Historical Lens
Base10 has taken to reading Megan McArdle quite often. She is an MBA and an economics writer at The Atlantic. She recently wrote about the increasing dissillusionment of the left that the "activist" movement is not what it once was in its ability to solve the world's numerous ills. She responds:

First of all, the notion that this is some sort of uniquely horrible moment
in world history is absurd. I grew up with the very real fear that one day,
without much warning, I would simply vanish in a radioactive cloud. The fear of
nuclear annihilation was the ever-present undercurrent to the lives of children
living in major urban areas, or near military installations, in a way that you
simply cannot comprehend unless you've lived it. Compared to the threat of
global thermonuclear war, any of the world's current problems, including climate
change, are trivial.

But why do today's crop of potential "activists" feel that we are in such a moment? McCardle has an answer:

But of course, people now in their early twenties don't really remember
anything before the late Clinton administration; no wonder everything seems
like it's going to hell in a handbasket. Their baseline is an unsustainable
economic bubble in an unprecedented peacetime lull following the collapse of
the Soviet Union.

I've come across this same thing when talking to my students. Their view of politics and the economy often has no historical perspective.
- posted by Base10 @ 1:37 PM