When was America at its best?

32 comments

  2. I would say but I don’t feel like hearing “bUt WHaT aBT XYZ?!?! ThAt waS pRettY sHiTTy wAsn’T iT?!?!?”

  4. I got to say the 2000s was a great time. We were all less divided and more connected. Everything was more simple and felt less stressful. And then… Social media happened.

  5. 2015 maybe?

    Gay marriage was legalized and the future looked bright for LGBT+ Americans

    Abortion was still legal nation wide.

    We had a respectable president who didn’t seem completely out of touch with younger voters.

    Gun laws were still reasonable in my state (Washington)

    No large scale book bans

    No surge in anti-trans laws.

    The right wing wasn’t openly supporting fascists.

    Feels like most things have gotten worse since 2016 and Trump.

  6. As a history major, before the country was founded and the general idea was laid down for an idea of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have not fully lived up to these ideals and our peak will come once these ideals are realized.

  9. We’ve never been a perfect nation, but I’d say the 1960s.

    The television-based media landscape that was ramping up in the 50s reached the ubiquity it enjoys today.

    American music like rock and jazz began to experiment, and the counter-culture they thrived in exists to this day.

    Civil rights scored huge victories, especially the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

    We sent men to that damn moon and we returned them safely to this damn Earth.

    We would have satisfied like 2 or 3 separate victory types in Civilization 6.

    The 60s did have bad moments, of course. The start of Vietnam, the FBI conspiracy against Dr King (and his assasination), the rise of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against, the GOP’s Southe⁵rn Strategy. A lot of the decade set up problems that plague us now.

  10. In what way?

    Serious question, because unless we quantify the idea, it’s too easy to get into a political circle jerk.

    I’d suggest, however, if you look through the lens of economics and at the idea of the material goods available to people, “now” (for some range of years ending with today) have been pretty damned good: people have access to a wealth of material things we simply didn’t have a few decades before. And overall, at least up until the pandemic, the economy was doing pretty good, with per-capita income increasing, and with per-capita income for minorities catching up with the rest.

  11. 1980s. There was much prosperity like the ’20s but unlike the ’20s there was no looming destruction of America’s way of life. For the first time since the 1910s, there was no major looming war. Relations with most countries was on the up and up. International partnerships were doing quite well. Technology was becoming available to the public, in multiple forms. Petrol was just a little over a buck per gallon. We had a President that effectively restored the public’s faith in the office of President.

    The main thing is that, having come from a long series of stressful events, Americans had learned to appreciate the simple things. It was a time when people were happy to be happy. Were there problems? Yeah. But we’d gotten used to so many major problems that the small problems were simply less of a burden.

    While we’re on the subject, think back to what I said earlier about technology being more open to the public. What is the one thing that drove America since the Gilded Age? The future! We, as a society, sought to reach our ideal future. Now, what that looked like differed based on when you asked. If you asked someone in the ’20s what the future looked like, they’d probably point to a newly built art deco building. If you asked that of someone from the 60s, they’d probably point to *The Jetsons*, with their flying bubble cars and floating homes with robot maids.

    In the 80s, the depictions were a lot closer to their own world. Just look at *Back to the Future Part II*, their 2015 looked much the same as their own with the exception of advanced technology and a peaceful society (with the obvious exception of Griff Tannen). This idealistic future is further show by the return of *Star Trek.* The entire premise of *Star Trek* is a fruitful and perfect society in the future. It comes as no surprise that the 80s would see that idealism return in full force, taking a 3-season show and producing a seven-season show with two spinoffs occurring simultaneously.

    The point is, people finally felt close to the future for which they’d been longing. Technology was available and was shaping their lives into ones with more ease and simplicity. International relations were looking a little closer to what they’d been imagining. They had the future in their grasp, at last.

    This idealism lasted into the 90s, as well. It saw a rise again when Y2K *didn’t* actually destroy the world (Gen Z is confused by that sentence). People started to really think that they’d attained that future. Their work, struggle and toil had paid off. Until 2001…

    As I’m sure you know, September 11th, 2001, two planes crashed into the World Trade Centre. Another crashed into the Pentagon and another in a field in Pennsylvania, likely headed towards the Capitol. It was a clear and direct terrorist attack that left all of the US stunned.

    “That couldn’t happen here!” “How could that have happened *here?!”*

    People could not really piece together how their golden future of peace and prosperity could contain such unspeakable, horrifying atrocities. As the Twin Towers fell, so too did the idealism of America. The hope that we’d make a better future for ourselves, and our children fizzled away.

    Instead, that energy was redistributed into anger at Al-Queda for killing all those innocent people, fear of disease and climate, and suspicion towards our own government and its citizens. Interestingly, *Star Trek*’s only show, a small reminder of that idealism, was cancelled not long after and did not return to television for some time. Even in the films and the eventual release of television, the franchise took a darker tone with a less idealistic view of the future.

    With all of this, the technology took on a more utilitarian form. We developed social media, more efficient news, and smartphones with apps to cover almost any function needed. Parents began to take up “helicopter parenting.” Gone were the days of trusting our children to be safe going to the mall or playing in the neighbourhood. We ceased to trust the world outside. We lost that lovin’ feeling.

    I say all that to say this, the 80s were the best because it was the last height of technological, economic, and diplomatic advancement before we lost our hope.

  13. For whom?

    The good old days (depending on what you look like and where you come from) weren’t always so good.

    When my Italian ancestors landed in New York in the thirties, things weren’t so easy for them compared to me being born a white, middle-class dude in the 1990s.

    I’m sure black folks don’t look back on the 60s too fondly either, while my boomer parents definitely do.

    Unfortunately, whether we want to admit it or not, it depends who you ask.

  17. Right now and it’s getting better. We can like or dislike the current politicians, but the tech today is the best it’s ever been. Human knowledge is growing the fastest it ever has. It’s a great time to be alive!

  18. 2015, sadly. The rise of the Tea Party hadn’t yet been leveraged by fascists and women still had control over their bodies. MAGA organized America’s ugly fascist tendencies into a political force, and overturning Roe was the first step in the now growing decline of our representative democracy. These two forces will eventually merge and transform the US into a Christian theocracy.

  22. If I had the choice to pick any American era to live in, it would be after 2015, when it became legal in all 50 states for me to marry a woman.

    But that detail aside, unquestionably post Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s. I’m a woman, it’s nice that the laws treating woman as either non-entities or as extensions of their husbands are pretty much totally gone. And civically speaking, I’m glad I don’t have to live in a country that treats non-whites as second class citizens *and* thinks that’s the way it ought to be.

    To be explicit, America is pretty much at its best right now in terms of things I value from it.

  24. Apreciate all the 2015 answers that boil down to “before the Republican Party swallowed Trump’s big anti-democratic dong with a smile and a wink.”

  29. I’m partial to the 80s and 90s, but I’m sure our best days are still ahead of us.

  30. It’s perpetually at its best.

    Every day in America is literally the best day.

  31. When I was a child.

    You aren’t old enough to understand systemic injustices. The older you are the further back in time that ideal period becomes. When pundits or politicians give a specific time they are going back to, count and you will see they were less than teenagers then.

  32. Freeing slaves, fighting Nazis, Civil Rights Movement. Most everything else was not great for a non-white man like me.

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