Life has never been easy here on earth. Not ever. So, depending upon your point of view, things seem to be getting a little crazy. However, to me, living here in the U.S. it is only about 1/100th as crazy as it was in the 1950s.
You might not believe me but that's how much worse it was then in a real sense.
Black people in the 1950s in the south were still being hung in their front yards with crosses set to burning in their own front yards. After hanging a black man from his own tree in his own front yard no one would reveal who did this so often the perpetrators were never brought to justice. This was the KKK.
Riots took place even in Los Angeles in Watts (within 20 miles from where I lived then in Glendale) (which was then an all white enclave by the way with schools better than any others in the greater Los Angeles Area) I watched Watts burn as the black black smoke rose up and watched black people on TV burn and loot the whole area as they were bashed by police officers with night sticks often until they were dead.
Then the worst part for me was white people at night after work testing their rifles to kill any black people who might come to Glendale. It sounded like machine gun fire in the hills as they all target practiced to prepare to kill black people if any should come to Glendale. To me, this was the most terrifying aspect of all this. I was only 17 and went to Glendale High School then.
A few years before Bay of Pigs in Cuba happened and then the Cuban Missile Crisis where everyone thought we all were going to get nuked worldwide. It was expected we all in cities were going to die horribly.
The next year (likely as a response to the "almost nuclear war" ) they killed President Kennedy.
Everyone knew people like J. Edgar Hoover (the head of the FBI) was involved just like he was in the assassination of Martin Luther King too. This is when trust in our government ended permanently by the American People. This is what did it.
So, as the Viet Nam war killed more and more of our boys this is why so many demonstrated against it. Because there was really no good reason for so many of the people who were our friends in high school who were tottally clueless should be drafted and send to Viet Nam to die or worse, come home and walk the streets as many do now with PTSD talking to themselves because of the horrors they witnessed or were ordered to perpitrate in Viet Nam.
So, when you tell me things are bad today I see them as about 1/100th as bad as they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Your friends are not being drafted and sent home in caskets. You haven't had to endure the assassination of President Kennedy or Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy.
Though it is true people aren't making enough money now to feed and clothe themselves, still I don't see this as bad as what we went through then with the Cold War 100 million people dying from that, before that World war II with 50 to 100 million people dying from that in just 5 years.
There really is no comparison to the horrors we all lived through then.
However, I will have to admit there is this up close and personal aspect to terrorism which really terrifies the public worldwide.
Now it isn't just presidents and soldiers dying but almost anyone at malls and in cities around the world.
But, in actual carnage of lives lost you have to have some perspective here.
World WAR II and the Cold War each killed around 100 million people each.
I would have to say in the terrorist wars in Afghanistan, IRaq, Syria and Lebanon there likely have been less than 1 million people that have died since 2001.
World War II killed 50 to 100 million in just 5 years.
The Cold War killed around 2.5 million every year compared to less than 1 million people dying in 15 years in all the terrorist wars.
However, we ARE dealing with the worst refugee crisis in the middle East since World War II. Right now, there are between 9 and 15 million displaced Refugees either in the middle East or in Europe or North Africa right now. And this likely will double or triple in size between now and 2025.
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