Strange how quickly you forget recent-ish world events

[Boystomenslowdanceatweddings]

I'm watching previous Charlie Brooker's screen wipes in an attempt to avoid doing work.
Things I had forgotten about:
Charlie Hebdo
George Osbourne
Hilary Clinton fainting
Pizza gate emails
Weird Brexit confusion re: hard, soft Brexit
It seems like COVID made me think of everything before that as light and fluffy, whilst every year I thought 'can anything get any worse?' And it does.
For example when Trump got in I was in hospital giving birth and thought what the hell have I done, bringing my child into this world? I'm from one of the cultures that Trump demonised during his election campaign and I was shocked at how people in the UK just thought he was a bit of a loveable dick rather than seeing him as the massive threat to integration and cohesion. Luckily now I can sit back and think of Trump being completely irrelevant.

I don't know anyone who thought of Trump as loveable. At all. The man is an abomination.

I was describing my childhood to the kids talking about bombs on the underground Kings Cross fire the cold War etc they looked at me in jaw dropping horror 😳 I said it's OK we survived they were like but mom you ran from a BOMB? in London?? I'm like well yes but it was OK no-one got hurt that time plus you can run upstairs fast in heels really fast when your motivated (the heels were where the conversation started)

So I think you forget your mind protects itself really

Same people who loved "boris the buffoon"

Yes, I agree.

I watched the This England, Boris Johnson show thing on sky and was shocked at how much of the pandemic I forgot. With Italy and the overwhelming hospitals, the Dr in China who was the whistle-blower, the prime minister shaking hands with everyone and being dismissive... so much

I don’t think anyone thought of Trump as a loveable dick. I think lots of people, here and in the US, thought he had no chance of getting in, but they always knew he was a toxic, terrible person.

Again, I don't know anyone who loved that charlatan either. But I think it's probably influenced partly by my job as the particular sector I work in is largely labour voting and we are mostly sensible people!

I can only think that this is why everyone seems to have forgotten about things like hygiene, hand sanitisers and bothering to cover your mouth when you cough in public. You'd think we hadn't just been through a contagious pandemic.

I still read people thinking Johnson is a lovable buffon. People can be very gullible.

Indeed.

Although I thought of him as a joke candidate in the early days of his candidacy, I have clear recollections of my late DP and I saying it was possible he would win, and being horrified at the prospect. As the campaign went on, that seemed more and more likely, and we were both appalled by it.

There was no confusion here about hard/soft Brexit either, I knew that the rabid disaster capitalist wing of the Tory party wouldn't settle for a soft Brexit.

I'd forgotten about Clinton fainting though, until the OP reminded me.

@LakieLady the faint was so important! It arguably cost her the election because women can't be seen as 'weak' or 'human' if they want a shot of power. Comparing her to how frail Joe Biden looks, it's amazing that people thought she couldn't run the country because she got pneumonia once!

I have one Tory-voting friend and she loved him, because "he's hilarious".

We generally avoid discussing politics, but I had to point out that being amusing wasn't really one of the qualities I looked for in a PM.

I think you were very restrained! Does she still think that now?

This is why Governmental enquiries are so useful. A scandal, or dodgy dealings or a massive cock up is discovered that in any normal company would get management fired immediately.

However in politics the Government launches a full Governmental Enquiry to "get to the facts" and then use this to bat off any criticism whilst the enquiry is ongoing "we are waiting for the full facts from the Enquiry before commenting further ".

Six months and a considerable amount of money later, the Enquiry publishes its findings which the public ignores and no longer cares about because they've forgotten all about it.

@Shesasuperfreak definitely! I have a voicemail from someone in Spain in Spring 2020 who is speaking about bodies in the street and fit and healthy people apparently dying with no real warning. It was all so scary and even though I work in the NHS we had little information. I remember saying to a matron, maybe we should get some gloves and masks in, which they ignored and the next week all PPE was out of stock.

You're about the same age as me, and I also grew up in London. I few MPs lived in our street, I thought it was normal to check under cars for a bombs in the mornings. The nearest IRA bomb to us was about half a Km away.

I was on a tube going to Camden just as the Kings Cross fire started - it just went straight through.

Cold War, lots of CND marches. Poll tax riots.

My teens think I lived through history; I suppose I did.

Curiously though, we now live on the border on S/W Yorkshire and pass the NUM headquarters on the way into town. We know several ex-miners; we have a family friend who was at the Battle of Orgreave, but they don't see miners strike as history yet.

I was shocked at how people in the UK just thought he was a bit of a loveable dick rather than seeing him as the massive threat to integration and cohesion.

Perhaps this is what some people in the UK thought about Trump. But I never met any of them. On the other hand, clearly large segments of the US population didn't (and still don't) see him as a massive threat to anything - they voted for him (and many would again). I said from the very beginning of his campaign that he could win - because he said out loud many things that people actually think and would support, but which they feared to vocalise. As do many "populist" politicians on the right.

But as for the "forgetting", I think that this is a product of the society we live in. News is something that is happening now, not something to learn from. We never learn from history, but all history is is yesterdays news. If we learned from what has gone past, we may not be doomed to repeat the same mistakes. And the powers that be have a distinct benefit in ensuring that we do repeat them! Informed critically thinking populations are very much not desireable.

Oh, absolutely!

Have you really forgotten about it, or do you mean you just haven't given it any thought recently? I certainly hadn't forgotten any of the things mentioned on this thread, but my mind doesn't linger on them on a regular basis.
I also don't know anyone except my late F who thought Trump or Johnson 'loveable rogues' (which was unsurprisingly given he was cut from the same cloth).

I think it's normal to forget somewhat otherwise why would you get back on a tube of bus after 7/7 or a plane after 9/11 for example.

I'm surprised your teens were so shocked by a bomb though, terrorism hasn't gone anywhere.

Mass media rewrites history. It happens all the time.