Nostalgia

Are you kidding? .... it was the great old days for Straight White Christian Men ... they were free to be completely racist aholes, treat women like slaves, have as many children as they wanted and not take care of any of them, have the world at their feet, make a ton of money just for being who they were and they were accountable to no one.

The reason why the past was so great for a small segment of society was that it was so shitty for 99% of rest of the world

I'm a white Christian man, and that sounds awful.
I don't understand how people can want to live in that world.
- It's easy if you don't know how shitty the other 90% have it. That's the thing about privilege. The folks who have it assume that everybody has it like they do (i.e. that privilege isn't really a thing, everybody has equal opportunity, racism is dead, etc).
- They're terrible people and racist....
- Look what MAGA did, they pushed the narrative that the white man is getting pushed out of society. Even though the United States is mostly White Christians. They just believed what these bitches told them, didn't bother to look at facts.
  That's the real crime.
- I'm guessing you either aren't American or you aren't and Evangelical Christian.

The rise in gay people since then reminds me of this diagram:

Is there some sinister reason why the low point was 1905 or so?
- christians thought that left-handedness was "sinister" and associated to the devil, so they made it illegal.
  Edit: i know it sounds like a joke, but it is not. this is not the onion. that's the actual reason.
- Underrated pun

"I sent a postcard to my gram gram from the lynching I went to this weekend"

And the whole world smells like cigarettes and leaded gasoline

Back in my day, we could drink gasoline right out of the pump. If you were feeling ill, you just head over to the nearby asbestos wall and give it a good lick.
Then you go out and yell racist shit and put women in their place.

Boomer: I miss being young
GenX: I miss being young
Millennial: I miss being young
GenZ / Alpha: I was told young people had more money 20 years ago and I wish I had more money

As a Millenial, I can 100% say that I do not miss being young. Granted, the busted lumbar region and cranky guts aren't fun, but the familiarity with my own body and the gained cognitive complexity are worth a helluva lot more to me.
I do miss those contexts and how they made me feel, I miss seeing my friends carefree and jovial, and I miss drum and bass and punk gigs. But I was a moron back then, and the shit I did to myself, I wouldn't wish on anyone else.
No, there is one thing: I miss not needing as much sleep as I do now.
Millennial here. I don’t miss being young at all. Sure my body is aging, but it doesn’t make up for how much better I’m doing mentally and emotionally. Also I’m grateful every day that I’m personally sort of financially ok, unlike a lot of our generation and the ones after. Helps being childfree though, because having children would be extremely expensive.
There are a lot of physical things I miss from being young, eyesight, faster recovery from injury and illness, etc. I didn't have money, I had unmanaged depression, I lacked a lot of self esteem. However, I had more friends(or at least acquaintances), more hope in people, much better physical fitness, and in hindsight a lot of my worries weren't that serious.
Aging and youth are both mixed bags. But I'll take being older without a doubt. -A younger millennial
Don't lump us in with boomers. That's just bad manners.
- Ever since the "Nobody knows how to fix a ~~car~~ computer except a ~~Boomer~~ Millennial" memes started trending, we've surrendered our "Better than that" card to GenZ.
  Millennials are as vulnerable to this crap as anyone else.

I can't get through my day without a shit ton of drugs

This is still relevant.

Drugs are so timeless, even wild animals do them

Yeah, but we did tax the everloving fuck out of the grotesquely wealthy, which made for a stronger middle class.

That was before they realized they could just pay our traitorous politicians pocket change to lower their tax rate.

I mean, this was before digital currencies. No one was actually registering every hand-written transaction. Everyone who owned a business big or small was definitely not paying the correct share

On the other hand:

Many of the pro-worker policies from the New Deal are still in place, and my union is strong
The owner of that factory over there is in the 90% tax bracket, isn't it great how he's paying society back for his good fortune?
Every other major economic power in the world was just absolutely flattened in a war, and our country wasn't touched
Because our country was relatively safe during the war, the best and brightest migrated here, and we're now benefiting from their ideas and inventions

On the other other hand: segregation was still a thing
- Yup, the 1950s was only better for white people, but there's a reason that white people look back on it with fondness.
  But, I'd guess that even for black people it was better than the 1930s. When the economy shinks, they're the first to lose jobs. When it grows they're the last to get them. In the 1950s things were booming so my guess is that black unemployment was low. Still, for working class white males the 1950s may have been a peak, for most other people things have just been getting better every year since then.
  Imagine how good it could be if everyone got some of the things working class whites got in the 1950s: strong unions, good labour protections, high tax rates on the ultra rich, etc.

When you get older, pretty sure you’re going to say the same thing….

“Man, the 2020’s were so nice, such a simpler time…. Back when genocide was in vogue and child molesters controlled the world.”

When was there ever a time in human history since civilization started when this wasn't true?

fr I'm sick of people portraying the 50s as this majestic golden age. people pretended everything was fine

Half of this shit hasn't even really changed

Make America Great Again!

the good old time, I miss it very much

I dunno, man... Cocain in soft-drinks and being able to support a family with house and car on a single income?

And it's not like we're rid of drug addicts, wife beaters or anything else nowadays...

A tough choice for sure.

Coca-Cola switched from fresh to spent coca leaves in 1903, so the '50s are about a half century too late for cocaine in sodas.
- Meh... I'll just have to put it in myself then. So not that different from now either.

Expose the pervert rich and powerful and let's clean up the billionaires after that.

A shit ton of drugs sounds amazing tho

In the past all was better, even the future

Maybe not the 50s but the 90s, for certain