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Wayne Karol's avatar

We're trained by our religious heritage to believe that the world can be totally, magically transformed. Your generation fell for it, just as the generation before you fell for the belief in an Age of Aquarius. Real world progress doesn't work like that: it's messy, imperfect, and comes with times of backlash and often new (hopefully smaller) problems.

One of the reasons the boomers have been so demonized is that what they changed fell so short of what they thought they would. Yet looking back, is it possible to deny that they created an America that's *much* less racist sexist homophobic etc. than the one they were born into? Yet for some reason we can't take a win, and both left and right want to tear it all down because they can't see what has improved.

What the end of the Cold War improved was a lot less than what we once thought. The future of liberal democracy may depend on not falling for the counter-delusion that it was nothing.

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Howard's avatar

What a poignant and informative piece. Thanks, Yascha.

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