Like many people of my age and looming decrepitude, I have developed a nostalgia for the 1990s. The decade of Nirvana, Notorious B.I.G., and Newt Gingrich looks like the pinnacle of human civilization compared to the nonsense going on right now.
Back then, Boyz II Men was a popular singing group. Today their name would be considered the premise of hate speech, unutterable in blue-state public schools. It would at a minimum have to be revised to “Boyz II Men Sometimez.”
The political culture was healthier too, even if Bill Clinton was president for most of the decade. I do sometimes wonder if I had not misspent so much of my outrage during the Clinton years, I would have had enough left to participate in the group outrage against Donald Trump.
My younger self definitely felt about Clinton’s election in 1992 the way many friends and colleagues felt about Trump’s in 2016: disillusioned and…
