He was younger…. He wants to go back to a time when he was young and free perhaps

Personally, I want to go back to the way in the 1950’s had livable wages where people could afford housing, food, and health services. I would also like to go back to an internet before corporations destroyed it with all their AI and tracking.

Social safety nets were stronger and income inequality was lower, largely thanks to the post-war economy retaining a lot of its state planning towards full employment, and largely due to the expansion in safety nets under FDR as a response to the Soviet Union’s massive improvement in safety nets. Time was good, if you were a hetero white man. The US was also emerging as the clear imperial hegemon.

Reactionary rhetoric tries to turn the clock backwards, to when the contradictions of society weren’t as sharpened. It’s usually a petite bourgeois conception, but can also be a part of other classes. It’s the opposite of progressive movement, trying to move the clock forward into the next mode of production, socialism in the case of the US.

It’s never about the real past for them. It’s about the fake shallow image of the past they yearn for.

The 50s, yeah, when ‘howl’ was published and every single adult was on meth qaaludes cocaine and a BAC that would today get you rushed to the ER for just about every waking moment. But thats not what they remember. They get the simplified idealized propaganda version, and like it. Everything is fantasy rp to them.

Same with the crusades, early america, and everything else they like.

Buying a house, a car, a golden retriever, having a wife and two kids by the age of 22.

He was young.

Being young, is nice. Mostly because you don’t have to deal with a lot of the issues that e.g. a house, children and maybe the marriage is not as loving as it used to be.

So he misses being young, but instead of realizing that he was just young. He thinks about what was different and as your responses imply, he blames foreigner for the change. As you expressed that he thinks of you as just a girl, he is probably also sexist and the 50s were much more sexist as it still is.

In other words, culture changed, he didn’t and he is old.

people that wax nostalgic for the 1950s are either:
A) folks who only see how advantageous it was for a white middle class cis straight man with a GI Bill, and just forget and ignore the rest of the reality of the era, or
B) folks that actively want to roll back civil rights for minorities, and would probably prefer the 1850s, if only they had pickup trucks back then.

It is because he has a mythical view of that decade.

If you were a straight, white man it was a good time to exist economically with a high degree of social cohesion. Oppression was worse, but it probably was much less visible to your dad’s sort of person.

And the economy was booming. My own dad went to college full time and worked 20 hours a week loading trucks in his 20s. On this salary, he was able to buy a starter house, marry his first wife, have 2 kids, and complete his degree.

It fucking sucked if you were literally anyone else though. Married women were barely better than property, and they frequently killed themselves to escape their husbands. Spousal abuse was common and not really looked down on in many communities unless you took things “too far” and sent them to the hospital. Being queer was just straight up illegal, and you’d be imprisoned and ostracized if you were caught. Racism was…worse to say the least.

While things might have been better in the past for a specific population or from a specific point of view, always remember that we have made substantial progress even in the past decade or two. Living in the past is a fool’s paradise.

Because the propaganda aimed at getting women to remember their place and get back to domestic chores, still lingers today and people think that’s HOW it was, not that they had to try and shove a cat back in a bag, somehow. When women had to do all the blokey jobs while the men’s were all at war, and realised, yeah, they’re capable of this, sometimes better at it, earning a wage, something unheard of for women, as they would still need a man to have a bank account or credit card or sign anything or have a lease on a house, until the 1970s, in some places. But yeah. It wasn’t like that. Women were miserable and oppressed and drugged up just to get by. Grandma’s hydrangeas were sometimes the only way to leave a violent relationship. But yeah, probs was fine for the blokes. They got to fight in a war, pocket some trauma to take home, force themselves back into the daily grind with no recognition of that trauma and nowhere to outlet it… I’m not going to start on intergenerational trauma, I promise.

Either that or, the grass is always greener… Yk.

It was before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, before women could open their own bank accounts, and before no fault divorce was legalized. In other words, white men had almost all of the power, both politically and socially.

People who pine for the fifties are mostly white men, and it just means they are racist and/or sexist. That’s not the only reason, but it’s a big one.

Other than that, they just want things to go back to the way they never were.

The USSR existed back then and the USSR was doing very well at the time up until 1975,
right after the petrodollar scheme was made and SWIFT was introduced.
Because of that, the US had strong labour unions.
Socialism was popular back then,
although the US was also able to propagandize that it was explicitly not doing that in the slightest.

Nowadays, the US will have to fight again against capitalism.
And capitalists are warring to survive, not just abroad,
but at home as well.
Their ideology currently is that capitalism has won,
communism has lost and therefore any concessions to the left
will no longer have to be made.

And US Social democracy isn’t coming from the top this time,
when FDR decided to take a turn for the left and continued going left,
up until Jimmy Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagen.

This time it’s coming from Zohran Mamdani
and this time it looks like it’s taking the form of democratic socialism,
a step more to the left than social democracy.

With better job availibility, your father would have had a much easier time
maintaining a good income and thus a family.
You however, would have a trade-off.
Better job security, but little to no knowledge of your sexuality.
Also terrible medical practises, barbaric in some fields.

I have a feeling it has to do with a lot of the things that you and I would consider societal progress.

The 50s were objectively a time of prosperity and entitlement for the US. It’s literally why they’re called “boomers”, it was an economic boom. We had high taxes on the rich, people saw those tax dollars translate into quality public services like highways, corporate competition was high, education was affordable, housing was plentiful. It was undoubtedly the best time to be a while male in US history.

And then capitalism did its efficient best to buy up the govt and begin squeezing all that prosperity into their pockets. And here we are.

Better good wages