The World Our Parents Made

"You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

If you can put your modern-day complaints aside for a moment, here's a look at the glory days of the postwar era, when American civilization was at its height, a benign colossus bestriding the world without a rival.  As Shakespeare wrote, But me no buts.  Just hush up and watch - and then weep for all we have lost.  It wasn't a perfect country or a perfect world - but it some ways, it was the highwater mark of humanity.  

Go read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Power Behind the Nation, 1947:

Your Head Trucker remembers well how the tiny tots of this peaceful era - some of them - grew up to hate and despise and cry down "the world our parents made." But now, just what kind of world have we made?  

And in particular, I refer to the 80-year-olds who have, collectively, sat in the seats of power and wealth for forty years now - they were once the golden boys and girls of the sixties.  What have they done with that power?

"We can change the world, rearrange the world" . . . "we" certainly have. For good or ill?  

Are we happy now?

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92 Percent of LGBT Americans Support Marriage Equality

This week, sensationalistic headlines around the country have been proclaiming the shocking news that there are gays who don't support marriage equality. Ho-hum. Ya know, fellas, there has never, ever been a poll taken that produced results of 100 percent for or against anything: there's always a few oppositional personalities who will take the minority view of things. Sometimes they are right, too.

 But in point of fact, here is how the Pew poll - which actually seems to be a combination of two surveys taken in 2013 and 2014 (I can't find the raw data on their site) - breaks down:

Click to enlarge.

I suppose the 7 percent of LGBT's opposed are those well-hidden "best friends" of the anti-gay crowd who love to proclaim that their gay friends don't support marriage equality.

This 2013 Pew survey of LGBT's provides more data if you're interested - though bear in mind always that these figures do not come from the mouth of God, but are subject to interpretation and variation. One little point, though, intrigues your Head Trucker: the whole transgender thing has become quite a cause celebre in the last few years, but Pew says:

Although there is limited data on the size of the transgender population, it is estimated that 0.3% of all American adults are transgender.

Which is what your Head Trucker thought: the ratio of trans people to gays is about the same as the ratio of gays to the general population (i.e., somewhere around 3 percent).

Pew also found that the division between party boys and sensible people is about what your Head Trucker thought - fifty-fifty:

And since we're talking statistics, there's another Pew report you might like to look at, with some interesting details on the changing generations in the general population:

I can't keep all these new-fangled generations straight, can you?  But here's a handy cheat sheet: