How America Fractured in 1968
I must be alone in thinking that times are pretty good and the US is not fracturing, and today is nothing like the late 1960s or 70s.<p>Crime&#x2F;violence:<p>Both violent and property crime rates are way down [1].<p>My home region of the Ozarks (SW Missouri, NW Arkansas, NE Oklahoma) is much safer than when I was in jr. high and high school (1995-2001) when there was a huge amount of rural violence associated mostly with the meth trade. I had friends and neighbors killed both purposefully and incidentally with this, none of whom were users or involved in the trade in any way--just children or landlords or neighbors or whatever. We used to get out of school because the cops would be raiding meth labs within shooting distance of the school. This has largely subsided. There is definitely violence associated with the opioid crisis, but the deaths have been overdoses and suicides at least among the people I know.<p>War:<p>There are definitely some nasty and protracted conflicts abroad, but, unlike in 1968, the US is not mired in them and losing thousands of soldiers a year--Wikipedia gives 4,491 deaths for US soldiers for the entire Iraq war, for example. Not that it wasn&#x27;t a horrible and unnecessary loss, and several orders of magnitude worse for Iraqis than the US, but this was also the case for Vietnam (and Cambodia, Laos, etc). While there continues to be strife in the Middle East and a few other places, and I worry about Africa being a major site of east vs. west proxy war in the coming decades, globally the situation seems more peaceful and democratic than in the Cold War or the colonial era.<p>Societal issues in the US:<p>There is a lot of sound and fury, but protests are largely peaceful. The protests involved with Ferguson, Charlottesville, etc. were much more mild than in the 1960s, or the race riots of Tulsa (1921, 39-300 deaths, 10,000+ people left homeless [2]), LA (1992, 63 deaths [3]), and so forth.<p>Gay rights were granted largely peacefully as well--lots of progress here, though it wasn&#x27;t frictionless.<p>Similarly, the recent wave of defenestrations of powerful men due to sexual abuse is to me a net positive even if there are inevitable witch hunts associated.<p>Domestic terrorism seems to be less of a concern. I don&#x27;t know about rates but from what I understand there were a lot of bombings from both far left and far right sources in the 1960s and 1970s. We haven&#x27;t had any high-profile political assassinations in a while.<p>The rise in single-parent households is a concern. I have no idea how much this reduces the incidence of domestic violence as moms don&#x27;t live with abusive dads. Maybe a little?<p>Homelessness is also a major concern but is slightly decreasing over the past decade, not even accounting for population growth [4].  I have no idea how it compares to the 1960s or so.  I think a lot of mentally ill people were institutionalized then, which isn&#x27;t the case now AFAIK.<p>The economy:<p>Parts of the economy are good (stocks, general employment levels), and though there are still problems with stagnant wages for many, debt levels (particularly student loans), and housing prices in many places are terrifying (I&#x27;m living in SV on a pretty meager nonprofit salary, because my wife has a great job that pays OK). But it&#x27;s a lot better than it was a decade ago, or in the 70s. There are still huge issues with medical care that need to be resolved, but at least lots of people are employed as paper pushers...<p>Inequality is a major concern, I concede. And I worry about an upcoming stock market crash.<p>I think it&#x27;s possible that trade work will pay better and better, and as more tradespeople rejoin the middle class communities (neighborhoods, school districts etc.) some of the inequalities of social status between the higher-income blue-collar work and lower-income white-collar work will dissipate.<p>The environment:<p>Way better than in the mid-20th century. We have a lot more protected lands than in the 1960s, and air and water quality are much improved (thanks, Nixon!).  From Wikipedia:<p>&quot;In the United States between 1970 and 2006, citizens enjoyed the following reductions in annual pollution emissions:<p>- carbon monoxide emissions fell from 197 million tons to 89 million tons<p>- nitrogen oxide emissions fell from 27 million tons to 19 million tons<p>- sulfur dioxide emissions fell from 31 million tons to 15 million tons<p>- particulate emissions fell by 80%<p>- lead emissions fell by more than 98%&quot;<p>Without looking stuff up, I think that the broad population shifts from rural and semi-rural to urban and suburban since the 1950s are decreasing the pressure on the environment; national forests in most places are recovering from the ~1850s-1950s logging period.<p>Climate change is bad, forest fires are bad, the decrease in insect populations are probably quite bad and may indicate a very rotten ecological foundation. However, the <i>effects</i> of climate change aren&#x27;t directly tearing our country apart at present; the <i>debate</i> over it (and the underlying struggle for power and authority between science and government vs. church and business) is or did contribute.  Once agriculture begins to fail in the Great Plains and CA central valley, it&#x27;ll get real.<p>---<p>Honestly, I don&#x27;t get it. Sometimes I think things have been decent for long enough that we&#x27;ve forgotten what it was like when things were really bad--the Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, etc.<p>I also think that a lot more of the seeming chaos is that more voices are included than previously, particularly from marginalized communities.<p>This aren&#x27;t perfect, but are they awful? Or are we just bored and riled up about small matters such as the rhetoric of our politicians, or their seeming inability to get stuff done?<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Crime_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Crime_in_the_United_States</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tulsa_race_riot" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tulsa_race_riot</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1992_Los_Angeles_riots" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1992_Los_Angeles_riots</a><p>[4]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journalistsresource.org&#x2F;studies&#x2F;government&#x2F;health-care&#x2F;homelessness-u-s-trends-demographics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journalistsresource.org&#x2F;studies&#x2F;government&#x2F;health-ca...</a>