Hey , have you see this fly car ? It appear in over 200 newspapers across the United States in 1958 . Sure , it ’s windy , but it sure as shooting is neat . I ’m just going to be staring at this flying car for the next four years if anybody needs me .
retiring visions of the future are a fun dodging from the grind of innovative lifetime . I ’ve been pen about them for ten years now , and they almost always track with the prevailing modality and economic conditions of the people who were make them . When the home mood is one of hope you see more fly cars and jetpacks like those of the 1950s and sixty . When the nation is fundamentally depressed about its prospects , you get darker visions of the hereafter like those of the seventies : Soylent Green , Future Shock , and World War III . Even visual modality of the future from childrenbecome darker .
Do n’t get me wrong , the future is always a struggle . Americans of 1958 were rightly terrified about things like atomic warfare and there were hard fought struggle over polite rights . But there was a general sense of optimism by progressives in the late fifties that even if there were tough fight in the lead , thing could be moved in the right counsel .
I ’m not so certain of that today , and I fear that our vision of the futurity for the next four age are go to reflect that . Donald Trump has been elected President and starting on January 20 , 2017 he ’ll begin enacting policies that were call during his toxic and factious campaign . President - elect Trump articulate that he ’s run to build a wall along the Mexican delimitation , institute a ban on Muslims from get in the country , and introduce stricter libel laws to battle what he sees as preconception in the mainstream public press . Newt Gingrich has even floated the idea of reviving the House Un - American Activities Committee to battle Moslem terrorism .
“ We in the beginning create the House Un - American Activities Committee to go after German Nazi , ” Gingrich said on Fox and Friendsthis week . “ We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis . We ’re going to presently have to go take the like step here . ”
The part that Gingrich does n’t mention is that the House Un - American Activities Committee morph into an hatchet man of thought crime and ruin the lives of Americans with affiliation to Communists — both existent and those only rumour .
hoi polloi have always had to fight for the future . We can attend at the scene of vanish railway car and jetpacks and forget that thing were incredibly difficult for mass of 1958 as well . But sometimes there is comfort in the rosier versions of tomorrow from half a one C ago . The question for the next four years is whether this state will feel any sense of optimism about the future — the necessary status for create utopian visions of tomorrow .
I mistrust our visions of tomorrow for the next four year will be more in line with the pessimism of the 1970s . But I have no thought . I ’ve been wrong before . And I , perhaps better than anyone , know that making prediction for the future can make the prognosticator await like an changeling .
But I ’m in actual jar that the country now has a president who was elected for narrate Americans just how shit everything is . Now that Republicans control both the House and the Senate , it ’s Trump ’s turn to set the national mood . And I fear that after 16 months of ideologic destruction , with the decimation of reformist ideas in Trump ’s wake , it ’s give out to be hard for Americans to imagine a hereafter filled with anything but strife and hurt .
1950s1970sFuturismpresident trump
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