A Brady Bunch view of the past

It’s quite the nostalgic touch as Donald Trump lumbers back towards the Cold War, clapping himself as he goes, and with a beleaguered Jami-Lee Ross seeking asylum for mental health issues. Trump won’t be alone in nostalgia for a good old nuclear standoff, and the warm security of a growing nuclear stockpile. Excellent idea, then, to threaten to withdraw from a Cold War era treaty with Russia to cut short and medium-range nuclear missiles from both arsenals. Blame the Russians for breaching the agreement, and feel that 50s vibe.

That was a golden era, so like Trump’s hair, when men of sound European stock ran all things, and deals were done on a handshake. It was all Mad Men, uplift bras, big Chevrolets, foreigners in their place, and no Isis spies disguised as South Americans banging on North America’s door.

A friendly nation, Saudi Arabia say, could carry out an assassination with enough finesse for nobody to notice, and transgender people didn’t want rights. They didn’t want to be noticed, let alone demand anything.

You can see why Trump eyes the free press with distaste. Its reporting gets in the way of his retro vision, and questions his bromances with other world leaders, which seem as tumultuous as any 14-year-old’s.

Ross’ retreat into mental breakdown and seeking refuge also has a retro vibe, a kinder one. The old mental health system had many faults, which is why big public mental hospitals have gone, but people could seek asylum in them when they were fragile. People who’d have been patients back then instead wander the streets on drugs that may or may not have unpleasant side effects, free from bossy surveillance, but also from protection.

Ross was lucky to find asylum on the two occasions we’ve been told he experienced what he calls a mental breakdown. I don’t know what that would be called today, but it was the term used in the past about people who felt they couldn’t cope in some major way. I don’t know where Ross went either, but at least he found a kindly place to go, which is more than many people in desperate need do.

The reporting on Ross reminded me of expressions used in the past about mental distress, ‘‘gone to Porirua’’ and ‘‘a screw loose’’ among them, when people – including the Rolling Stones – talked about ‘‘nervous breakdowns’’, as in ‘‘here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown,’’ a track that sounded cool at the time.

Some medical conditions seem to have vanished. Do people still get ulcers and have to drink a lot of milk to get better? What happened to neuralgia? And what about bunions, those lumps that distorted older people’s feet and made their shoes distort into bizarre shapes? What happened to dyspepsia, and are we missing out on something if we can’t discuss such ailments at length with friends, family, and everyone on the bus?

There are now laws against kids getting what was called ‘‘a damn good thrashing’’ or a ‘‘good hiding’’? Why were they good? Probably because parents were ‘‘having a fit’’ of intemperate anger or were ‘‘up the wall’’ and wisely hesitated to take it out on someone their own size.

Such parents probably ‘‘had to get married’’ because she ‘‘had a bun in the oven’’, and there was no recourse to reliable contraception, or abortion.

Trump admirers must pine for such a time, when life was The Brady Bunch in their enfeebled imaginations, the most daring place in town was the milk bar, and the atomic bomb was the best idea anyone ever had.