Nobody Wants the 1950s Back. They Want Something Else. (opens in new tab)

Every civilization eventually develops a fantasy about its own childhood. Rome had one. Britain had one. America's fantasy childhood is the 1950s. A decade so beloved that millions of Americans who never lived through it spend their evenings trying to move back there emotionally. The remarkable thing is that almost nobody actually wants the 1950s. They want the feeling they imagine the 1950s produced. Those are very different things. You see it everywhere now. "I want the 1950s back." It appe...