[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

I'm an end-boomer, born in 1961. I totally missed the Hippies, though my babysitter was one, when I was 6. I grew up with tye die shirts, embroidered bellbottom bluejeans, wedge sandals, and cross-shoulder fringed pocketbooks. We didn't discuss politics in the house, so I grew up ignorant of politics. I didn't even know what party my parents claimed for themselves until a couple of years ago.

Our neighborhood was predominately white (we had, I believe, one black family), middle-class, suburban with sidewalks and unlocked back doors. We had summer sleepover camp. Life was fairly idyllic. When the race riot happened at our high school while I was still a Junior High student, I didn't understand it at all. I had zero understanding of why people WOULD have a race riot. I mean - they're just dark-skinned, what difference could that possibly make in the scheme of things?

We had a gay elementary school teacher. We laughed *about* him because he was a raging full-on effeminate rainbow-suspender-wearing "queen" but we never laughed AT him, because he was an amazing teacher and everyone absolutely adored him.

I grew up in, what was at the time, conservative-leaning moderate white american suburbia.

Presently, that is now known as "leftist." It's known as that, because what used to be right-leaning conservative, is now alt-right. And they have moved the entire spectrum. If anyone claiming I'm a "leftist" were to see an ACTUAL leftist, they'd realize how ridiculous their label is on me.

The "cancel culture" is nothing new. People like me have been victimized by it most of our lives. The only reason it's a meme, a trope - is because it's affecting "you" (the OP, not the person I'm responding to) now. It's "your" turn now. Doesn't feel very good, does it?

How about stop spewing hate and division and "us vs. them" all the time, making "my side" feel like we're somehow to blame for "your side's'" failures, and stop making "my side" feel like it's somehow inferior.

Then maybe you'll discover no one is trying to cancel you. They just want you to behave like a civilized adult. If you aren't capable of doing that, then you're going to get a time-out.

That seems like a pretty ideal childhood. Your parents probably felt that their job was to "protect" you. You seem to have ended up understanding the world pretty well. And on another subject, it would be nice if we could put 1/2 of the people in "time out" and re-educate them. We have a TV channel, FB, and other media that are making BIG $$$$$ by dividing US people. That did NOT exist in the 50s and early 60s when we were ALL Americans with just minor divergent views on Unions, cultural issues, and baseball. Then Vietnam and the JFK assassination exploded that bubble. And pent-up racism boiled to the surface. At least the major TV and radio media were NOT actively trying to stir up division and trouble until years later. It seems that internally we caused our own animosity and problems.