Since I was born just before 1950 I have seen everything that happened since I was 2 years old and could remember things as a more developed type of person. So, for example, I remember watching General Eisenhower on TV (the first one I ever looked at) in 1952 during the Republican Convention that my Grandfather had bought his TV for. So, of course my father and Grandfather both were very conservative Republicans back then. However, by the early 1970s my father started to support JFK and other moderates because he saw what people like Nixon had done. Though Nixon was probably the best World Statesman along with Winston Churchill of England of the 20th century (FDR was pretty good too) Nixon was a paranoid along with being extremely intelligent. So, in this sense his brilliance was compromised by his paranoia. This is something that Stalin and he had in common as World leaders. And likely in the case of JFK he wasn't paranoid enough or he wouldn't have died in Texas (but this could have been because of all the pain killers he had to take every day of his Presidency for extreme back pain from injuries he suffered as a PT Boat Captain during world War II.
Many people don't know how injured Kennedy was and most people didn't know FDR couldn't walk when he was president either.
But, for me, the craziest thing about being alive since about 1950 is that when I was little I met people who lived before Cars, automobiles and planes as children. There were even people I met who were alive during the Civil War as Children. So, this gave life a really amazing perspective for me. Most people in the 1950s were very hard and unforgiving unless they knew you. So, people were much more clannish then. If you were a family or a friend they often would even die for you if you needed them too. So, this was very different then too. So, loyalty to family and friends was a much more important thing than it is now including loyalty to your wife and children. Though loyalty to one's children is almost as important as then loyalty to one's mate or significant other is mostly gone in the way it was lived every day then.
Also, it would have been unthinkable for most people to use guns for killing people back then except for criminals or the Mafia or the Army and military. There was an honor code in that someone might carry a knife for protection but guns were only for hunting and for warfare. People who used guns on people were considered the lowest forms of human life if they weren't the police or the military. So, people mostly didn't carry guns concealed then unless they had a permit to carry on in bad areas if they lived there.
Picking up hitchikers was relatively safe in the 1950s and 1960s until people started taking drugs more like LSD and then hitchiking which really scared a lot of people who had never dealt with people as crazy and as unpredictable as that before. So, starting about 1970 less people picked up hitchikers. I kept picking up hitchikers in my car that looked safe and around my age until I got married in 1974 and had a son then. After that unless I knew the people mostly I wouldn't give them a ride anymore to protect my wife and child from harm.
There were different eras I lived through. The first era I would say was 1950 to 1965. This era had a lot of similarities which I might describe as "Grateful they survived World War II" and "HOpeful that a better future was coming for all Americans and the world". This was followed by "WTF are you doing sending my friends from high school over to Viet Nam to die?" So, this became at times quite violent in the U.S. and around the world in response to the U.S. fighting in Viet Nam. This mostly was because the people who were forced to fight in the Viet Nam War and the Korean War before that mostly were draftees who went and died there. They had no choice but to go unless they went to Canada or something to escape the draft which many did then.
Socially this was the most difficult time for America since the Civil WAr. This was a social war and not so much a physical war at least inside the U.S. but it tore families apart and many never recovered from the emotional and physical splt ups of families and children through these times. IN fact I would have to say America is stil recovering from the harm done to it by the extreme mistrust of the JFK assassination, The Bobby Kennedy Assassination, The Martin Luther King Assassination, all which might have been aided by J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI in one way or another at that point. So, this didn't help trust inside the U.S. either.
So, trust of the government first left then and now in regard to congress it is even worse with Congress' approval rating below 10% at this point. Considering the Approval rating of Congress was at around 70% or more during the 1950s you get why this is a really big deal now.
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