While there’s an emerging understanding that our heritage was less stained by racism than shaped by it, a sense that Christianity shifted with chilling speed from a source of relatively benign civic unity into a wellspring of snarling division, and a growing scientific understanding that our post war prosperity set the stage for the planets’ climatic upheaval, we badly need to pinpoint where we went astray in the first place if we wish to fix this country. But new understandings of history have cast shadows on that picture-and over the past half century, over consumption and hyper-individualism have wrought havoc on three of America’s most distinctive features: our intertwined sense of history and patriotism, our kindness and generosity, and the promise of prosperity for all. Postwar suburban prosperity the emerging movements for human equality-the escalator seemed to be heading steadily up. Bill McKibben grew up believing- knowing––that America was the greatest country on earth that for all its obvious flaws, it was history’s most dynamic machine, pushing steadily towards a better future.
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