Reverend Benny & Mister Sid's At Your Service #59

Politics can change life in the wrong ways.

By Glen Bledsoe

(Salem) - Those of us who are old enough remember a far more rational time. A time when the crazies of the right wing would have been impossible.

They would never have been given news coverage. Barry Goldwater was as right as it got and Goldwater was really a reasonable man even if you disagreed with him.

But something happened along the way. Something's been happening every since Viet Nam really. Like a virus raging in the corpus of America. The disease spreads and manifests itself in increasingly horrible ways.

I'm not misremembering this or fantasizing about the good old days. The record is there for anyone to watch should they care to watch it.

It's documented on film and there's plenty of it. You see it reflected in the television of the past. There's plenty of Mr. Ed and the Twilight Zone on television for those of any age to watch. But the context is missing, and I don't know how to supply it.

We're not remembering. We're not understanding.

Once I showed my class the movie "The Longest Day." They were fascinated with the story, and I explained the circumstances of World War II as best as I could to my 5th graders.

One of the boys raised his hand and said, "By the way, who won that war?"

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