LogFAQs > #960048896

BUMPED2002 posted...

What changes exactly since the 1950s has made America worse.

The economy and the idea of "US as #1 global superpower" peaked in the 50s. So people looking for an American "Golden Age" tend to look to it as the definitive moment.

Now we're in a period when faith in government has probably never been lower, the nation is more politically divided than any point other than the actual Civil War era, the economy is slowly crumbling and likely will never recover no matter who gets into office or what policies we pursue, awareness of , and pretty much everyone on the Internet is an asshole.

It's very easy to perceive the present as a terrible shitty time, and start looking backwards for better times to be nostalgic about.

And if you don't look back to the 50s, there's always the 60s (if you want to idolize the Kennedy years), or the 80s (if you're my age and nostalgic for your childhood), the 90s (if you're everyone else on the Internet's age and want to be nostalgic about your Millennial childhood or the economic bubble of the mid-90s), or even the early 00s (if you're too young to remember even further back).

Realistically, the present probably isn't as bad as some people make it out to be, but it isn't as good as it could be, either. Even if a lot of the current problems are probably at least somewhat inevitable (ie, the US losing economic power is at least partly because we never should have had it in the first place - we basically profited from European devastation in the wake of WWII and China's lack of agricultural and industrial power compared to the West. But now Europe is mostly recovered and China is on a much more level playing ground, which means both are tapping into wealth and resources the US monopolized for years).
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