To the older generation

I'm an 80's baby so I'm looking for information from the much older generation.

Are many of these political issues (fiscal cliff for example) just more of the same as in previous years? The media definitely makes it sound like the end of the world worse than the Mayan calender. Is this a cylindrical thing that occurs every so often (history repeats itself)?

Seems like every generation has its "booger hunters", doom, gloom, and such.

I remember my folks worried that when JFK got elected, he would be takin` orders from the Pope.

I kind of figured it was like this.

IMO, this isn't some cycle. From a 50's baby's perspective the elites have got us right where they want us. Hopefully I will be dead before the bottom really falls out.

I think this thread would be better suited in the Political Forum.

I just wanted to keep it on topic. It was more than just a political question, just didn't state more.

I meant the current state of affairs in general with the way everything is going on in the world and the country. Fiscal cliff was just one specific I could name off hand.

I can remember the y2k scare. Growing up in the sixties I was afraid of the US getting nuked by the Russians. My dad grew up during the Great Depression and I was reminded of that quite regularly. He remembers war rations before he joined the Army in WWII.

Alot of hings are cyclical. I don't think the fiscal cliff is. Recessions/depressions are. The fiscal cliff is more of a fiscal slope but there is a pebble rolling down that slope that is going to cause the ripple that will cause the wave that becomes the tsunami that has the potential to wash over us like it did Greece.

I can remember my mom telling me stories about her dad avoiding the train thugs so he could steal enough coal to heat the house when she was little...she was born in 1923, God rest her soul.

Its kinda like this;
20 yrs ago there were a lot more cows to milk and nobody really noticed when they milked them for their own use.
Now the cows are less plentiful and the old ones are dead/dry. Now they have to create diversions so we cant see them milking the last few cows dry leaving the rest of us hungry.

Point being, its time to hang some milk thieves so they take notice.

I'm 65 and the closest and scariest I can remember to thinking we were about to experience the end of the world as we knew it was the Cuban missile crisis.

georgia357 said:

I'm 65 and the closest and scariest I can remember to thinking we were about to experience the end of the world as we knew it was the Cuban missile crisis.

Click to expand...

Can you imagine the mis-match ? Uncle BO vs Putin compared to JFK vs Kruschev ? Scary.

60's baby here; IMO it's changed so that more and more folks are taking some kind of hand out, less people are willing to work. There has been a lot of legit concerns over the yrs BUT we as a country are dying by a thousand cuts. We don't pay attention to that.

not really "older generation" yet but early 40's. I can remember in the 70's how social security was going to go bankrupt, the russians were going to come kill us and kick out dogs, the world population was growing so fast we were all going to starve to death, etc.

basically, when you hear this garbage see what theyre "selling" either literally or figuratively and there you go.

my 95 year old 6th grade alabama one room schoolhouse educated granddaddy taught me that. One of the best lessons ive ever been taught. everyone is trying to 'sell" you something. remember that.

ESPECIALLY politicians.

T

Mid-40s here, and it's been some kind of scare from the media and politicians all my life. There are a hundred thousand network news people out there whose jobs depend on keeping us all tore up, scared, and worried about something. I can remember my grandpa talking about FDR getting elected-people were saying the same communist/socialist stuff about him that they do about Obama and how he was heading the country straight to a place with a much warmer climate (not saying it's not the truth about either one.) But point is, nearly a hundred years later, we're still here. If you want to imagine really hard times, think about being here during the Civil War, with armies marching and fighting and looting through most of the country. We survived that, too. We ain't seen no hard times in our lifetimes.

Good points of view. Thanks all!

I suspect my parents lived through much scarier times.

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I'm in my mid 40's and I remember in the 70's being told that we were going into another ice age in the next 20 years or so. I also remember news reports that said we only had 20 years of oil left to fuel the entire world. As for the present political drama, it does seem that every couple of years in December there is some kind of urgent extension of tax cuts that we must approve. The drama always ends witht he Republicans caving and making their base mad for doing so. As a young man I trained to kill the Commie scum in Russia (we called them threat forces in training excercises). I grew up thinking that I would die fighting the Russians and I ended up having to settle for Saddam's boys back in 91'.

I used to have nightmares of Russian soldiers entering our house and dreams of atomic bombs when I was really young. Then as a teenager watching the Vietnam War every single night. Cameras were in the battlefield daily. Kinda became scary as you turned 18.
It was mostly over when I entered the Navy.
The energy chrisis in the 70's was a hassle. We should have used that to move on to better sources.
The current fiscal cliff stuff can cause us issues. Dave Ramsey the radio economic guru says just leave your investments alone and ride it out. He doesn't let the Media control his investments. You can't chase the market.

I was born in '52.
I attended grades 1-8 at Dyal Elementary School which was located out in the country, at the crossing of two dirt roads,,about 9 miles from town (Baxley), in Appling County.

During that time we would have the "bomb drills" you can see on the older film clips of the time.

I can still remember just about every town had a bomb shelter.
I'm glad that everyone making them (The Bombs)finally got so scare of making them bigger and more powerful.

Some were getting close to being so power that they were nearing the point of mushrooming into outer space and possibly causing a catastrophic collapse of Earths atmosphere.
Aren't we glad they quit making them more powerful and just making more of them?


The Cuban missile crises was on of the scariest times I can remember on a national and world level and I'll always believe President Kennedy's resolve to it and his wishes to overthrow Castro
is what done him in, With Castro getting help from Nikita Khrushchev.

The Soviet Union and it's allies was known as and was refereed to as "The Iron Curtain" when it was talked about, mostly back then.


At recess or at home, it would be nothing to see a military blimp pass over or for a fighter jet to fly over head and be so close to the ground the trees would sway from the air wash.

About once a month we would ask each other, at school, if they heard the sound from one of the jets breaking the sound barrier.

Sometimes one would tell of a neighbor whose windows got busted out of their house by the blast or we'd have a laugh from a tale of somebodies hogs or cows tearing
out of the field from one.

Chickens would panic and several would get killed in the large chicken houses.
Dairy farmers would complain about it causing their cows to quit producing milk and the list goes on.

These were times that a real scare still loomed over the nation of an outright attack on what was consider then and at times now, the mainland.

Mama and Daddy would tell of what was still recent times to them of the food rations that each family were allowed.



Now I'm not sure of what to be afraid of except of all the lies coming from the CIA since before Vietnam up to today and what it has cost this country in lives and world respect.
Everything use to be more threading, real to truth.
I think today just be glad of how it turned out, if it was good and hope for a good or better day tomorrow.

We've been warned back over two thousand years ago that things are going to get so bad until it leads to the destruction of the whole earth so live the best clean life possible canand done worry about bad things happening, just prepare for it in the best way you can and don't waste too much time complaining because it's going to happen ether way. When? Only the "I Am" has that answer and the first one of us to know are in graveyards
and they're not talking.

Remember that the Simpson-Bowles act (now referred to as the fiscal cliff) was a plan to resolve the fiscal dilemma we find ourselves in, not create a crisis, and was passed by congress. It was their best guess at what it would take to get revenue and spending under control. I haven't heard anything any better that anyone is saying lately.