The busybodies' most terrifying dystopia

[rangerrebew]

REAL AMERICA
The busybodies' most terrifying dystopia
'Never underestimate people who simply want to be left alone to live normal lives'

By
Patrice Lewis

August 23, 2024
 
In our home library, we have the excellent Time-Life series "This Fabulous Century," which chronicles decade by decade the events from 1870 through 1970.

The last book in the series, 1960-1970, is particularly interesting. As you can imagine, it covered much of the societal upheavals taking place during that tumultuous decade. Among much else, it chronicles the rise of the hippies and the tossing of social norms that characterized the 1950s.

But the volume has one interesting chapter entitled "Middle America: Half a Nation." It documents the parts of the country NOT embroiled in crazy stuff. Instead, it features life "far removed from the world of hippies, drugs and riots." It depicts people simply going about their normal lives. Planting and harvesting crops. Sitting on the porch at the general store, passing time. Participating in high school functions. Attending church and church events. Watching a kid's piano recital. Viewing a parade.

https://www.wnd.com/2024/08/the-busybodies-most-terrifying-dystopia/

[Smokin Joe]

Yeah, I went 'back  East' for a bit earlier this year.
The differences between the land of my childhood then and today are profound.
Things once openly discussed are now couched in hushed tones with the almost instinctive turn of the head, looking for the Zampolits...the cultural equivalent of an HOA enforcer.

That 'frog pot' has heated slowly for them over 40 years, but for me, the differences were notable.
 
While there, I really didn't act much different than I do here, well, except for being disarmed, and found that if you don't walk about with a chip on your shoulder, most folks respond well, even there.

Simple courtesy goes a long way.

But the friction there was palpable, even in the shocked (but pleased) reactions to ordinary courtesy, the sudden relaxation of shoulders and waves of abandoned concern washing over faces, even for a moment, for how another person was going to view them. There is a strong penumbra of oppression is such society, and it wears on those who are subject to it, however willingly. Knowing my time there was limited, I didn't buy into that.

It was good to get home...
Back to a community that felt like America, where I could speak far more freely, where announced pronouns aren't a 'thing', where I am not tiptoeing through a cultural minefield in my size 12 work boots, or for that matter kowtowing to the imperious cultural tyranny imposed in the name of "freedom" that is that other America (not as if I did).

That yearning, sometimes for an America that they have not personally known in their lifetimes, is still present there. I pray for its liberation.