dagblog - Comments for "Progress"

It was not an easy time for

trkingmomoe — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 04:16:37 +0000

In reply to Progress

It was not an easy time for Kennedy. He faced the Berlin Wall crises and the Bay of Pigs. Then the Kruchev thought Kennedy was weak, because of the soft response to those 2 crises, and would only complain about the missiles in Cuba. But Kennedy faced the Cuban Missile Crises head on.

I see a parallel in this with today. The republicans may have underestimated Obama with this current crises. We will see how it plays out.

Thanks for bringing up this period of history. I have been thinking about it for the last week. I was a freshmen in high school during the Cuban missile crises and wrote about how scared I was. I still have my diary from then and got it out to look at this past week because I don't remember any other time, that there was such an intense crises except during the Cuban missile. For a week we waited for WWIII to start and end the world. Now we are hostage to a threat of blowing up the world economy. This has gone on for weeks, I am exhausted, and 2012 election can't come soon enough. I don't want to see any more parts of our population held hostage by the republicans. We need to give him a better congress to work with him.

Regarding your last paragraph

Elusive Trope — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:38:56 +0000

In reply to Those industrialists that the

Regarding your last paragraph - this is what I was driving at in my blog Now is the Time. Not to plug my own blog, but it seems silly to reiterate the same point. But I think "give a second term President Obama something better to work with" sums it up. It is still within the realm of possibility for the Dems to retake back the House. If the Dems can do that, plus keep the Senate and resend Obama back to the White House, especially after this debt ceiling showdown, then the meme that has to be accepted by the MSM is that Americans want something other than what the Tea Party is offering. Of course the alternative is a period austerity until people get tired of seeing their elders dying on park benches. I would rather not have to go through the latter experience in order for people to get their act together.

Those industrialists that the

Barth — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:21:00 +0000

In reply to I echo Richard's sentiment.

Those industrialists that the Dickster talks about included, of course, quite a number of oinkers who detested FDR and whose younger versions did not like "young Kennedy" but that younger generation, which served with JFK in World War II, and reflexively voted for Nixon in 1960 (the" Mad Men" crew) had this sense---many of them did, anyway---that this rising tide lifts all boats idea that President Kennedy kept talking about, might just make sense. That a country at peace, making money, and, perhaps in according some greater civil rights to the down and out in the south, might open up a couple of new markets. (The loathsome Pete Campbell, if you watched the show, saw this---albeit imperfectly---in trying to put ads into Ebony magazine).

When President Kennedy jawboned the steel magnates, and may have been more succesful than the supposedly hardnosed President Truman a decade earlier, they gave him a grudging respect, I think. By 1964, either because of the President's murder, or just the degree of trouble they could see in Senator Goldwater's endorsement of extremism (and, by the way, his ridicule of the space program in the same speech---find the speech and you will see what I mean), many of them voted Democratic (and told their bosses something less than the whole truth.)

And Trope has it exactly right----it is our 1960s view that we were all in this together, and had left behind the dog eat dog philosophy of the past---that got us through the tumultuous first half and plus of the decade. Vietnam is another story, sadly, so sadly, but the Civil and Voting Rights Acts---crucial to our country, but hard on our politics, also helped to split us asunder, and by 1980 usher in the anti-Roosevelt era which we are still in, horribly.

There are many things the President has done in the past year or so that are not what we might have wanted from him, but we also failed to vote in 2010 and got a very hostile and crazy Congress---especially House of Representatives---as a result, so, frankly, that's a wash. We need to pick ourselves up from this, learn our lesson about dividing over relatively insignificant issues and try to give a second term President Obama something better to work with at least in the two years after the next election.

I echo Richard's sentiment.

Elusive Trope — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:46:53 +0000

In reply to Progress

I echo Richard's sentiment. One of the things that I had hoped Obama's victory over McCain signalled was that after the Bush years, we had as a nation come to our senses and believed that government truly did have a role to play in our shared future. Alas, there are still too many of us out there who do not wish to join together in a collective endeavor.

I must have at one time, but

Richard Day — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:40:33 +0000

In reply to Progress

I must have at one time, but I really cannot remember thinking about the contradictions between America 'then' and 'now' in terms of aspirations.

You really nail it.

Look this is what we can do as a nation....

vs.

Look at what we cannot do as a nation...

We used to have Giants of Industry, now we have hollow corporations that produce nothing! hahah

This country is soooooo great, soooooo rich in money and natural resources and talent and yet we are constantly bombarded with this message that we are incapable of solving our problems.