Born Free?

I've come across a dreadful series of self-congratulatory assertions on a couple of the less cerebral right-wing blogs. It ties into the fairly widespread idea of a golden age in the past, when you didn't have to lock your doors, and kids could play out all day with no supervision. But the divergence from reality is such I'm willing to bet it never rained in this world, and, never mind qualifying for them, England always won football tournaments. It starts like this:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

Now, it should immediately be obvious what is wrong with that as an opening, but if not, I refer you to Unity's suggestion how to address the British Crime Survey's omission of murder as a crime:

1. Have you been a victim of murder in the last year?

It goes on:

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

Geoff Adams-Spink was born in the target decades. His mother took one tablet of Thalidomide. I wonder how he reacts to this narrative.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun.

"Always great fun"? Remember, none of our respondents have been the victims of murder in the past twelve months.

Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes.

I'm going to get anecdotal for a second, here: I've hinted before that I nearly lost an eye to a bungee rope. I'll tell the story one day, but for now just let me say I was the only person to blame. The really bizarre thing, though, was that my girlfriend of the time had an elder brother. As a boy, he had lost his eye to his catapult - not from a missile, but from it twanging into his face. I still don't know how he managed it - I inevitably get images from the silent-movie era of the guy looking down the hosepipe, wondering where the water went...

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

Hmm, wasn't it Remembrance Sunday over the weekend? I believe the two world wars saw their fair share of risk-taking and problem-solving. And remind me again where the term "Renaissance man" comes from. But, again, it's a captive audience: you won't go too far wrong massaging the egos of your readers, who by amazing coincidence pretty much all fall into this generation.

The point that I am labouring is that the narrative is bollocks: obviously if you're around to read it today, you didn't go through the windscreen of your dad's car or meet your end in any other grisly way. The piece acts like the TV psychic who asks you the viewer to choose a number between one and five - he's bound to choose right for at least 20% of you. As I mentioned at the start, it also successfully intertwines itself into the notion of a golden age when things were simpler.

So what is it aiming to do? Is it just someone's lament for a bygone age that never was? No, I think this is the crucial sentence, tucked away at the end, just after another "CONGRATULATIONS" - the shouting is in the original - has softened you up:

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

Ah, so that's what's going on. It's a quite cleverly-disguised propaganda piece boosting the idea that government regulation has made us all soft and namby-pamby, and has dulled our sense of responsibility. Whereas I think what really matters to those responsible for this garbage is regulation eats into their bottom line. Never mind a few crippled workers or children, or the odd bit of toxic waste, eh?

If anyone knows the original author of the piece I've been citing, please do let me know. Amongst other things, I'd love to give them due acknowledgement and credit.