The Secular-America-is-Becoming-More-Decadent Narrative.
Are secular elements of society any worse now compared to previous eras?
For over 5 decades we’ve heard how the 1960s was so damaging to American society. There are many reasons to be doubtful of such pronouncements or assessments. The secular-society-is-more-decadent-then-or-now narrative is too scripted and trite. The ringing of its supposed truth should even set off a tin-eared bullshit detector. Its dissonance is deafening, and definitely disconcerting. How were the anti-war demonstrations, riots caused by racists, summers of love, and checking out via LSD of the 1960s worse than the 1930s, when America sat on its isolation ass, and let the Nazis annihilate Jews and destroy Europe? Americans who quickly discern decadence have never been too aware of human suffering, and barely concern themselves with it.
.
We went into Vietnam, other Asian nations, Caribbean and Middle East nations, and Central and South America on similar notions as Stalin and Hitler employed to infiltrate their neighbors and install puppet governments. Because people had more sex, took a lot of drugs, and protested a ridiculous dominos falling war and terrible skin color-coded segregation, they did more to destroy our nation than the 1950s of fomenting fear, fetishizing sexual denial, and hating on others? There is very…