3 ms·
Maybe, but as one who grew up in this country, I can say that this state of paranoia simply did not exist to this extent decades ago. Personally, I think it ha
by magduf 8y ago
Maybe, but as one who grew up in this country, I can say that this state of paranoia simply did not exist to this extent decades ago. Personally, I think it happened after 9/11. People just weren't like this back in the 80s and 90s, and many of those factors were, if anything, worse than they are now. At least now, with ObamaCare, you aren't totally screwed on pre-existing conditions. And if you go back before the New Deal, or into the Gilded Age, things really were dog-eat-dog back then with zero safety net, but middle-class Americans weren't generally paranoid back then.
- magduf 8y agoI'd also like to point out that the crime rates were a LOT worse back in the 1970s, and have been steadily falling ever since then. There's even a theory that leaded gasoline is to blame. Anyhow, even with worse street crime back in the 70s-80s, Americans simply weren't paranoid back then like they are now. Back then, kids routinely ran around by themselves with no adult supervision, and this is now unheard of in suburbia, even though the crime rates are a small fraction of what they were back then, and kidnappings were never a common thing.