Back to the 50s.

Getting us back to the 50s, that decade glorified by so many conservatives, it what the Biden Agenda is working toward.

With some pretty important caveats.

The 50s were a great time... if you were a white male. There were good jobs and couples could raise kids with a spouse at home (often by choice), have a car, maybe even a small house 'by the lake' for vacations and long weekends, afford to send the kids to college. With workplace pensions and Social Security, retirement was something to look forward to, not dread. It was a good time for many of those families.

Maybe they used the GI bill to get an education and became part of the white-collar workforce. Maybe they stayed in a blue-collar job, supported by a union that made sure they had access to medical care, a decent wage, and of course, a pension.

White males were, no duh, right, were the main beneficiaries of this. And of course, not all white males. But in the rear-view mirror of nostalgia, the 50s look very much like a good decade for those men and their families and there were a good number of them. Much generational wealth was built then, setting up those kids for an easier future.

The policies (*) and the timing (**) of that decade allowed many to ascend to the middle class, to a place with solid financial footing, a firm foundation to grow their wealth, so unequivocally be part of that new, ascendent middle class. (*) Decent schools, alas a destruction of public transportation, but then again, that created more blue-collar jobs. Infrastruture. A government that actually was trying, imperfectly of course and with a lot of fuck-ups, to make things better for many people. (**) Post-war expansion etc.

Women, Blacks, minorities... well, that's a different story, of course. One conservatives elide. They don't want to think about what that glorified decade meant to women, who still didn't have reliable birth control, to Blacks before the Civil Rights and Voting Acts, to brown people, same, to anyone who wasn't a straight-white-cis-gendered-able-bodied-male.

So eh.

But Biden. Biden wants to take us back there. To a time when decent work paid not just a living wage but a getting-ahead wage. When unions protected rights. When a medical emergency wasn't the horrible crisis it is now. To a time when families could aspire to a solid financial acumen which would allow them to pursue their dreams, open opportunities for their children, and eventually retire at an age where they could enjoy life, some travel, eventually maybe grandkids. All that.

But. And this is the kicker. Back then, in 50s-first-time-around, it was white males who were the necessary ingredient for this magical secret sauce of wealth and progress. What Biden is proposing is that... well, all of us, now should be. That families of all sorts, headed by men, by single moms, by Blacks or by immigrants who've thrown their lot in with us, gay or straight etc, singles, and couples (*) can all strive for the American Dream which used to have a 'white-male-please requirement. (*) A couple is a family, of course. Just wanted to expand a bit to make sure the message was 'everyone' and to say that families are headed by all sorts of combinations, from heterosexual couples to a gay-single parents.

He wants all of us in whatever combination we live in to have the same access to an environment that allows for a better future.

Look at what he describes: a world in which there are high paying jobs available for many people, both college education and blue collar. A time when we manufacture stuff in the US. A country where we don't ignore infrastructure and just wait for it to fall apart but instead rebuild and put in place a whole new network for a new generation of cars. A cancer moonshot, as if the name itself wasn't a reflection of getting to the moon and the technologies and scientific progress that made that feat possible. Unions, so workers can be protected. Etc.

I honestly believe that like many conservatives, he remembers the 50s as a better time, and hopes he can recreate them, but this time, for all of us.

I don't know if he can, because there are others, alas, who want to go back to the 50s as they were originally, where women could not control our reproduction, thus could not control our lives, where Blacks did not have the same opportunities as whites and where their vote wasn't protected or counted, where schools, no longer public, but a mish-mash, no longer guarantee a decent, factual, science-based education for all.

He'll try. Hopefully, we can get there. But when I listen to Biden, what I hear is a yearning for that glorified decade, only more equitable and more diverse. Under those conditions, it would be a pretty cool time.