The following song is from South Pacific, a post WWII musical first produced in 1949.
I
have underlined the parts of the song that describe the group of people
who were morbid in the early post-war period before the Cold War began
and when every country in the world was becoming socialist.
I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen,
So they called me a cockeyed optimist
Immature and incurably green.
I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead,
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist
And I can't get it into my head.
I hear the human race is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is sellin' me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.
I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart...
Over
the intervening 55 years the actual group of morbid people referred to
in this song has changed a little. In 1949, the fatalistic people that
Oscar Hammerstein was referring to were (1) mostly the anti-Roosevelt crowd
who believed that Roosevelt had taken the country down the road to
Socialism and (2) the radical communists who could see that America was not
going to have a worker's revolution. Roughly 70% anti-socialists and
30% pro-revolution/anti-commerce.
Today the morbid group has changed. The fatalist now believes human caused Global Warming is destroying the earth, that group is about 70% anti-commerce and 20% anti-George W. Bush. Today, among the fatalists, only a tiny 10% resemble the anti-Roosevelt group that think we are doomed because we have lost our old values and gone too far down the road to socialism.
A complete reversal in 'morbidity'.