“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” — Marcel Proust
Nostalgia, a term that originated as a medical diagnosis for Swiss mercenaries suffering from homesickness, is the sorrowful longing for a lost past. An April Pew survey found that nearly six out of 10 (58%) Americans think the country was better off for people like them 50 years ago. For Republican and Republican-leaning respondents, nostalgia for the early 1970s reached 72%.
This is bad — but not for the reasons you might think. First, some context. In 1939, Gallup found that 62% of Americans thought people were better off in the horse-and-buggy era (though only 25% said they’d actually want to live then).
Indeed, Americans have always had a thing for the “good old days.” The problem is that what — or when — constitutes the “good old days” is a constantly moving target. It often seems to be about five decades earlier from right now.
Karlyn Bowman studies public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute. She found that in recent surveys, the 1980s and 1990s are starting to supplant the 1950s as the new “good old days.” You can see evidence for this all over the place in popular culture, from the remakes of old sitcoms to original offerings such as “Stranger Things” that cast those years as a lost time of innocence.