standing up to the man 2

 I don't intend to get into the usual political squabble with Beagles.

I agree that it is not all that useful to bandy around words like lefty and righty and communist because they mean different things to different people at different times.  What I think is interesting about the Trumpist and hippie protestors are their similarities in that they are both sticking it to The Man.

The Man was not so bad growing up in Gage Park in the fifties, he would maybe filch an apple from the immigrant's fruit wagon now and then, but you knew he'd keep the Beagle Boys out of the money vault.  The US was riding high, having defeated the nastiest characters to come along since the Huns.  Well they were actually called that back then.  The living was easy, everything was fine on tree-lined Homan Avenue and everybody fought to keep those impudent dandelions out of their well trimmed lawns.  The American flag was the most beautiful of all flags and our country was the apple of God's eye.

But when you rode the bus downtown somewhere between Western and Ashland things changed.  Suddenly there were colored people, which is what we called them when we were being nice about it, who well, looked kind of shabby, and their neighborhood also.  We were told by our parents that these had once been perfectly nice neighborhoods like on Homan Avenue, but then they had moved in and they were bad people who ruined neighborhoods and watch out because they were moving steadily west towards Homan Avenue.

And you know that just didn't sound right, there was something wrong here.  But if you listened to the guys on the radio and the tv, there was nothing wrong with America and anybody who said anything otherwise, there was something wrong with that person.  

See that's the thing.  If the guys on the radio and the tv had said something like America is a pretty good place but it has its flaws and we should work to change them, maybe things would have been different in the sixties.  Maybe not, that is just speculation, just my personal impression.

My intention is to compare the my people of the sixties with the Trumpists of today, and I have not gotten very far, but it is getting late and the newspaper is waiting outside my door and my cat is looking for her morning lap, so I am going to give it a rest until Monday when the forecasters all agree summer will be here at last, no really.