly they are, because 100 years into the “progressive” project, those who support it are conservatives. But it’s a weird sort of “conservatism” because what they’re conserving is the cult that tells them if they tear Western civ apart paradise ensues. The whole just-so cult of Marx as filtered through their parents, grandparents and great grandparents.

Part of the whole Marxian philosophy is that it’s a self-contained system, congruent within itself, and with no basis in reality. This makes a certain type of mind susceptible to it. In other centuries they’d be religious fanatics, missionaries to the heathens and zeal-burned puritans.

That type of mind tends to think of things in terms of pre-ordained and fixed narrative, not wildly creative and innovative. That THEY think of themselves as creatives is the insanity of the current system and the Marxian corruption of institutions. They are not actually capable of creativity, only of passing on the received word.

And so we get to the other side of the rerun of the seventies: These kids, by and large, grew up with everything from schools, to TV to even their parents (for the children and grandchildren of boomers) being sold a version of the sixties and seventies in which protesting on the street, behaving badly and destroying property was being passionate and fighting for the voiceless and by itself meant IMPROVING SOCIETY and MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

So the most gullible of this generation are rebels without a clue. They must perform the hit the streets and protest, but they lack the immediacy of the draft to make it personal, and they lack anything like civil rights to make it righteous.

Instead they attach to any stupid cause they can find or which is handed to them by manipulative SOBs. So, you know, it might be saving the endangered Prebles Jumping Mouse, or perhaps saving old buildings, or even well… Lately Occupy Wall Street, BLM, antifidiots and of course pro-Hamass.

Sure, some of these people are paid. I still feel I owe massive apologies to the young lady 10 years ago who told me it was all for money, because her generation was desperate for money. I didn’t believe her, but to a great extent she was right.

But those not being paid? They’re there because they were told they have to protest something to be good people. They have to stand up to the man and take to the streets. This has been drunk with mother’s milk and held up to them as the greatest good. Therefore they must do it.

They don’t understand the issues. They don’t get any of it. In their minds, though the very fact they’re protesting and sometimes clashing with the police means they’re changing the world (No one ever asks if changing is for the better) and being stunning brave and “activists” and therefore good people.

Only this explains bizarre things like Queer (or Feminists) for Palestine. Which is the logical equivalent of Chickens for KFC.

This is also why they become hysterical and unable to cope if challenged. They just have to do this performative thing and paradise will happen. Why are you stopping them, you bad person, you?

The thing is, as with their attempt to recreate WWII emergency state with the covidiocy, that it’s like the reruns. It’s hollow.

Even BLM didn’t “take” amid the people, and that was arguably, as presented, a more compelling cause, because it was at least over here, and it was wrapped around a case presented as wrongful death at the hands of a state agent. (It wasn’t that.) Which resonates with a lot of people.

But this? Most people who are aware of politics know about 10/7 and these theatrics for the aggressors aren’t even at the level of being tolerated. And even those who don’t know politics are aware Islamic terrorism is a thing. The only people approving are terrorist supporters, many of them recent immigrants.

This rerun, like all the others, is headed for the crapper. And the woke will be baffled as to why the people didn’t “rise up” to support them.

Mostly because all they know are the gestures to repeat, not what they mean or what was behind them.

Honestly? It would have been kinder to make them Bible-obsessed puritans going off to convinced people in tropical climes to wear pants.

At least, even if they got eaten like uncle Bosey (snarf) it would have given their lives purpose, without messing up other people’s lives.

Unfortunately they’ve been taught to act the savages instead. And getting them out of this rut is going to hurt. Them, us, and all of civilization.

Briefly.

144 thoughts on “ReRuns”

  1. I think one of the reasons you’re feeling like it’s the70’s is demographic. The 70’s was when the boomers were at peak hormonal stupidity. Once they aged out, things settled down. The echo boomers are at their peak proportion, right about now and it will be followed by a trough just like the last time. 

    also, remember what Disney was like in the 70’s, well they’re back. Disney came out with earnings today and boy oh boy. They’re tanking, hard.This ties into the desperation the “elites” seem to feel. Disney’ management knew this was coming all through their proxy fight with Peltz, that’s why they had to win since they would all have lost their phony baloney jobs and if the rumor about their cooking the books on Star Wars is true, might have ended them in the pokey. 

    Same holds true for the uni party. a motivated Trump would cost them their phony baloney jobs and might end them up in the pokey, if they manage to avoid the citizen’ s tar and feathers.

    That said, I don’t think the judiciary was quite as corrupt then as it is now.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. The Reader thinks that what Disney has done with it’s books should result in a bunch of folks ending up behind bars. Wonder if the Florida Attorney General is up for it?

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    3. The current iteration of Disney is not much like the Disney of the 1970s. They were creatively exhausted back then, but they had a tremendous respect for their accomplishments of the past (if anything, possibly too tremendous). By revering and cultivating those accomplishments, Disney kept enough golden eggs coming out of them to get through that phase and catch a second wind creatively.

      The Disney of today is creatively hollow, but they don’t have the saving grace of revering what came before. Their productive (I hesitate to say “creative’) vanguard has contempt for anything not made with the right (meaning their) values. They don’t mind plundering that wealth in a way that devalues it, because they don’t value it themselves except as raw material for what they’re doing their own way. Their corporate-ideological culture isn’t going to sustain Disney, and the old properties won’t sustain them until a future creative revival, because the public will learn to respect those properties as little as Disney itself respects them.

      This doesn’t even get into Disney making itself a looking-glass caricature of a family entertainment company and driving people away in their millions. They could be drawn back by a complete purging of the upper echelons and a re-emphasis on the great works of the past, but Disney is not going to oblige them.

      Okay, I’ve yakked enough about stuff I only sorta know about.

      Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. The Reader notes that the Disney of the 70’s had embarked on the great project of Disney World. And by the late 70’s it was already something special.

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          1. The Reader thinks that the folks who sold Disney all that swamp land in Florida in the early 70’s must have a few regrets. Who knew what you could build in what was (in the 70’s) a hell hole of a swamp?

            Liked by 1 person

      2. It seems that current woke leadership at Disney is dedicated to ‘deconstruction’ of the classic Disney oeuvre because it’s rac(etc.)ist, homo(etc.)phobic, and patriarchal.

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    4. “Echo boomers” are what Millennials used to be called back when they were still babies and little kids. Mid/late Boomers born in the ’50s and early ’60s started their families in the ’80s, prompting a rise in birth rates. “Gen X” was originally known as the “Baby Bust” because they were born during a downturn in birth rates that ran from roughly 1965 to 1980.

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  2. Nod.

    Some of the idiots were interviewed and they didn’t KNOW who Hamas was.

    Idiots.

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      1. After looking at the Mayday and the other posh selfies, I’m leaving my mind open as to whom it’s useful. Those look like an own goal to me…

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      2. More like ‘useless idiots’.

        They can’t build or create, only corrupt and destroy.

        Takes a lot of smart, talented, competent people to build a car. Only takes one idiot to wreck it.

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        1. Eric Raymond’s “Gramscian Damage” claim is that corruption and destruction is precisely what the Useful Idiots are useful for, to their puppet masters. So useful, in fact, that they continue to corrupt and destroy even after their puppet masters are gone.

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    2. Solution: clam up and refer everyone to a spokesman.

      Question: how can it be free speech when they can’t speak?

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  3. There was a lot of violent insanity roaming around in the early 70s, too, after our military involvement in Vietnam ended, and the hysteria about the draft burned out with the end of it. The Symbionese Liberation Army for ex. The Black Panthers, and local madness like MOVE in Philadelphia, and the People’s Temple in San Francisco/Guyana. There were a fair number of diehards who didn’t want to let the 60s youth-quake go.

    There are a lot of establishment Dem politicians in San Francisco who still want to forget how very heavily they depended on Jim Jones and his cult following.

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    1. Naw the People’s Temple folks are still voting for Democrats in San Francisco. Moving to a foreign country or death can’t stop them from getting that Vote harvested.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Naw the People’s Temple folks are still voting for Democrats in San Francisco. Moving to a foreign country or death can’t stop them from getting that Vote harvested.

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    1. There was a lot of violent insanity roaming around in the early 70s, too, after our military involvement in Vietnam ended, and the hysteria about the draft burned out with the end of it. The Symbionese Liberation Army for ex. The Black Panthers, and local madness like MOVE in Philadelphia, and the People’s Temple in San Francisco/Guyana. There were a fair number of diehards who didn’t want to let the 60s youth-quake go.

      There are a lot of establishment Dem politicians in San Francisco who still want to forget how very heavily they depended on Jim Jones and his cult following.

      (Looks like answering my own reply is the way that my comments show up. WP Delenda Est…)

      Liked by 2 people

  5. All these redos and recastings and all are just shells of what the original was.

    So, it’s all just a giant cargo cult, from the endless remakes/reboots to the protests of the cause of the hour.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Our current generation of “elites” have been taught to believe in a magical, pagan world.

    Do the right gestures, worship the right idols, and then a miracle occurs and you have the results you want. There is no reason or logic behind those thoughts-indeed, reason and logic will destroy the magic and show that the idols are false.

    The tools of reason, logic, and science are terrible because they are tools that anyone can use. Magic and worship are the tools of the Elect and the Elite and become the justification for their supremacy.

    …this is not going to end well. This terrible and soulless remake of the 1970’s is going to be all sorts of “fun.”

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    1. And those idols are just power-trip faces for people who believe they are the gods they don’t believe in. They can’t even understand they are doing Wrong because they don’t know what it is. (Not that they would believe in it anyway.)

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  7. Your comparison to religion and missionaries is not even an analogy. You have to have different things with a similarity to be an analogy. The protestors for Hamas, the idiots desecrating art or blocking roads to save the planet, and the others (not the rioters they were just stealing stuff) are fanatical adherents of the Great New Faith. Every teacher, counsellor, TV show, movie etc. has told them that virtue is found in the oppressed and vice in the oppressor, and that any success or prosperity is a result of oppression. They are expiating the guilt they feel because they enjoy unearned plenty.

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    1. And most of them (perhaps not the pro-Hamas groupies) are millennialist. They are sure the End is Nigh and are trying to do Something in order to bring about a new creation, a paradise of some kind. They are a bit like Ghost Dancers of the Great Plains in the late 1800s.

      If you look, you can see the pattern. I first caught it in the radical environmental movement, then in Greta Thunberg’s stuff, Extinction Rebellion, and others. Iran’s leaders are millennialist, although not in the same way (and they believe that they can/should trigger the End Times in order to speed up the coming of paradise.)

      Liked by 2 people

  8. It also seems like the 70’s because movies and books had become real downers. Depressing, dystopian, gritty realism. 

    Along came Star Wars with hope and heros! And TADA! The zeitgeist changed. Was it Star Wars, or was it just lucky in it’s timing. The world may never know. 

    Of course they had to destroy the franchise. They are why we can’t have nice things. Or ever hope to have nice things.

    But the human spirit is a resilient thing and I wouldn’t bet against us.

    Especially Americans.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Lucas and Spielberg and the clique they moved in were part of a movement of rediscovery of classic 1920s-1940s films, and that informed the films they made. We’re seeing something of a similar movement of rediscovery among the Millennials and Zoomers, so possibly some of them will manage something similar.

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      1. I remember a clip from a TV magazine show at that time, comparing Star Wars and/or Indiana Jones to Errol Flynn pirate/adventure movies. Amazing how many of the tropes and beats from the older films were used.

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  9. The Reader, having been in his 20’s during most of the 70’s, has nothing good to say about the decade, and little personally that he likes to remember. Short version – it sucked.

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      1. What the Reader will say about the music in the 70s is that was better than what came after. The Reader also thinks that is a low bar.

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        1. The music of the ’70s was a good example of Sturgeon’s Law. My roommate for the last few years of the decade liked MOR music (K101, for those living in the SF bay area at the time). Hookup songs like “Knock three times” along with creepy breakup songs “Take a letter, Maria” were par for the course.

          Punk and punk-adjacent had their share. KSAN’s evening drive time DJ loved him some punk, so extreme break-up songs got to play. “Your Love is Like a Nuclear Waste”. Never heard Tonio K’s “H-A-T-R-E-D” on the air. That was way over the top. I don’t care how bad the breakup was, but “m*****f*****” doesn’t belong in a song.

          Stephen King was very ’70s for me, too. I liked The Stand, though the V2.0 edition didn’t move me to buy another copy. Read and sort of enjoyed his other work (Salem’s Lot was decent, the others OK), until Pet Semetary put me off his work for good.

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          1. In the late ’60s through the ‘early ’90s I didn’t really notice the pop music; I was tuned into mostly Country&Western (or as a coworker put it, “He likes two types of music; country and western.”. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Hank Jr, CCR and a bunch of others. Ballads were far more interesting to me than the pop of the time.

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            1. Yeah, “Both kinds of music.” :)

              I went country around 1980, Crystal Gayle, plus the Texas people. I need to convert the Guy Clark LPs to join the ripped CDs for my MP3 playlist. And some Asleep at the Wheel. And, and, etc.

              Ricky Skaggs has been playing the Opry recently, and I keep hoping he’ll do one of the Guy Clark songs, either “New Cut Road” or “She’s Crazy for Leavin’*”. OTOH, his bluegrass is really good.

              ((*)) OK, Rodney Crowell co-wrote it with Guy.

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      2. Well, in a sop to his drunken brother, he did dereg beer so we get stuff other than weak, Pilsner, based stuff. See, I can find something good about Carter. Oh, and he killed a wabbit (~_^). okay, that last is debatable.

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    2. I didn’t like the seventies either. Toward the end I went with a friend to a “welcome to the crazy eighties” party whose theme was the hope that things would be less drab.

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        1. The Reader personally preferred Harvest Gold appliances to Avocado.

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              1. My profound sympathies … the house that I lived in as a teenager was built late-forties – had burgundy-colored trim tile in the bathrooms. Mom hated it mostly because she couldn’t get towels that matched it. (Mom was a completionist,)

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                1. Speaking of dated interiors and appliances … I presume that you are all familiar with James Lilek’s “Interior Desecrations” ?

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                2. Mom’s “new” house came with black tile (circa 1951). She redid the bathroom, in pink. Actually, it was P.I.N.K.!!! Only bathroom in the house, sigh. Her house, her rules.

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              2. I had a Burnt Orange broom closet in the kitchen when I moved in in 2022. Apparently the whole kitchen was done in that color in the 70s.

                It was very low grade paint and sanded off in clouds and piles, revealing the green-tinged blue that was probably the original 1959 color.

                The rest of the kitchen was like battleship gray, only darker. It and the closet are now light blue.

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            2. Yes, when Mom moved to a downsized house (I was the youngest kid, and in college), the appliances were avocado-green. I had a couple-three green cars later on, but never that shade. (BRG for the win!) Towards the later ’70s, my first refrigerator was the harvest gold. (In the mid-80s, I moved and the kitchen appliances were chocolate brown. Urk.)

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        2. MomRed’s avocado green blender weighs as much as a small car and is still going strong. I can live with the color. (The icky pink bathroom tile, however, was a different story.)

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          2. We inherited a 70s green KitchenAid mixer!
            It is completely analog — all wiring inside, no circuit boards or chips.
            It’s a tank — I’m proud to own it!

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    3. I actually have mostly good memories of the seventies, which was basically my adolescence and that was living in NYC during its nadir. You don’t notice these things when you’re young, few Americans had reason to notice it anyway.

      Perhaps we would all do well to ask ourselves the first question Wall Street people who survive ask about any new information. Why am I being told this, by this person, at this time? There’s an entire industry out there who exist purely on the proceeds from riling people up, left and right.

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      1. An industry? Try several, from school boards to college professors to the MSM to the various Alphabet Agencies to the DemonRat party. Stir hatred and discontent for the sole purpose of increasing personal power and profit.

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  10. I will note that last year at least two Marvel movies had black male villains. But Marvel is odd, in a way. The original writers realized a cracked and monomaniacal “environmentalist,” made a great villain, without realizing that also showed the hollowness of a lot of environmentalism. (There’s a scene in, “Endgame,” where Captain America comments he saw a pod of whales in New York Harbor and Black Widow basically says, “is that better (than what we had)?” And Cap agrees – it’s not.

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    1. The MCU up through Endgame drew on relatively older, more popular (and therefore saner) storylines. And in the one newer, more controversial storyline they did (Civil War), they seem to have done a good job of learning from the source material’s mistakes. After that, they kind of went off the rails.

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    2. Which is about the only thing that tells me Marvel’s still breathing despite three or so decades of strangulation. Whether the company will be able to continue to breathe past the garrote until we get past this cultural crisis and can get them medical attention, only God knows, however.

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      1. The Reader thinks someone will get a lot of the old IP at a fire sale and hopefully start ‘Classic Disney’. It worked for Coke…

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    2. The Who opened their 1973 tour at the Cow Palace. Keith Moon, the drummer, was so stoned he kept falling asleep, and finally couldn’t be reawakened. The promoter called for an ambulance, and Townsend, disgusted, said something like “anyone out there know how to play the drums?”

      Someone *did*, and managed to get the promoter’s attention. Scott Halpin, age 19. He was a newbie, but he did know a couple of Who songs. They got him up on the stage, sat him down at the drums, and Townsend walked him through the songs he didn’t know.

      Scott passed away in 2008, but he left an enduring legacy: when any major band goes on tour, the audience is full of people waiting for the chance to do the same thing Scott did. The entire band could drop dead onstage, and people could come out of the audience, pick up their instruments, and do a passable job of finishing the concert.

      I’ve never quite decided if that’s awesome or creepy.

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  12. I agreed with this whole thing until the last word.

    Briefly?

    I dunno.

    Remember, it was these kids’ grandparents that pulled this crap the last time around. Not it’s this generation.

    You fill people’s heads with this garbage and you get it back out.

    Now, this crap skipped my generation. Most of us just didn’t care, had too much crap going on, had divorced parents and a society that didn’t get divorced kids (my parents were married up until my dad passed in the late 90’s but a lot of my friends weren’t so lucky.) and didn’t trust anything, to include that guy when he wanted to protest whatever. We had too much on out plate already.

    We could run a grill and wouldn’t have had to beg for food too, but that’s a separate issue.

    The bottom line is that the rot seems like it’s about to set in.

    Our only hope (oddly) is decreasing college enrollment. If we can get kids into trade schools and making money that way we can avoid the indoctrination that comes with a degree and they’ll still be able to feed their families.

    And make no mistake about it: College is an indoctrination factory. Part of the problem may have been my major (history) but I saw it all around me. Now, I went back to school at the age of 29, so I was able to avoid the BS because I had enough life experience to see through it. These eighteen year olds straight out of high school don’t.

    It’s going to take not just a lot of work but a lot of luck to avoid what is probably coming. I pray that we get it.

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    1. Nah. You’re not getting one important thing: Colleges are selecting for “passionate” and “activist.”
      this is it. This is all there is.
      And my generation didn’t fall for this, either. Mostly because we had older siblings who did. This is a rerun of the seventies by the same sh*theads children all over again.

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  13. They are emotional junkies, saving the world, from themselves. Only they don’t realize that they are indeed the problem, not the solution. Their ideas come from make believe, so that is the only place they work. Reality does not care about your intentions, where for them Intentions is all that matter. And we all know what road good intentions is paved with.

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  14. The ’70s had their issues, but I don’t think they were as bad as now, just different. But I was see them through the eyes of a child.

    We celebrated the US Bicentenial in the ’70s, even changed the design on the quarter. Fire hydrants were paint red, white and blue. 250 year mark happens in 2026 and I don’t know if there will be a celebration or a new quarter or a cohesive country.

    Being a kid in the ’70s I remember Watergate, Vietnam, oil crisis, terrorists and inflation being the news of the day. Some Apollo missions finished up with SkyLab. Space Shuttle was glide tested. We would have spoiled our drawers if we had something like SpaceX.

    Protestors and hippies were looked down on as communist scum by both Democrats and Rebublicans. Most of the male figures in our lives had done a stint in the service and many had served in a war or two. Nixon was shady and Carter was weak. My mom lost a key promotion due to Affirmative Action and started drinking. We were more scared of tornadoes than nuclear war.

    In the city, integration meant busing. In the country, our town was all ready integrated since it reduced the cost of schools and made for better sports teams. We really didn’t think about racism where we were, but dating outside your race was a no-no. (Intergration hit hard for my friend in Dallas. It didn’t go smooth at all, cultural shock.)

    Fashion was meh, especially if you had to wear hand-me-downs. A lot of women still had sewing machines at home and many of the girls dresses and other items were hand made. Clothing was expensive and much of the money we earned in side and summer jobs went to clothes. I worked on the farm in the summer to get most of my clothes for the year. Sears was bigger than Walmart. It’s catalogs were dream books.

    Music was good if you had decent radio stations or friends with record collections. I was gifted a radio with an 8-track. Later inheirited a much better radio with 8-track and all my cousins music in that format. He migrated to cassette. On very rare occasions at my uncles, we stayed up late and watch the “Midnight Special” or snuck out of bed to peek at it.

    TV was meh. We had a black and white set and 4 channels on a good day. With the Sunday paper came the TV guide for the week. It was scouted for the rare movie or special.

    Movies were rare treats. Remember seeing the re-release of ‘2001’ before I saw ‘Star Wars’. The first blew me away, the second was ok. James Bond movies were the best. I don’t remember sequels except the “Witch Mountain’ movies.

    ( I didn’t see ‘Blazing Saddles’ til the late ’80s. ‘Dazed and Confused’, a retro film describes my cousins ’70 experience semi-accurately.)

    There was no internet, personal computers or smart phones. All we had was traditional media. If you want another viewpoint you could check out the out of state newspapers and the various magazines at the library. Books were my escape due to my crazy family life. Radio, sports and music were close seconds.

    The era ended with Reagan, “The Miracle on Ice “, my parents divorced and I ending back in Texas living with relatives. I think their stress in ’70s broke them. I think the current period is breaking more people now.

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    1. I remember gas lines, the Iran hostage mess, the Bicentennial, stagflation (and a lot of “poverty food” for supper), and Camp David. I missed the music because my family listened to classical or folk (Neil Diamond, Odetta, Ian and Sylvia, the Limelighters…) Oh, and Star Wars and The Black Hole. The latter had two scenes that scared the heebie jeebies out of me, and might be why I’m not entirely trusting of anything robotic.

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          1. On a big screen tv, you can see the burning wreckage of the Cygnus beneath him, and the zombie-cyborg crew members going to and fro like ants or damned souls. Brr. Someone put way too much thought into that scene.

            And yes, I’ve borrowed Max’s, er, ambience at least once for a baddie in a novel, although there was actually a human inside this time.

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    2. There are specific small-scale pop culture meddlings I might commit in the 1970s if given a time machine, Jedi mind tricks and a lot of period appropriate money. I don’t think I would visit the decade just for fun and atmosphere. Well, maybe some of the bicentennial celebrations.

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    3. I do wish I had my parent’s ‘74 Spirit of America Nova though. There were some nice vehicles in the ‘70s, and some good music. But I don’t think you could pay me enough to travel back in time to then.

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      1. That might be the only exception. $10,000 in Apple stock in the ’70s scales to something stupidly big today. 

        You wouldn’t have to go to the ’70s, the ’90s were a lot more fun and would be enough, given foresight of the markets and events.

        Yeah, even if I could replay my life with complete foresight, the ’70s would be a depressing grind to survive in many aspects unless one got really creative.

        Maybe I could read the classics while working on a better education. Probably would get sent to military school just to avoid the family drama and predators, but it might have be a different fire/frying pan.

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        1. $10,000 in Apple stock in 2000 would be worth $3.15 million today, and pay almost $600 a year in dividends.

          If I was going back to the 70s, I’d do my damnedest to make IBM use the Motorola 68000 CPU and Microware OS-9/68K in their PC. That would make a world of difference in everything related to computers.

          The fact that Billzebub Gates would remain an obscure nonentity is just a bonus.

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  17. “Honestly? It would have been kinder to make them Bible-obsessed puritans going off to convinced people in tropical climes to wear pants.”

    WOOL PANTS

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    1. Don’t knock tropic-weight wool pants until you’ve tried them. The wool doesn’t glue itself to you the way cotton can. I’ll grant that cavalry twill and other weaves aren’t fun in 98 F and 98% humidity.

      Signed,

      Alma, who has not been able to wear shorts since she was in grade school.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. It’s a parody,
    not parity.
    As bad as the 70s got we still had the tools/wiggle room to get free. A Market responsive to the needs of the consumers (who could afford to be poor), has been recast with corporate serfs to the government at hand, with mandates over supply in demand.
    In the 70s you could go see your family doctor with or without insurance, And everybody understood that premium paid at the doctor’s office or billed to you also help cover some of your neighbors who had just recently been laid off.
    Local products were always cheaper than stuff that had to be shipped in, uniform pricing and just in time shipping had not become a thing yet.
    I remember lay away being a year round thing, but all these tools have been recast and re imagined by the government at hand with no thought of the consequences and future bad decisions required to support today’s bad ideas.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Available where? I completely agree with your daughter. It’s parent Soap was also one of the best shows on television. My Dad watched it religiously – and I think a LOT of conservatives did – because it was so good. OTOH, we really could not stand All In the Family. Probably because, to hark back to a recent MGC post, we would have been quite pleased if a meteor landed on the Bunker household.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Oh, heck, yeah! Soap was hysterically funny, and popular! When the latest episode on Beta tape arrived at FEN-Misawa for broadcast to the military audience, all of the staff rushed in to watch it on one of the newsroom playback machines… checking for potential host-nation sensitivities, of course. Before it was broadcast, of course. We could never be too careful about host nation sensitivities, you see.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Want another layer to Soap funny? In Portugal the translator missed it was supposed to be funny.
          I walked down, in a complete “studying for finals funk” and sat down to watch it with my parents. I know this sounds unbelievable, but the subtitles and description in the equivalent of TV guide made it seem like a drama. And my parents are watching it, riveted and a little sad, and wondering why their daughter is laughing her head off.
          I had to start simultaneous interpreting before they GOT IT.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. When we went to see the movie Dogma, we were the only Catholics in the theater, apparently. At least, we were the only ones laughing at all the Catholic in-jokes. Including the priest who blessed his golf clubs, because we knew one of those.

            Liked by 1 person

  21. I have actually thought for some time that the Reagan presidency was a remake of the Kennedy presidency. Opposition to communism and “watchmen on the walls of world freedom,” support for space travel, income tax cuts, an Irish bloke in the Executive Mansion . . . Only this time the shooting failed.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I had an excellent history professor in college whose area of expertise was Kennedy and he showed us how Reagan’s policy speeches were almost point-for-point the same as Kennedy’s. (He also explained the Cuban Missile Crisis to us, which was incredibly refreshing given that adults prior to that seemed to assume we would absorb the details about something that happened before we were born through osmosis.)

      Liked by 1 person

  22. Want to start “IMPROVING SOCIETY and MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE?”

    You could:

    • make your bed in the morning
    • pick up the trash–in your house, in your yard, in the street
    • mow the lawn
    • wash your car–and yourself
    • wear some clean and neat clothes–and lose the a$$hole t-shirt
    • turn down your car stereo
    • tip generously
    • stop making that resting b*tch face

    I could go on….

    Liked by 2 people

    1. There’s a local high school that has partnered with a number of local businesses. The businesses support the high school, and the students get internships. And part of the school policy is to teach these students about working behaviors, such as dressing appropriately and being on time.

      This is in an “underprivileged” area, and to be frank, many of these students have never had these behaviors modeled to them before. So what this private school is doing is teaching them how they can break the cycle of poverty through behaviors that we take as read.

      I honestly don’t know their “success” rate as such, but I bet a lot of these kids get employed where they wouldn’t have after attending a standard high school.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. The Reader was starting to view the 70s through rose colored glasses until disco came up…

        Liked by 3 people

    2. The big Album Orientated Rock station in Detroit had a ‘club’ called D.R.E.A.D. — Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco

      I might have been a member with the card and everything…

      Like

  24. who have no creativity but love the style, and so are trying to do performance of what they think should be there, in the hopes it will work. And are forever baffled it doesn’t.

    What you’re describing there is a type of Cargo Cult. It’ll work about as well as in the South Pacific.

    Liked by 3 people

  25. I remember saying back before COVID that it felt like a rerun of the ’70s was about to arrive.

    The parallels aren’t exact. They never are. But there is a similarity between now and then. One big difference this time would be that Trump’s time in the White House was better than Nixon’s terms.

    If Trump can get back in, then we could potentially have a new ’80s-style reinvigoration. It took two years under Reagan. And it might take some time under Trump while the economy recovers from the damage that’s been done to it.. But there are a lot of things that can be fixed simply by replacing who’s running the government.

    Some good news is that as I’ve noted before, the current round of campus protests appear to be *very* unpopular on the college campuses. Yes, they’re noisy. But the only reason why they exist is because the campus administrations tolerate them (or, in the case of GWU, apparently because the local police have ignored a request for assistance in clearing them out). All indications are that administrations that take a hard stance against the demonstrators gain respect in the eyes of the students. Instapundit has a link up today that states that over 80% of college students want the protestors held accountable for their actions. The ex-hippie professors might cheer on the protestors. But the students want them to go away, and everyone involved to be punished.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. I could be snide, here, and say that it’s because this entire administration, and in fact, the entire upper-crust/controlling layer of our institutions are profoundly untalented theater kiddies, who have no creativity but love the style, and so are trying to do performance of what they think should be there, in the hopes it will work. And are forever baffled it doesn’t.

    They’re cargo cultists. They keep thinking that if it all looks like it works, then it will work – even though what they build lacks the core components that… well make it work.

    Liked by 3 people

  27. Rerun of the 1970s. Okay, not unreasonable.

    Difference between that time and this time is heart. The spiritual journey of the 60s/70s was a real one for a lot of us. Me, anyway.

    Hippies actually lived in those communes. They tried to do it for real. Failed of course, but they put their own time and money on the line. Found out for themselves it was a stupid idea.

    Now, 2024, it’s completely fake. News story from the “protest” tents at University of Toronto, where the “students” are chanting “river to the sea” and related Nazi propaganda (sorry, Godwin’s Law weenies, this is genuine Goebbels stuff).

    Of interest is the fact, one more time, that none of these agitators are students.

    https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/not-a-student-encampment-u-of-t-professor-visits-anti-israel-protest/ar-AA1o6dOC

    This is the same with the Pantifa riots, and the #BLM riots, and pretty much every other Left-wing riot since 2010. Bussed-in actors, burning stuff.

    It was noted that various other “encampments” that “spontaneously” popped up from nothing across the East Coast universities… all had the exact same green tents. As if somebody got a container full from somewhere.

    This time it feels different to me. I don’t know, maybe nothing comes of it, but -this- time there is no thin patina of respectability. No anti-racism, no “can’t we all just get along?” no anti-war polish. Straight-up terrorism supported by straight-up paid provocateurs.

    They’re promoting the bastards that killed Shani Louk. Nobody is buying it. That’s what’s different.

    The other thing is the toxic fakeness it getting to everyone. Saw a report from China yesterday showing workers painting rock and sand green with fire hoses. Fields filled with row after row of rocks stuck on the end of pieces of rebar, from the air or from a distance it looks like crops. Dead trees painted green. Barren dirt painted green. All done to give cover to Chinese government inspectors enforcing compliance on national green regulations. The inspector, who is already blind and deaf because they bribed him, goes to the town of Wu in Wuwu province, sees green, ticks off all the boxes on his inspection sheet and goes home back to Beijing. Meanwhile everybody in the town of Wu has cancer because the ground water is full of benzine or MEK or something a lot worse from the local factory that literally runs its wastewater into the ditch on the street out front. All the fricking factories do.

    If they’re lying that hard and that blatantly to their own government, imagine how hard that government is lying to us.

    But we don’t have to imagine. We know from Covid how hard they’re lying. Everything they say is a lie. And we ALL KNOW IT.

    Imagine how hard HamAss is lying, and how hard the HamAss supporters in Canada and the USA are lying. Literally everything they say and stand for is a lie. Everything in the media about it is a lie. The tents are a lie. The chants are a lie. The actual people standing there chanting are a lie.

    This is the malaise that grips us. We KNOW they’re lying. They know we know, but they’re still lying. They’re waiting for us to make them stop.

    The thing that’s going to happen, eventually, is a huge reaction to all this lying. That will be all of us rejecting them and revering the truth. Reverence for the truth is the way forward, and it is the future.

    That’s what I think, anyway. That’s what I write in my books.

    Liked by 2 people

  28. Today’s youth aren’t doing a performance art version of the 1970s, they are doing 1930’s Germany. If you look back at how the German universities had mobs of students and professors doing exactly what the modern-day Hitler Youth are doing on campus now, the parallels are striking, down to modern film and old photos of Jews being barred from entry and then violently attacked.

    Remember that the Nazis started out as a fringe minority as well, and as they gained control of institutions, gained power even as they remained a minority. It is pretty much not safe to be a Jew in any place in the USA run by Democrats.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. This is…not wrong. Most of the left and even some of the idiot-right are larping 1930s Germany. The thing about that is, this is the US, and we are *not* like Germany. And the people who would be this nation’s Nazis have made this latest nauseating turn not because they’re a minority marching into power, but because they’ve *been* in power in the heights of culture and government for decades, and are unnerved by the fact that their program isn’t getting the desired result. They’re afraid that, after all this time, it may never work. Not only that, it seems some of them can sense that there’s an increasingly likely scenario in which they end up being frog-marched out of their cushy dens by a bunch of pissed-off American citizens and shot in the street to the sound of applause.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The two things that stand in the way of “it happening here” are the facts that there is a well-armed citizenry, and the ability to exchange information outside of the ruling class’s control. This of course is why they are so eager to disarm the populace and censor speech so that only approved narratives are allowed. Gutting First and Second Amendment protections, just like the protections against warrantless searches and unreasonable searches has already been gutted, is essential for the totalitarians to seize power.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Thank you. Prime for “Benson.” It didn’t have “Soap,” though. Daughter has a Hulu subscription, I think – I’ll check with her when I remember to.

      I saw more of “Benson” than I did of “Soap,” so I think I’ll remember – I had a bedtime way back then. (Actually, have one now, approaching quickly.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “Remember when I couldn’t wait to set my bedtime whenever I wanted it. Not the 9 PM demanded by my parents. Now that I’m an adult, apparently that bedtime is 9 PM.”

        (Or something like this. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “Animal crackers and cocoa to drink,

          That is the finest of suppers I think.

          When I am grown up and can have what I please,

          I think I shall always insist upon these.”

          🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

          Somehow, my doctor has at least as much say in my diet now as my parents did then….

          Like

          1. Warm hot fudge pudding.

            My own body has said “Nope. Only if you want to be sick.” Stupid RH.

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      2. We haven’t watched Soap yet. I vaguely remember it from childhood.

        My adult bedtime now is earlier than my bedtime in high school. I remember my mom almost falling asleep on the couch waiting for her bedtime of 9PM, and thinking she was a lightweight. Now, my wife is usually in bed by 8 if not sooner, and my 13 YOA is in bed, by her own volition, at the same time. I try to stay up until 9. <i>le sigh

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        1. Yep. Proper bedtime for me is now 8:00 – but I allow myself an hour to decompress with the Kindle, so shut that down by 9:00. (Or so it should be…) That lets me get up around 5:00, which is important during the summer months, at least; which have already started here.

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  30. Great so the country is being run by failed theater kids who want to reenact “Do you hear the people sing” from Les Misérables. If it weren’t against my religion I’d take up drinking.

    Liked by 2 people

        1. At 190 proof it’s a great solvent, fuel, (possibly painful) disinfectant, and in a pinch you can even dilute and ingest it – though almost ALL other choices for potable ethanol are better.

          Like

      1. As someone pointed out elsewhere, the problem is that the 2020’s might be like the 1930’s… the 1930’s were followed by the 1940’s – and the first half of those….uh.. aside from the music. and some scientific/engineering advancements.. were NOT so great, to put it ever so mildy.

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        1. Science and pop culture were fine in the 1940s…but everything else was not so hot, including the food. (“Don’t mention the war!”)

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          1. It’s Odd, I know, that I can read the (trans)script for Casablanca and see it’d be great. And yet, I simply CANNOT stand to watch the actual movie. As in, I’ve even tried to watch it – alone so there’d be no issues of people seeing/hearing any reactions I might have – and I got maybe 30 seconds past the intro narration before I shut everything off in an act of self-preservation.

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            1. OK, I’m curious… What is it that turns you off so much? Casablanca is one of my favorite Bogie flicks, and I can’t see or even imagine anything that bad in it. (Only if you want to say; it’s just curiosity on my part.)

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              1. That’s just it. I cannot pinpoint what exactly turns me off so badly about it. The script is great. It *should* be a Great Watch… and yet… while I can agree it’s a Great Story, I still cannot stand to watch it as it was made. It’s NOT any individual actor, either. I can deal with any one of them… in anything else. For all I know, it’s that I was inoculated against it by by so many going on and on about how amazingly great it was. I don’t know.

                $HOUSEMATE once suggested that it’s that I experienced all the cultural reference cliches it spawned and so it felt cliched. But that doesn’t explain why it turns me off so bad even before any appear.

                Now, Citizen Kane, which is (now) rather formulaic kind of speaks to me and I wouldn’t mind watching it again.

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                1. Gack. I couldn’t stand Citizen Kane. I found it dreary, turgid and pretentious.

                  If I want dreary, I’ll watch Casshern Sins. At least there are exciting mech battles.

                  The first time I watched Casablanca, I had recently seen The Beast With Five Fingers. Every time Peter Lorre spoke, I heard an echo of “The hand, the hand!” Made it slightly surreal.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. Well, it would be boring if everyone had the same opinions; that’s why we hold horse races. 😉

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  32. I laugh when I hear people complain about high interest rates. This is NOTHING compared to the late 1970s.

    On the other hand, personal debt is much higher and credit card interest rates have gone insane. On the most recent bill, I noticed (I don’t really pay attention because I don’t carry a balance) the rate on my Fleet Farm card: 34.99%. I think even Libertarians would consider that usury.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. NOTHING compared to the late 1970s.

      Try the ’80s. People complain about 6% student loans. My student loan was 6% (1979). Hubbies was 1.9% (1977). OTOH both were annual, not compound. Also not arbitrarily changed on us on the fly. The offers we got were to pay them off at a discount, if we paid off early. (No. 1. Did not trust the letters. 2) Why? When we were earning 15%+ on money market.)

      personal debt is much higher and credit card interest rates have gone insane.

      Wouldn’t know. Haven’t checked. We pay off all credit cards, every month. Do not have any that charge the minute charges post. The card that does that is history, immediately.

      rate on my Fleet Farm card: 34.99%. I think even Libertarians would consider that usury.

      They didn’t in the ’80s. CC percentage rates were dang near that bad then. Back then we weren’t always paying off CC’s. OTOH that was our Wards CC. They had a program that if you got laid off, as long as you had it one billing cycle before the lay off, they paid your monthly bill + cost of the program + interest accrued + X% of bill. When you know you are getting laid off, and when. Yes, we took advantage, the billing cycle before we got laid off, canceling as soon as went back to work. Pretty sure our console TV was paid for that way. Dropped it as soon as they got wise to people who could do math. Went to multiple billing cycles before, dropped the extra % payment.

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  33. Pingback: The second time as farce – “we’re living through a performative version of the seventies” « Quotulatiousness

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