(Ode To The Eternal Bogeyman)
A little history - this time it's August 1949. Sixty years ago and the world, aside from the personalities, hairstyles, customs and technology is just about the same.
Only then it was corruption in Government (the Five Percenters), Free German Elections, Voice of America versus Radio Moscow, China, Polio, The Voodoo Murder Case, Herbert Hoover, John Barrymore and the Vanishing World of Burlesque.
It is probably all quaint by comparison, a curio of a deep-distant past. Most, if not all the people whose voices you hear are gone. The situations completely forgotten, and never brought up in any conversation.
Why is any of this important or even worth the half-hour it takes to listen to this? In each of these stories is some shred of what we're about today, this moment. Fear and apathy, for two, are with us constantly. In 1949 they took the form of the Soviet Union and The Red Scare. Today it's fear of the unknown - fear we won't get what we want and fear we will lose what we have. Fear based on someone telling us we should be fearful, but not knowing exactly why.
At least in 1949 you could point your finger directly at Russia and lay all blame on them. Today it's not so easy - the lines are intentionally blurred, the causes complex. People who should know better don't and people who don't know are blind and scared.
Strangely, it was always this way.
Even 60 years ago.
