Note, I did not say “lunatic fringe” although it is an apt moniker.

I think it was when parents became phobic about their kids falling prey to rapists and/or murderers following high-media profile crimes. I’d be guessing mid-1960s. I was a nine year old wondering around a west African nation. Before that, I do not recall “hovering” parents. After we came back to the US it seemed to become far more common. It certainly was the case where we lived for we had a serial rapist in the area for three years. Then hovering parents became a fixture, even in my home (albeit of a lesser degree).

Here people changed their behavior in response to actions by persons in the fringe of society.

That seems as if it was the watershed. Since then, society moved in an ever-tightening zero-risk tolerance direction, seemingly in all areas save fiscal management (i.e., “investing” in kleptocurrency like FTX).

Now, people are obsessed with “hurts.” I guess hurts is what you get when delusion encounters reality. Micro aggressions, CRT, and cancel culturing someone because some overweight, bearded snowflake of a transvestite felt slighted because of a tweet that was not even aimed in their direction. Madness, all of it.

Now most people are afraid to say what they think. It may be because they never learned how and now it’s to hard to learn.

I believe that what we are seeing with the tolerance toward sexually-oriented transvestite cabarets for infants and children is the inevitability of the slippery slope that many have hurled themselves onto like a male teen on a slip-‘n-slide covered in naked girls and olive oil.

This is not a lament; it is a question for the hive:

Do you agree with my premise?

If so, when do you think it began?

What must be done to turn it around?

Stopping sexually-oriented transvestite cabarets for infants and children is where I’d start.

I grew up in the 1960s. My parents did not hover, in fact they often booted me out of the house with the instruction to come home when the streetlights came on.
I would say that hovering came into play in the 80s with a more "if it bleeds it leads" type of reporting of child abductions.
Our population is now being force fed on lunacy in all forms of media.

Yes, and in a few clicks you can have access to news from all parts of the world, bad stuff happening.

https://www.statista.com/stati...n-the-us-since-1950/

This just goes back to 1950, but USA murder rates are not much different than the 1950’s, good spike in early 80’s. Of course, varying widely by location.

There was no "hovering" that I ever saw. I graduated from high school in 1965. What you knew about the world came to you via TV, newspapers or the radio. The Vietnam war and the subsequent peace movement were the prime topics of the day. Those who made up the "fringe" were still in the closet, at least in my little world.

The biggest change that I saw came in the early 70's. I was a school teacher for only one year, 1971, and I well remember discussions that I had with other new teachers. They were mostly female, single and without exception, liberal. In that brief period, I never talked to one new teacher that was a conservative. We all know where that led us.

My guess is that all this catering to the fringe began with computers, cell phones and then social media.

When we abandoned education to the Communists, we set up the loss of the nation - maybe.

Demographics says the Communists will go extinct in 50-100 years, but I’m not sure how stable a world of Strict Orthodox Christians, evangelical Christians, Trad Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and Fundamentalist Muslims, with a rapidly declining amount of innovation and trade will be.

quote:

The biggest change that I saw came in the early 70's. I was a school teacher for only one year, 1971, and I well remember discussions that I had with other new teachers. They were mostly female, single and without exception, liberal. In that brief period, I never talked to one new teacher that was a conservative. We all know where that led us.

According to my daughter, who has to hire new teachers, the downhill slide is still accelerating. She says the newer crops are hopeless - smug, entitled, and don't understand they actually have a boss. Not to mention entirely woke.

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I grew up in the 1960s. My parents did not hover, in fact they often booted me out of the house with the instruction to come home when the streetlights came on

similar, I grew up in the 50s. We didn't have 'streetlights' much less paved streets. Still, the RULE was 'be home for dinner'.

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the newer crops are hopeless - smug, entitled, and don't understand

.....I prefer the term "Differently un-enabled".
In any case, it's THEIR turn coming up, & they better gather some kind of survival skills....

The votes of people who were excluded for the wrong reasons back in the 60's became an asset, an identified election edge for one side. Then, as people competed for that vote, the competitors began courting the freak vote to win primaries. Then the freak vote simply morphed into a generic political asset, and to make it that way "the rules" in general became identified as a political and social evil in order to pander to the freaks.

Now we are where we are - the respectably politically correct would have to publicly define themselves as evil in order to deny their eight-year-old a sex change operation.

quote:

a slip-‘n-slide covered in naked girls and olive oil.

Please advise where I might find one of these, pictures would also be appreciated.

WRT the original question, it seems to me that natural selection has conditioned those who survive long enough to reproduce to be very cognizant of threats and potential threats, out of proportion to the likelihood of such. In other words, parents becoming over-protective is a perfectly natural response to increased information about potential threats, ie. you know more, you're scared more. So blame it on the media/Internet/whatever that enables these parents to become aware of things or persons that might be detrimental to their precious little darlings well-being.

24 hour news cycle must be fed and cannot be ignored. The internet is that on steroids.

It had to be after the 80’s. I grew up in the 70’s and high school in the 80’s. We had a subdivision pool and our subdivision was surrounded by hundreds of acres of farm fields and woods. We left the house everyday by noon in the summer and we were lucky to make it home by dinner. None of our moms had any idea where we were at or what we were up to the entire time.

That’s where I live to during the same time period.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:


Do you agree with my premise?

If so, when do you think it began?

With cable news followed by the Internet and the 24 hour News cycle.
Local news became national news. Perceptions changed because of it. Made things seem far worse than before.
Abductions, sex crimes, shootings = Ratings/views.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:

quote:

a slip-‘n-slide covered in naked girls and olive oil.

Please advise where I might find one of these, pictures would also be appreciated.

Rule 34.

Just to confirm it’s validity I quickly googled “naked girls slip ‘n slide”.

Rule 34 is valid and applies.

^^^ [GRETATHUNBERG]It's SCIENCE!![/GRETATHUNBERG]

The obssession has always been there. The circus side show, the religious zealot on the street corner. It seems more thanks to our 24 hour media. Some of it is psychosis or in layman's term mental illness. Prior to the 1950s those folks were locked away. Bizarre behavior fascinates the average guy.

Education became indoctrination of far left ideology. It's bad in elementary education, worse in high school and at the peak of hard left at the university level. Once the young come out of that gauntlet of nuttiness only life experience can turn it around. Scary part is corporate America is bonding with the goofy thinking.