The Good Old Days by Reaganfan

[fezzyfestoon]

I skimmed over most of the original post, but one thing caught my eye; The comparison of '90s culture to a largely dystopian feel to the 2010s. I think the somewhat more depressed tone of our culture has a lot more to do with ourselves than it does with our government. The government to me seems to be more about globbing on and riding the people than actually being a catalyst to positive change. They made themselves out to be greater than they were during the economic success of the '90s and started doing more stupid, unnecessary things to make it even "better" and have subsequently screwed us so deeply we've noticed the giant monkey on our back. The government's over-involvement in our lives and its overbearing negative impact is irritating because it has only exacerbated the problems we had already been dealing with. They created unnecessary economic bubbles and set us up to fall so much deeper than we would have. The government wasn't good in the '80s and '90s, they were just playing on our own successes and taking credit while acting like they were making things even better. The government's actions in the "Glory Days" were far worse than they are now. That mindless and needless grandstanding coupled with greed-fueled abuse led us to where we are now. They could do it under our noses because we were doing so fine (and were so narrow-minded) that we didn't bother to figure out the stupid government. They weren't making things worse for us at the moment, so we let them toil and pretend to be great. Now, when they're supposed to be here (and were the ones that put us here), we're finally turning around and looking in the face saying, "what the hell?" The "glory" of those days were just a cruel facade that should have been quite easy to see through. True to American culture though, we chose to ignore mounting problems until they threatened us with complete collapse.

I guess my point in a more succinct sense would be that the positivity of the '90s was just an illusion brought on by the high of near universal success. Being slammed back down to earth by those propping us will give us a better view of just what they were doing right under us the whole time.