We Always Suspected That He Was Seriously Retarded

Davenoon over at LGM has picked up on the fact that the Teary-Eyed Moron on the GOP Propaganda Channel (formerly known as Fox News) has been getting all teary-eyed over the "Golden Age of America", which, in the mind of the TEM, was the 1970s.

Really. This just proves my suspicion that to any particular person, the "Golden Age" was a time that they were either a child or which occurred before they were born. TEM was a child back then.

I wasn't. So, from my recollection, let's take a step into the Wayback Machine.

The harbinger of the 1970s was the first Moon mission of the 1970s, Apollo 13, which almost ended in tragedy when a liquid oxygen tank in the Service Module exploded. The decade opened with a drawdown of American troops on the battlefields of Vietnam and a ramping up of the air war against North Vietnam. After the mining of Haiphong Harbor, which cut off all shipping into that port, North Vietnam agreed to peace talks, which ultimately led to a colorable excuse for the U.S. to end its combat operations in the Vietnam War in 1973. With American troops out of the way, North Vietnam built up its conventional forces and crushed South Vietnam less that two years later.

As the decade opened, the President, Richard M. Nixon, was a man who was so paranoid that he really needed professional help, if not a stay in a psychiatric hospital. He was convinced that everyone was out to get him (he held a special fear of Jews) and, faced with probably the lamest Democratic presidential candidate since 1924, Nixon ordered that the Democratic campaign headquarters be wired with listening devices. That led, within two years, to the prospect of certain impeachment by the House and likely conviction by the Senate, so after having declared that "I am not a crook", Nixon fled the White House.

Terrorism came onto the world's radar on live TV at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

The most serious Arab-Israeli war began in October of 1973. Egypt achieved some degree of surprise and overran the Israeli outposts in the Sinai along the Suez Canal. The largest tank battle since the Battle of Kursk took place in the Sinai. Israel ultimately prevailed, but only with a very heavy American resupply effort (following Israel's private threat to use its nuclear weapons if it was going to lose). The Yom Kippur War resulted in the first Arab Oil Embargo, which tripped up the world's economy, leading to lines at gasoline stations and an overnight doubling of the price of gasoline.

The fallout of the oil price spike was large price rises throughout the economy. The subsequent recession resulted in a situation of both inflation and no economic growth, known as "stagflation." This also effectively marked the end of the economic postwar period after the Second World War. The American automobile industry, which for years had been producing cars that were both low mileage and of extremely crappy workmanship, was unable to adjust to a sudden need for higher-mileage vehicles. Three Japanese car makers, Datsun, Toyota and Honda, had such vehicles and greatly expanded their sales networks in the U.S. Their cars turned around the decades-old stereotype of Japanese goods being shoddy, as Americans discovered that Japanese cars were of far higher quality than American cars. A generation of Americans came to equate American-made cars with being pieces of shit (the joke was that Ford stood for "fix or repair daily") and the American automobile industry has never recovered.

Stagflation continued throughout the 1970s. By the late 1970s, inflation was approaching 20%. In 1979, the Shah of Iran was deposed, which substituted a brutally corrupt monarchy for a brutally corrupt theocracy. The Iranian Revolution led to another disruption of the world's oil supply, which led, in turn, to another doubling of the price of gasoline and another period of gasoline shortages. The president at the time was Jimmy Cater, who ended his term of office with few people really caring that he was gone.

Culturally, disco reigned. Enough said.

The 1970s were no shining time. TEM has proved his utter moronosity by even suggesting as much.