I watched what it did to my peers, who began extolling the virtues of Greed and of looking out for oneself and one's own as the embodiment of Responsibility. Madalyn O'Hare became the devil incarnate due to taking prayers out of schools, which did not happen in the Bible Belt. The myth of Welfare Queens had snooty kids who wouldn't touch…
I watched what it did to my peers, who began extolling the virtues of Greed and of looking out for oneself and one's own as the embodiment of Responsibility. Madalyn O'Hare became the devil incarnate due to taking prayers out of schools, which did not happen in the Bible Belt. The myth of Welfare Queens had snooty kids who wouldn't touch cafeteria food complaining they wished they could get government cheese too. Like the Magas of today, they had zero self-awareness and no understanding of what it meant to be low-income. Entitlement they had in spades, much as they railed against the nonexistent entitlement of the poor (with some exceptions—there will always be aggressive people out to game systems in any group). In the southern Bible Belt, the new Reagan-Limbaugh morality dovetailed nicely with undying Jim Crow values.
OMG! Me too re the Greed! I can still remember my gut reaction to the cover of Time Magazine in the 80s (after the movie Wall Street came out). The headline was "Is Greed Good?" ...And the main article did, in fact, claim greed WAS good! I thought at the time that we were in real trouble. And here we are.
I watched what it did to my peers, who began extolling the virtues of Greed and of looking out for oneself and one's own as the embodiment of Responsibility. Madalyn O'Hare became the devil incarnate due to taking prayers out of schools, which did not happen in the Bible Belt. The myth of Welfare Queens had snooty kids who wouldn't touch cafeteria food complaining they wished they could get government cheese too. Like the Magas of today, they had zero self-awareness and no understanding of what it meant to be low-income. Entitlement they had in spades, much as they railed against the nonexistent entitlement of the poor (with some exceptions—there will always be aggressive people out to game systems in any group). In the southern Bible Belt, the new Reagan-Limbaugh morality dovetailed nicely with undying Jim Crow values.
OMG! Me too re the Greed! I can still remember my gut reaction to the cover of Time Magazine in the 80s (after the movie Wall Street came out). The headline was "Is Greed Good?" ...And the main article did, in fact, claim greed WAS good! I thought at the time that we were in real trouble. And here we are.
For sure the alarms going off while everyone else seemed perfectly at ease with the new 'morality'.