When I was researching which era historians believed to be America’s Golden Age, there were two time periods that kept showing up – the late 1880’s to 1910-ish, and 1945 to 1965. I wrote about the first era last week, so today I want to consider the time between the end of WWII and the time many Americans believe was the beginning of the end of American greatness – the mid-1960’s. 1945 seems to be an obvious beginning of our greatness: our soldiers were coming back from winning the war against fascism in its many forms, manufacturing was moving away from building weapons of war towards household appliances and homes. We were getting ready to start building a massive highway system, and our nation had never been more hopeful or prosperous. The nuclear family was all the rage, and everyone knew their place in the well-oiled machine. Sure, women were forced to leave their war-supporting jobs to care for children, homes, and husbands, and people of color still didn’t have rights, but for the rest of us (white men) it was fantastic!
Then the baby boom, which began when all those mostly male soldiers returned, started to decline, and we elected our first Catholic – read, non-Protestant, president. Accusations of papal control of the government circulated, even though JFK was not so great at being Catholic. The birth control pill became readily available around 1964, allowing women to have some control when they gave birth, and we entered the baby bust. Women, LGBTQ people, and people of color started to demand equal rights – the audacity of them! – and the rebellion against straight white male Christian hegemony went full bore. Two Kennedy’s, a King, and X were assassinated soon after, and the America we had dreamed off began to change, or, for some, die.
After reading about both of these alleged Golden Ages, I began to see that there were some similarities; maybe you can see them as well. Both periods were punctuated by the rich getting richer and poverty increasing, and when leaders like Dr. King spoke about helping the poor, they were chastised for being too political. Both periods followed wars that were supposed to defeat great evils – slavery in the first and fascism in the second – and yet, those issues continue to haunt our conversation in this new century. Both periods were about liberating people previously oppressed, and we continue to argue about who should have rights. And both were followed by terrible economic times. For me, neither of these times were Golden Ages at all; maybe we have never had, and never should have, a time we think is the best time in our history. Maybe we should keep working towards a greater union, admitting that it never was, and never will be, perfect. Maybe being good enough, for now, is enough.
Prayer – Holy God, thank You for the many different people who make up this country. For different races, languages, creeds, cultures, and faiths. May we live together as one. Amen.
Today’s art is “The Parthenon” by Frederic Edwin Church, a symbol of Greece’s Golden Age.