As opposed to every movie (and TV show, today) in which everyone dutifully does so. The culture has changed. America is no longer the same country. It is a very different country.

Safetyism has changed it.

The change is both subtle and profound. Subtle, because it has become almost unnoticeable; it is invisible – unless you can remember what America was like before Safetyism. It is something like being able to remember what America was like before Nahhhnlevven – that is, when America was still a country rather than a Homeland and you could run like OJ through the airport to catch your flight at the very last minute. When you describe the way it was to people who cannot remember, it does not register – because how could it? It is difficult to notice a difference when you have no comparison point.

This is why the Party – in Orwell's 1984 – was so obsessed with erasing the past to create a kind of permanent but also ever-changing present. It is absolutely why the past is being changed to suit the present today; viz, scenes in TV shows about the past depicting what was not true in the past; though there are some wonderful exceptions to this rule, one of them being the popular series, Mad Men. No one in the show, which was about advertising executives in the '60s – "buckled up" because back then, almost no one did. Seat belts were like the appendix in a human body; i.e., a thing that flopped around unused.

The culture had not yet been changed.

The italics are there to emphasize an interestingly incongruent relationship: Seat belts were in cars for decades before most people wore them. More precisely, seat belts were mandated (to be installed in all new cars) decades before most people were made to wear them. It took decades of nagging – and in the end, mandating – before "buckling up" became something almost everyone does now by rote. It changed the culture.

Intentionally or not, it also changed everything else.

Pre-and-post "buckle up" America are two very different places. Pre "buckle up" America was not defined by Safetyism. It was perhaps a riskier place but it was also absolutely a freer place. Kids played outside unsupervised and so never learned to be afraid of the outside. They grew up sitting in mom's lap while she drove – or sitting beside her while she drove – rather than strapped into a "safety" seat in the back. They grew up without fear of cars as a result and most were itching to become old enough to drive, themselves – and when they did, they were just as free to drive anywhere, anytime as adults. They could buy booze at 18, too – in congruence with being old enough to be dragooned into "service" and sent to kill (or be killed) in some foreign sandbox somewhere. Today, 18 year-olds can't legally buy booze but can be dragooned to "serve." Another weird incongruence that can be attributed to Safetyism.