Has the cultural divide between the left and right become an unbridgable chasm? Is the center dissolving as those hugging the middle ground are being forced to take sides?

Unfortunately, it is always difficult, nigh impossible, to assess with any fidelity such comparative differences across vast differences of time. Recently, I was lamenting to a friend that this is the worst construction season I can recall in Madison. Nary a street seems to be without those orange cones, or blocked lanes, zig-zagging traffic lanes, and backed-up impatient drivers. For the first time in memory, you really cannot get anywhere from here, at least not easily. But is that accurate? Is my current annoyance clouding my memory and perspective?

So, the question remains, did we get along as a society better in the old days, before Fox News and culture wars and armed attacks on the Capitol at the urging of a sitting President? Many believe so but is it true? After all, recent experiences have the advantage of just that … being recent and fresh in our memories while the past tends to fade with time.

I can think back to my childhood and youth. There surely were conflicts back then, certainly as I came of age in the 1960s, but even in the somnolent 50s. After all, we had a form of legal apartheid in a good portion of the country during that decade … a period seen by many as the halcyon days where all was peaceful and happiness reigned.

But just think a bit about the world back then. Blacks and other non-whites were told where they could go or not go, or where they might sit or not sit, or if they could vote at all. And they surely were told how to act in the presence of Whites. Emmett Till, a 14 year old black boy from Chicago visiting family was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman (which she recanted many years later) in Mississippi. His murderers were subsequently acquited by an all white jury despite overwhelming evidence as to their culpability.

Lest we forget, people also resisted the putting of flouride in water supplies because it was considered a Communit plot of some sort. A good friend today laments that, growing up in North Dakota, she suffered many cavities since no fluoride made it into her water supply. She blames her teeth issues on a the backward politics of her state which prevented a common sense preventative measure from being introduced. She never became a Commie as far as I know though she is a bono-fide liberal, so there is that. On the other hand, we all eagerly lined up for our Salk Polio vaccines despite a shaky roll out. There was no effective vaccine disinformation campaign (though some resistance came from scientists pursuing a different remedy). In that era, the public believed in science and the scourge of polio quickly became just a bad memory.

We also had the John Birch Society and like-minded right-wing groups. The remnants of the Birchers can still be found in Wisconsin’s Fox River Valley. But groups like this laid out a paranoid belief that the Commies were everywhere. Not even Dwight Eisenhower, our Republican President who had defeated Hitler in Europe, could be trusted, though I can no longer recall what his sins could have been. Then again, he did collaborate with the Reds to defeat Hitler, and he even appeared with Stalin and the Politburo in the Kremlin for the May Day parade in 1945 at the very end of the war in Europe. But they had been our allies at the time and had suffered an immense human cost to defeat our common foe … the Nazis. Still, just appearing with Satan’s minions may have been enough of a sin in eyes of the far right.

The paranoia of the 50s was not relegated to the fringes. Congress went on a Red witch hunt after China fell and the Korean police action, I mean war, broke out. The House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) dragged people before its tribunal to smear their reputations for sins like having lunch with someone who once had a cousin suspected of being a fellow traveler. When those who fell victim to this form of kangaroos court justice employed their Constitutional rights, they were branded guilty and often blackballed in their professions.

Like the very system Congress was attacking, those brought before the Committee were deemed guilty absent evidence and could only redeem themselves by pointing out other alleged Reds. Most would not stoop to such self-serving, but despicable, tactics and paid the price for having a conscience. The great entertainer, Charlie Chaplin, was one such victim. However, he emigrated to Europe to escape American paranoia and injustice.

In the early 1970s, Chaplin was invited back to a Hollywood Academy Award ceremony for one of those a lifetime achievment award things. When introduced, he was given a 12 minute standing ovation. It was the longest and most exuberant reception ever given a celebrity before or since, partly in recognition of his talents of course but also to acknowledge the beastly way he had been treated in the States. It was the Academy’s way of asking for his forgiveness.

Of course, the author of the 1950’s witch hunts was Senator Joseph McCarthy. The paranoid tenor of the times is still known as McCarthyism. ‘Tailgunner Joe’ won his Senate seat after WWII. He never was a tailgunner in the war but had a picture taken that suggested as much. From the start he had a cozy relationship with the truth that he exploited when his career in Washington seemed to be floundering. During a speech in West Virginia, he made unsubstantiated claims about Commies infesting our government in Washington, especially the State Department. His wild assertions were picked up by the press, and Joe saw a publicity gold mine.

This early ‘throw anything at the wall to see what sticks’ approach to politics would become a staple of Republican politics as vile negative campaigning became a well-established art form. As is often the case, his unsupported claims had to escalate to keep the public’s attention and maintain his place in the media spotlight. Then, not surprisingly, he went too far … attacking the U.S. military. The Senate censored him, he lost his limelight, and he soon died of acute alcoholism, but only after many lives were ruined.

The good citizens of Appleton Wisconsin kept a statue of Joe McCarthy prominantly displayed in front of the local courthouse for many decades after his passing in the late 1950s. He remained a political hero in this conservative area. The statue was still there when my then new wife was seeking that same Appleton Courthouse where Joe’s likeness could still be seen in the early 1970s. She was doing interviews for a State sanctioned and supported research project on women in state government.

Suddenly, she was pulled over by an Appleton police officer who questioned where she was going and what her business in town might be. Perplexed, she asked why she had been pulled over, what had she done wrong? The officer replied, ‘you did nothing wrong. I merely saw the Support the ERA sticker on your bumper and knew you were not from around here.’ As a reminder, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was designed to guaranteed equal treatment of women under the law and was being considered at this time (it didn’t make it). Apparently, anyone who supported this radical concept likely was a liberal, surely an outside agitator from Madison, and probably a card carrying Commie. You could never be too careful. Oddly enough, my radical spouse eventually became the Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and of the unified state court system.

Then, of course, we had the turbulant 60s. Too much violence and conflict happened during that decade to recount in anything less than a book. But the bitterness of the era was real. Minorities and other non-mainstream folk were beaten and assassinated, churches bombed, draft boards threatened and records destroyed. Numerous ill-considered terrorist incidents carried out to stop what some considered an immoral war or to advance various rights.

I can recall joining an anti-war march very early on (1965?) in Worcester Mass. It happened the day after Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon gave a spell binding speech on the immorality of this conflict and the flimsy rationale for escalating the comflict (the Gulf of Tonkin incident). Those opposing the war were still a tiny minority. So, as we (I was accompanied by my girlfriend at the time who would go on to be the Dean of the Education School at Rutgers after getting her Doctorate from Harvard) marched peacefully with a small group of protesters in front of City Hall.

We became concerned as we were surrounded by an angry mob many times our size. They saw us as traitors and Commie dupes. Soon, we were barraged with eggs and beer cans, not all of the latter were empty. You could literally feel the hate these good people had toward us. The moment I recall best was when the line of marches stopped. I saw a group of guys who looked like bikers straight from the movie set of Brando’s The Wild Ones. One of these gentlemen said, ‘let’s beat the f%$k out of the tall one with glasses.’ I looked about me without moving my head. I was the only tall one with glasses. I started the ‘perfect act of contrition’ which, I had been told as a young man, could even get a debauched sinner like me past St. Peter. But I could no longer recall the entire Catholic prayer. I was doomed.

The height of this insanity, and the ending of the worst and most senseless violence, arguably can be associated with the Sterling Hall bombing on the University of Wisconsin campus in 1970. On August 24, a truck laden with explosives was parked beneath the building that contained the Physics Department and which also housed research projects associated with the Department of Defense. After a hasty phone call to authorities, too late to do any good, the ensuing blast ripped the building apart in the middle of the night. Miraculaously, only one person was killed, a Ph.D student who was working through the night so that he could take his wife and child on a quick holiday before the next semester started. His wife, oddly enough, would later work as a computer specialist at the research entity I helped run in future years. The antiwar protests continued but the uncontrolled rage was dialed back after this tragedy.

This quick historical tour is not meant to recount the past with any depth or veracity. Hardly that. But it does cast light, I hope, on the dfficulty in assessing one era against another. I have many stored anecdotes which suggest that the conflicts and cultural divides were as virulent then as they are now. Perhaps it is time for another plug of one of my books where many of these stories can be retrieved.

This work has all you need to know on those fabulous decades of the 50s and 60s. Yes, there was all kinds of conlict and bitterness and even violence back in the days which many view with nostalgia. The political divides even then tore families apart. My father, a smart man who never had an opportunity to obtain a formal education beyond high school, was immensly proud of my own success in school. Yet, he was bitterly disappointed when I drifted into the anti-war camp in college. That was a family cultural divide we had much difficulty surmounting, but we did in the end.

So, are we merely imagining that things are worse now, that democracy is imperilled as never before, that we are facing challenges that are unparalleled in our history? Well, McCarthy in fact was censored by his peers when it became obvious that he was a charlatan. Congress did end legal Apartheid one century after the end of our Civil War. And Nixon was forced to resign after Watergate when even members of his own political part indicated that they could not support his illegal actions. As bad as things were back then, as virulent the conflicts and disputes, there were limits. Members of both political parties would rise up to say ‘enough is enough.’

So, is our country in bigger trouble today than it was five decades ago? So sad, too bad! You will have to wait for another blog for an answer. But I promise one. I DO! Someday :-).