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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3405363" data-attributes="member: 4937">Like I said, it probably would depend largely on who you were.  History is what it is, but our experience of the present is largely subjective.In 1953, the Korean war was just coming to a close, and America had just learned that it never could again go back to being the world's great neutral, uninvolved, global power.  Hollywood was communist, or at least heavily tilted that way, but busily trying to pretend publicly that it wasn't (and had never been) so that the 'Red Scare' would seem even more draconian than it already was.  Reagan was in charge of the screen actors guild, and then seemed no more likely to be President one day than say Melissa Gilbert does today.  Most of America was trying to forget that it had been racist in the 20's and 30's, so that it could go on to bashing the South with a clear conscious.  Alot of people were making babies.  Pretty much everyone was determined that thier children not have to go through what they went through in the 30's and 40's.  Protecting the innocence of the children is huge, and people were rich - they had cars, tv's (small ones), and thier own houses (small ones), so naturally they were raising alot of spoiled brats who very much wondered what the grownups were trying to hide and who thought that thier parents just could never understand the sort of 'hardships' they were going through.TV was big.  Everyone loves Lucy - 70% of America gets in front of a TV to watch the latest episode - which kinda makes you wonder just how big the supposed big contriversy of the show was.  Cars are if possible even bigger.  Every American male tinkers with his.  Gas is cheap.  American sports were becoming industries.  Movies were changing.  In academic circles, the beginnings of the counter-culture movement are taking shape, and hipsters are wearing goatees, and writing the rebellious poetry.  The drug culture is beginning to take shape.  Organized crime is king.  Street gangs are still basically just bored boys.  In rural areas, the new prosperity and the new sense of world brought by returning soldiers killed the rural communism of the 30's.  Most of American history for the next few decades will pass the rural areas by as they catch up to things like indoor plumbing, until the counter-counter-culture rebellion of the rural areas in Reagan revolution.  Almost everyone really believes that what science fiction authors are saying will happen by the year 2000 - flying cars, colonies on mars, domestic robots, etc. - will really happen, but no one can yet imagine a pocket calculator.Everyone who isn't highly religious smokes cigerettes.  Cigerettes are available for sale to minors - they often have baseball cards packaged with them.  'I Love Lucy' is sponcered by Phillip Morris.The US is just getting involved in a obscure war in Veitnam.  The decision to send troops is wildly popular in the United States.</blockquote>

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