For many, especially those on the political left, the 1950s are
the "bad old days." The widely accepted list of what was allegedly
wrong with that decade includes the Cold War, McCarthyism, racial
segregation, self-satisfied prosperity, and empty materialism. The
failings are coupled with ignoring poverty and other social
problems, complacency, conformity, the suppression of women, and
puritanical attitudes toward sex. In all, the conventional wisdom
sees the decade as bland and boring, with commonly accepted people
paralyzed with fear of war, Communism, or McCarthyism, or all
three.
Alan J. Levine, shows that the commonly accepted picture of the
1950s is flawed. It distorts a critical period of American history.
That distortion seems to be dictated by an ideological agenda,
including an emotional obsession with a sentimentalized version of
the 1960s that in turn requires maintaining a particular,
misleading view of the post-World War II era that preceded it.
Levine argues that a critical view of the 1950s is embedded in an
unwillingness to realistically evaluate the evolution of American
society since the 1960s. Many--and not only liberals and those
further to the left--desperately desire to avoid seeing, or
admitting, just how badly many things have gone in the United
States since the 1960s.
Bad Old Days shows that the conventional view of the 1950s
stands in opposition to the reality of the decade. Far from being
the dismal prelude to a glorious period of progress, the postwar
period of the late 1940s and 1950s was an era of unprecedented
progress and prosperity. This era was then derailed by catastrophic
political and economic misjudgments and a drastic shift in the
national ethos that contributed nothing, or less than nothing, to a
better world.
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