lots was wrong with that era. if you rotten cherry pick the worst, of course it sounds awful. i'd not trade a return of Jim Crow for anything. nobody wants to go back to what was awful about that era.

but important things were good about that era. it was a time when we could make progress on civil rights, because the "white" public felt affluent. a generous spirit was not a kiss of death for politicians, as it is now.

the kids who rebelled perceived themselves as affluent! they resented inauthenticity, being cogs in a machine, militarism, in the richest society the world had ever known. today's kids don't feel rich. they feel insecure, indebted.

the goal is not to go back to any era. the goal is to understand what's good in a society, and income and wealth compression — we're all in the same boat, we have similar interests, we can govern coherently together — are things that are good in a society, which we once had much more than we do now.