>a lie built on the exploitation of former colonies and underdeveloped nations
This is the key. The West is no longer as relatively rich as it used to be. Large swaths of the human populace have moved out of poverty just since 1990, causing a sort of "prosperity inflation" where the old prosperous Western nations are no longer as far ahead anymore.
Just the top 10% of India, China, and miracle-on-the-river Asian countries is more than the population of the US, definitely better educated, lives in better conditions than Americans, and competes for the same resources including American jobs. An invisible America-sized country has emerged from thin air in the last 3 decades, and it's better than America.
I think this has already had a deep impact on the psyche of the West. E.g. the phrase "filthy rich" now conjures up images of an Asian international student with bottomless family money from mysterious sources, not an old white family living in Connecticut. The richest man in the world has a foreign accent. The valedictorian is never an unhyphenated American kid.
The past appears better than the present for America because, taking into account this "prosperity inflation", it really was.
This is the key. The West is no longer as relatively rich as it used to be. Large swaths of the human populace have moved out of poverty just since 1990, causing a sort of "prosperity inflation" where the old prosperous Western nations are no longer as far ahead anymore.
Just the top 10% of India, China, and miracle-on-the-river Asian countries is more than the population of the US, definitely better educated, lives in better conditions than Americans, and competes for the same resources including American jobs. An invisible America-sized country has emerged from thin air in the last 3 decades, and it's better than America.
I think this has already had a deep impact on the psyche of the West. E.g. the phrase "filthy rich" now conjures up images of an Asian international student with bottomless family money from mysterious sources, not an old white family living in Connecticut. The richest man in the world has a foreign accent. The valedictorian is never an unhyphenated American kid.
The past appears better than the present for America because, taking into account this "prosperity inflation", it really was.