One of the hidden superpowers of the Trump era’s most recognizable tag line, Make America Great Again, is the growing suspicion that how we lived in the past was better than what we have today, which touches a yearning that is often only partially articulated. The miasma of depression and dread that haunted our nation for many decades before then-Citizen Trump descended the golden escalator to announce his first run at the White House has been an unacknowledged factor in his rise, and  many fail to recognize that his readiness to unashamedly divide the world into the good and the evil provides a lifeline for voters who feel our nation has been mutating into some dark and unnatural mirror image of what we always hoped it would be. Trump might be brutally blunt and prone to exaggeration, but he is willing to say what many Americans intuitively believe to be true, which drives Democrats crazy—but has been electoral magic.

When I was young I found the popularity of sappy television shows such as The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, and Happy Days to be inexplicable, but I now recognize they provided a dose of escapism that was desperately needed after national traumas that extended from the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King to our military nightmare in Vietnam. For a half hour at a time there were no bullets tearing through flesh; we had only banal problems solved by spunky youngsters—all underscored with a laugh track. Even if our movie theaters were filled with the grimmer and grimier fare of Midnight Cowboy or The Godfather movies, a dose of saccharine was there for the asking on one of our three (!) television networks in the years before cable television and streaming video began bombarding our eyeballs with mainstream pornography and sadistic violence on demand.

The reality is, of course, that America’s past was full of problems, but nostalgia is a potent drug that makes us forget what we choose not to remember. Just think, for example, of the 20th century generations that hopscotched from the Great Depression to World War Two to the fear of imminent nuclear annihilation. Perfect pasts exist only in our imperfect memories of messy history created by messy—and imperfect—people.

Nonetheless, the problems that dog our steps today have their own peculiar character that is making them both worse and more pervasive.

First, the general breakdown of the family in America—which has led to several generations of children being raised by one parent, grandparents, or no parent at all—is now so widespread as to barely merit comment. Illusory “freedoms” for adults who have shrugged off their commitments to one another have punished and traumatized our nation’s children, who enter their young adulthoods emotionally bereft and psychologically scarred—only to repeat the process later in their own lives with even more disastrous results. Love requires both maturity and determination to flourish in a real world of real challenges. How many twenty year-olds do you know who are today even the least ready to meet this test, and what do you imagine will be the consequences of their feckless adulthoods for the children they grudgingly bear—and barely raise?

In addition, both cell phones and social media have done a fantastic job eroding our fragile sense of privacy and normalizing the abnormal. The desperate misery now afflicting yet another generation oversharing their lives while underappreciating their own worth and pursuing a ridiculous chase for likes and follows is a testament to the mentally corrosive effects of technology designed to breed both addiction and insecurity. 

How bad is this during the critical formative years of adolescence, a time when so much of our self-concept and self-confidence is set in stone? Let me put it this way: If you put a young person on a global stage at a time of their life when self-doubt, anxiety, and vulnerability are at their peak and give others the opportunity to callously comment on every aspect of that terrified teen’s life while also subjecting them to constantly being filmed without consent . . . nothing good will happen. I am gratified that states and school districts around America are finally banning these pernicious devices from our nation’s classrooms, but I fear this will be too little, too late, for we have already established norms for our psychological and emotional spaces that shred young souls on a daily basis. Childhood and adolescence has always been tough, but we have thrown a technological yoke around the necks of our young that is turning them into slaves to their phone screens, and the aftereffects are sadly apparent as they stumble into fragile adulthoods filled with depression, anxiety, and crippling confusion.

Although I understand we very often view the past with rose-colored glasses, it is true that children raised a half-century ago (before we waved goodbye to two-parent homes and put a cell phone in every hand) behaved more far respectfully toward adults and those in authority for the simple reason that consequences for misbehavior were swift and certain—and no one particularly gave a hoot about a child’s “rights” or feelings when they broke the rules. I still remember my 7th grade Social Studies teacher knocking me off my chair in the middle of class for back talking him, and my classmates lived in equal dread of what awaited them at home if a phone call came from the school or a neighbor reporting unacceptable behavior. We might not have much appreciated a smack (or two or three) and no dinner for acting like stupid kids, but looking at the offspring of parents today, who are annoyingly obsessed with trying to be “friends” with their children instead of doing their parental jobs and disciplining them, it seems that modern child rearing techniques are at least part of the reason that so many children, adolescents, and young adults are spoiled and entitled brats who are seemingly incapable of either empathy or self-reflection.

This same sensibility of punishment swift, harsh, and certain also applied to our criminal courts, which used to be in the business of enforcing the law. Coddling criminals instead of simply locking them up has been the signal failure of a half-century of “progressive” law enforcement policies and techniques. Plea bargains for violent crimes should not be allowed, sentences should be be served in full, and more police should be walking a beat again to both build strong relationships with the communities they serve and pick up on-the-ground intelligence that will help them to both prevent and solve crimes. All of this wisdom of the law enforcement past, which has been discarded in favor of modern techniques that solve shockingly few crimes, must be resurrected in order to improve public safety, and the howls of liberals should be roundly ignored if they don’t like it. The decline and fall of our major American cities, many of which are terrorized by criminal gangs and individual psychopaths who operate with near impunity, is a national scandal that is routinely excused by elected officials who blame everything and everyone—other than themselves—for the fear that stalks the lives of those impacted by ever-present street violence and civil disorder.

Of course, when it comes to blaming America and Americans for their suffering at the hands of the victim-blaming incompetents now ensconced in positions of authority throughout our nation, few are as expert at deflecting blame as Democrats and their ideological allies. Those who are currently protesting against the deportation of illegal immigrants and the crime crackdown in D.C., loudly proclaiming these to be horrid examples of authoritarianism and bigotry, are beyond rational discussion about the problems inherent in open borders and bizarrely lenient prosecutors and judges. Most people are understandably unhappy when they or those whom they love are victims of robbery, rape, assault, burglary, or the many crimes that are as predictable as the filth and decay in our urban spaces, but this simple fact seems to elude those who insist criminals deserve our unreserved sympathy.

At times we might be fooling ourselves or simply looking for hope, but the attractive innocence of the past many times compels us to yearn for that which did not exist except in our faulty memories. We are, for example, obviously and understandably upset that children need to take part in active shooter drills at school, but I well remember spending my elementary school years participating in “duck and cover” drills that presumed my school desk would save me from a nuclear explosion. Pedophiles were still looking for victims long before it became fashionable to hang “Pride” flags in every classroom and turn creepy school teachers into sex therapists. Police ignored all but the most egregious domestic violence while encouraging frightened women to be more “understanding” with their abusive husbands. The lack of alternative media made it easier for official lies to be spread and allowed the virus of Marxism to spread throughout academia undetected. Our political leaders were free to be even more corrupt when there were no required financial disclosures, and compliant media were happy to cover up wrongdoing in exchange for access to the rich and powerful. Humans are inherently flawed and can be easily manipulated by those with ill intent who present themselves as saviors, so it is likely that fifty years from today our descendants will be shaking their heads at our foolishness.

There is no argument that America’s history had its problems, but it was in many ways infinitely superior to our slouching and sullen present, which celebrates idiocy and rages at common sense, morality, hard work, and personal responsibility. Our discontent is real, the stupidity of fantasyland social policies is undeniable, and the reluctance of well-educated but mentally incapacitated elites to recognize the harm their theories are causing is an ongoing frustration for citizens who desperately wish for American greatness to return to our nation.

Looking back for inspiration and instruction will always have a component of wishful thinking and willful blindness baked in. However, it is equally true that the political, social, and cultural problems we are facing today are corroding our ability to govern ourselves effectively and allowing the worst among us to exercise unwarranted power over the future direction of our nation.