Okay, my observations in detail, then:
--------------------------------------
Everything stank. ...cigarette smoke...
Yes, I'm glad there are now laws about public smoking, and designated smoking areas. Big improvement.
More than one bath a week was considered over-fussy.
Bullshit. We're not talking about the 1800's here. With rare exceptions (like when camping out), I've had a bath every day of my life... a practice I learned from my mother, who learned it from my grandparents. The people I associated with and went to school with and stood beside in stores and sat beside in church were the same way... clean. Where did this author live, anyway, Tobacco Road?
Nuclear obliteration at any moment was a distinct possibility.
True. We grew up with it; we accepted it; we lived with the sure knowledge that nuclear war was coming. Isn't it more reassuring, now, to be waiting for an airplane through your office or biochemical warfare in your drinking water.
people still died of infectious diseases
Yes, and through the time period we're discussing we watched those diseases conquered one by one. In many ways I wish for the idyllic life of an early settler, tilling the land and living a calm, pastoral existence. But I don't wish for things like the health conditions that led to sayings such as, "You'll catch your death of cold"... an observation of literal fact, at that time. To not have aspirin, cough syrup, blood pressure medication, or antibiotics readily available would make for a miserable sickness and a dangerous life, indeed.
Houses were cold and dark.
HUH? Repeating myself... we're not talking about the 1800's here.
Traffic was much worse than today in cities and on holiday routes.
ROFL!!!
Aeroplanes also came down constantly
Oh, yeah, man, we had 'em crashing into our back yard every few days. I just piled the wreckage up behind the storage shed.
Most people couldn't make a phone call without going into a box in the street that doubled as a urinal.
"Most people"? Really--most people? Interesting. Wandering bums would choose to go inside the see-through glass enclosure of a telephone booth in full view of the street, to relieve themselves, instead of doing it behind the building in a back alley. Umm... yeah, that makes sense.
And the phones rarely worked because people smashed them up for fun.
What a crock. They did not. Maybe ONE person smashed ONE phone near where this author lived, and now it's metamorphosed into, "the phones rarely worked."
Razor gangs attacked innocent passers-by with blades for no reason.
Yes, I much prefer the safety of that relatively recent development, the drive-by machine-gunning, over those nasty blades from the bad old days, don't you?
You couldn't go to the seaside on Bank Holidays because of ferocious running battles between gangs.
Yep. All those pictures you've seen of people on the beach in bygone years...? They're all gang members. The blades are hidden in their swimsuits.
Respectable people were racist
True, and perhaps the greatest change for the better in the USA is the surface treatment of other races. Racism isn't gone yet by any means, but it's vastly better than it was back then.
Superficial manners were observed, of course, but on the sly, people were just as rude and nasty as they sometimes are now.
So what's changed?
----------------------------
Here's something I know from personal experience. When I was a child, there was a feeling of security that is now completely gone. People slept with their doors open and their windows up. They went to work or to town without locking the doors, sure in the knowledge that no one was going to invade their living area. Cars were left parked with the windows down, or with the doors unlocked.
In some ways, we live in a better world now. In some ways, it's far worse. But this kind of distorted misrepresentation of the facts is nothing but a ranting appeal to emotion. It dissolves on close examination.
COMF
Ah, love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart's desire!
