Friday, April 22, 2011

A Timeless Observation

"You have no conception of the speed and accuracy with which our Congress can reflect current idiocy. Way down at the bottom of the public mind there's always a strong current of common sense, but somehow it never finds its way to Washington."

~James Blish, "First Strike" (Copyright 1953)

It's the date on that which really amused me. Apparently some observations are timeless... a fact which I've noted in regard to Tom Lehrer as well.

This, by the way, is what happens when I raid my father's library for "new" (to me) reading material.

2 comments:

  1. Wouldn't that have been written during the McCarthy thing?

    Anyway, while rereading the Old Testament recently, I noticed a passage that involves an old man lamenting that the youth of day were nothing compared to when he was a kid, and didn't properly worship Yhwh and were totally lazy.

    So, yeah, that one, at least, is millenia old.

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  2. Yes, I think that's about right. I'm not sure if the McCarthy hearings were still going on, or whether they'd just ended at that point, but it's the right general time frame for the Second Red Scare.

    And the "kids these days..." sentiment is even older than that. I'd have to look it up, but I think there's a Sumerian clay tablet that expresses a similar sentiment.

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