Increasingly as we get some distance to it, the decades of the late 20th century have shed their normalizing mythology as the "best in history" (for the wealthy

Increasingly as we get some distance to it, the decades of the late 20th century have shed their normalizing mythology as the "best in history" (for the wealthy countries) and become one more era of human survival among many: a time we can look back upon as a slightly more brutish and uncivilized one with unique unkindnesses, even as we grapple with many of the same age-old challenges of civilization right now.