I was born in 1966. When I recollect my youth, I feel as though I had two very different and distinct childhoods - one in the 70's and another in the 80's. The one in the 70's was not great. In fact, I struggle to recall much of anything that was good - from polyester clothes to disco music, it was actually awful.
My parents watched the evening news religiously and I would often join them. It left me with the memory of George Wallace being shot, people trying to grab on to helicopters as they lifted off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, a subcommittee in the House voting to impeach Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter saying we need to lower our expectations and blindfolded American hostages being led out of a building in Tehran. I remember the 70's as chaos. Business people were the bad guys. Corporations were evil. Profit was a dirty word. It wasn't "if" one day the US would be a socialist country, it was "when" that would happen.
My 80's childhood was very different from that of the 70's. It was just more ... optimistic. There were no shortage of tragedies - Berlin and Beirut bombings, Challenger disaster, etc. But, for some reason, that decade was better. It was focused. I think a lot of people associate the optimism with the election of Reagan, but I think it went beyond politics. People wanted to be busy. They came to believe that striving to be successful was a good thing. Maybe it was the demographics - the baby boomers were hitting their 30's and addressing the challenges of family and career.
Nowadays, it seems as though we have returned to the 70's. Success and accomplishment are not viewed as worthy of praise. Rather, they are derided. This is exemplified in President Obama's "You didn't build that speech". Everyone focuses on the "you didn't build that" part, which is ghastly. But I think the more damning part of this speech is the contempt shown of successful people as thinking they're smarter than others or work harder than others (see 1.17 in the speech). I think, in general, successful people are smarter and work harder than the average person. It's not luck. Sure, some may have hit life's lottery. The vast majority, though, didn't.
I wonder how my kids will look back at this part of their childhood - will they view this time as their "70's"? How do we get to the "80's"? I know this much, it's 3 years away - minimum. Because when you're President derides productive people, there will be fewer of them. You'd think we would have learned this lesson already. Hang in there, kids.
