In a Jan 1945 article published in a journal called “Mental Hygiene” by the medical doctor Gordon A. Eadie titled “The Over-All Mental-Health Needs of the Industrial Plant, with Special Reference to War Veterans”, the following words appeared.
‘We are trying to show him not only what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for. So many of these boys have only a very hazy idea of the real issues of the war. About all they see is “going back to the good old days.” This is a dangerous state.
If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.’
Seventy years later the danger of “going back to the good old days” became apparent in the politics of the West as Trump and Brexit exploded on the scene. Similar events occurred in the little known Southern Continent which was the birthplace of the spokesman for those wanting all the disruption these events have caused.
Rupert Murdoch and other arch Conservatives used the Good Old Days as a rallying cry for all those terrified of an unknown future. The fact that the future always has been and always will be ‘unknown’ is the carefully ignored truth.
Murdoch has popularised the fiction that we CAN go back. The damaged and the fearful have believed him. He continues to try to find ways of increasing the number of damaged and fearful within our society.
His son, and heir-apparent, Lachlan, looks set to take the greatest disruptive organisation in the world down even more disruptive paths!
I see a day when all good moderates will long for a return to the good old days of Rupert’s ideas.
