this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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A while back, Michael Moore got a bunch of MAGAs of all ages together and asked one question. "When did America stop being great?"
The ones who were born in the 1930s thought that things started going wrong in the 1950s. the ones born in the 1940s thought it was the 1960s. The ones born in the 1960s thought it was in the 1980s...
I was born in 1982. I think I have a good excuse for thinking America went to shit, oh say, around the end of 2001.
Personally, my 20s sucked. My 30s were much better.
'93 here and I think the passage of the Patriot Act was a pretty important demarcation line, not just for abandonment of due process, but also when all the major networks embraced telling their audience who to hate.
That was how it was before the Vietnam War. The news media disconnected itself from the foreign policy desires of the State Department during the Vietnam War because they actually saw the lies on the ground and reported the facts.
The first Iraq war started the change back to having the news media play lapdog again with "embedded reporters" meaning that the news media couldn't wander by themselves like they did in Vietnam.
So we have shifted back to a news media basically toeing the line for the wishes of the government.
Ronald Reagan was deregulating the media from Inauguration Day 1981.
There used to be a thing called 'The Fairness Doctrine' that required stations to give time to opposing viewpoints if they ran an editorial. There were restrictions on how many TV/radio stations one entity could own.
Just look at children's TV. Once Reagan came in you started seeing half hour long commercials for GI Joe and The Transformers.
Funny thing. I was living in NYC on 9/11/2001. None of the people I knew thought that the Iraq Invasion was a good idea.
I was there. There were a lot of antiwar marches.
The New York City alternative paper, The Village Voice ran two cartoons I remember.
One was a cover. Bush Jr. as Mickey Mouse in the sorcerer's apprentice outfit. The big broom looked like Saddam and the little ones looked like bin-Ladn.
The other was Bin-Ladn and Saddam cast in a 'buddy cop' movie where they have to learn to get along to take down the bad guys.
It wasn't that Bush was carried away by an unstoppable tide demanding war. Bush manufactured the 'evidence' and his people sold it hard.
If you have not seen it, you should watch the movie Wag the Dog, and check the release date on it after doing so. Phenomenal movie about government spin doctors.
You should read the original book.
In the book they specifically name Bush Sr. and Saddam. But the author says that the person he was most afraid of offending was the Hollywood producer...
It was a good movie, too.
I was born in the mid 90s, and I feel like my experience of things going to shit in the mid 2010s is similarly justified.
Not all nostalgia is equal.
There's wanting to go back to when all the slaves were happy and there's remembering when you could go to the airport and buy a ticket for cash.
And in 50 years there will be people waxing nostalgic
Kinda proving my point here.
Now you're being hyperbolic. You seem to be saying that we shouldn't point out Left victories of the past [the New Deal etc.] simply because they happened in the past.
Nostalgia is a human trait, and like any other it can be manipulated.
Right, facists harvest that anger and lust for a better time then tell people and it’s [this group’s fault] and that they stole it from you.
This is how class warfare keeps people from joining together and rising up
Life started to suck when the responsibilities came.
I feel it is less responsibilities and more the societal awareness that comes with them that tends to make the change. When you start paying bills you start dealing directly with greedy corporations, landleeches, and greedy employers, all of whom view you as a commodity rather than a human being.
Life being pay to play, as it has been for a couple hundred years, is where I feel the "downward trend of society" feelings come from.
Decline as the oligarchs siphon money out of the classes.
Years ago, a single factory worker could buy a house, raise a huge family, send a few to college, have a couple of cars, take a nice yearly vacation.
then a couple of kids, and student debt
then a big vacation every couple of years.
Now a single factory worker, if you can still find a factory can just feed themselves and rent a cheap apartment.
So, worsening since the 1930s? Mostly, I'd agree with them.