Before the colonists arrived.

As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the clouds and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.

Now I'm the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:

• When you're a kid, the world belongs to the grown-ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.

• When you reach teenage years, the world starts being yours: you've developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.

• When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You're not a powerless kid and you're not weaker old guy/gall yet. You're fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it's yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed, and a pure product of their time.

• And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shifts beneath your feet, but it's happening very slowly, year after year, until...

• You reach an age at which you're very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.

And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledge that it's not your world anymore, but it's younger people's now. People who are now the age you once were: it's their turn to have a go at owning the world. You're just in it for the ride.

Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you've liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It's not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It's easier to reject the world around you than admit it's just not how you like it anymore, but it's poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.

I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past, from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they're not from my world: they're from today's youth's world, and I have no say in it.

If you're old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.

The corollary of all this is: there is no better America in the past: the past simply seems rosier to older eyes. America has always been as great or as shit as you find it to be today.

It wasn't too bad before all those illegal immigrants showed up in the big sailing boats, I hear...

It was probably pretty chill before a bunch of chodes came over and named it America.

Im Latino indigenous, I grew up in a war where Americans are funding death squads and bombing half the country to keep Russia out of this hemisphere. After America bombed my country and nothing was left, we moved up to the US to follow my country’s stolen wealth to the empire that took it. There we were called wetbacks and spics and told we were streaming jobs and weren’t welcome, go back to your country they would say, you know the country that’s filled with American craters. Now those Americans who wanted Russia out, are sucking Putin cock, and we’re still being rounded up like cattle! Move on to Canada eventually and never got over Americans being such monsters. These past few years have been wild as even the amaerican leftists have turned racist. I’ve called out a few young people on their anti colonial hypocrisy and anti war stance but only on some wars, etc. Not even against their views, just trying to point out their own colonial past, and I’ll get called all sort of slurs.

1930s-1980s. So when the superrich were supertaxed. Remember 91% income tax in early 1960s?

Back when they were fighting Nazis instead of being them.

The more history I learn the more I understand that every country is awful, and people have been terrible forever.

The moon landings were pretty great. Let's just not mention the contributions made by all those ex-Nazis.

Get outta ma head Charles!

Apparently when white men ran it, women stayed in their place, gays stayed confirmed bachelors, and minorities stayed under the table.

In the 1950s for white men, America was pretty great. For just about everyone else no one would say it was "great". So when they say "Make America Great Again" they mean "Make America Suck Again For Everyone But White Men".

As recently as 3 years ago I was inspired by huge investments in renewable energy and climate change, starting to work on a huge backlog of infrastructure work, there was hope for high speed rail, incentives to bring manufacturing back to the us, support for unions, we had an ethical fact-based government, the rule of law and primacy of the constitution, respected all people and were working on quality of life improvements ……

Remind me again why we voted to tear all that down?

"Great" is subjective. For them, america's greatness came from the KKK lynching black people without repercussion before coming home, rape their wife and beat up their children

I'm not even American but I laughed at this

before 1492

Back between September 2, 1945 (WW2 end date), and November 1, 1955 (First day US involved in Vietnam). Unless of course you were black. Then it would have been August 28, 1963 (MLK's I have a dream speech date).

Before the human species arrived 4 sure.