The plucky poll slingers at YouGov, who are consistently willing to use their elite-tier survey skills in service of measuring the unmeasurable, asked 2,000 adults which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy and so forth, across 20 measures. But when we charted them, no consistent pattern emerged.

We did spot some peaks: When asked which decade had the most moral society, the happiest families or the closest-knit communities, White people and Republicans were about twice as likely as Black people and Democrats to point to the 1950s. The difference probably depends on whether you remember that particular decade for 'Leave it to Beaver,' drive-in theaters and '12 Angry Men' ' or the Red Scare, the murder of Emmett Till and massive resistance to school integration.

'This was a time when Repubs were pretty much running the show and had reason to be happy,' pioneering nostalgia researcher Morris Holbrook told us via email. 'Apparently, you could argue that nostalgia is colored by political preferences. Surprise, surprise.'

And he's right! But any political, racial or gender divides were dwarfed by what happened when we charted the data by generation. Age, more than anything, determines when you think America peaked.

So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person's birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.

The good old days when America was 'great' aren't the 1950s. They're whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you'd never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn't sold out.

A few decades from now, our memories shaped by grainy photos of auroras and astrolabes, we'll recall only the bread straight from streetside tandoor-style ovens and the locals who went out of their way to bail out a couple of distraught foreigners.

In other words, the 2020s will be the good old days.

Elon Musk who treats free speech like a weapon rather than a right - has managed to become even more disruptive than he has already been.

Citizens aren’t employees, and legislators shouldn’t act like department heads all trying to manage up. The government’s role is not to sell a product and maximize profits. And the president is certainly not a CEO who can summarily downsize the country to make it more nimble.

Elon Musk - Powerful Critic Of Illegal Immigrants - Worked Illegally In U.S. At Start Of Career, Report Says

Musk’s immigration status put the company at risk of not receiving funding, according to the Post, which cited a funding agreement between Zip2 and Mohr Davidow Ventures that Musk, his brother Kimbal and an associate, had 45 days to secure legal work status or face losing out on the $3 million investment.

Derek Proudian, a Zip2 board member who later became the company’s chief executive, told the Post that Zip2 investors did not want its founder deported, and that the Musk brothers’ “immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.”

Ford and Apple - which once saw business with China as a major bright spot — are repeatedly forced to scramble to explain. Ford, for example, told Reuters it follows U.S. government regulations “across our business.” Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook talks up the company’s Americanness: “I know that a company like Apple could only come from America — and we are as committed as ever to giving back to our great country,” he said in Arizona in 2022.

As Chinese companies have caught up and in some cases surpassed American companies in technology, the new question for the American ones is whether to attempt to fight their way back to the forefront, at great cost, or cede the market to the Chinese and become their customers.

“It would take Apple a decade to get out of China” even if it wanted to, Jeff Fieldhack, a research director for Counterpoint Research, told me. “It’s not just the building of devices. It’s the huge ecosystem of components.”

If tensions between China and the United States continue to ratchet up, the pressure on companies that straddle the two markets will only intensify. There is no easy way out.

Only if the president-elect is willing to fight big money and redistribute wealth can he stop the rise of someone far worse than 'Old Donald'

Trump threw rolls of paper towels to Americans devastated by a hurricane as if he was lobbing free T-shirts to fans during a halftime show. He handed a woman $100 for groceries during a September campaign stop in Pennsylvania as if that one-off handout was a full-blown economic policy for the country’s working stiffs.

He has been declared the world’s richest person and troll. In this election season, neither seems good for America.

Ford and Apple - which once saw business with China as a major bright spot — are repeatedly forced to scramble to explain. Ford, for example, told Reuters it follows U.S. government regulations “across our business.” Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook talks up the company’s Americanness: “I know that a company like Apple could only come from America — and we are as committed as ever to giving back to our great country,” he said in Arizona in 2022.

As Chinese companies have caught up and in some cases surpassed American companies in technology, the new question for the American ones is whether to attempt to fight their way back to the forefront, at great cost, or cede the market to the Chinese and become their customers.

“It would take Apple a decade to get out of China” even if it wanted to, Jeff Fieldhack, a research director for Counterpoint Research, told me. “It’s not just the building of devices. It’s the huge ecosystem of components.”

If tensions between China and the United States continue to ratchet up, the pressure on companies that straddle the two markets will only intensify. There is no easy way out.

Only if the president-elect is willing to fight big money and redistribute wealth can he stop the rise of someone far worse than 'Old Donald'

as goes centrism, so goes democracy. In this time of turmoil, we desperately need both.

A dive into true centrism reveals its power and utility. But first, we have to dispense with some things that centrism is not. Centrism isn’t a mushy tendency to compromise. It isn’t a brain-dead fondness for style over substance. Above all, it is not to be confused with “moderation” — the futile and frankly foolish attempt to carve out a space halfway between the extremes of MAGA authoritarianism on the right and rabid nihilism from the left.

If climate change is a fact, to take one example, then splitting the difference with climate deniers is nonsensical. And if the MAGA movement assaults truth, then telling half of the truth or telling the truth half the time isn’t centrism. It’s absurdism, and a sure path to meaninglessness and nihilism.

Centrists don’t start coups

Centrism is also an electoral winner. In Britain, the Labour Party succeeded by moving to the center, providing a reasonable alternative to the faltering Tories. Its journey to the far left under Jeremy Corbyn was a disaster; its return to the center a stunning success. Biden’s centrism carried him to victory in the hard-fought 2020 Democratic primary, then went on to attract millions more votes than any presidential candidate in history in that general election. Going into this fall’s election, Biden centrism endures as a fundamentally strong platform, especially in contrast to the ever-more-radical agendas of many in the GOP. The latter turns out to be quite unpopular.

The role of the courts

In recent years, be it in Poland, Turkey or the United States, politicization of the judiciary at the hands of right-wing ideologues has endangered liberal democracy itself. A judiciary co-opted by reactionary politicians soon loses the qualities that the rule of law — an essential aspect of liberal democracies — provides. Politicized judges who reflexively side with the politicians who appoint them inevitably discard precedent and strain to reach predetermined outcomes — the antithesis of centrism. They accelerate rather than block their side’s power grabs. In doing so, they jettison their own legitimacy. Any court that earns the scorn of voters soon earns efforts to impede its independence and limit its jurisdiction.

Ending all-or-nothing politics

Radical centrism” might sound like an oxymoron. But centrism is certainly worth pursuing passionately and unreservedly. Having previously resided within the old, pro-democracy conservative Republican Party, I can appreciate the efficiency of markets, the need for a strong military defense and limited government. In my post-Republican years, I now see the necessity to combine markets with strong government investment, the folly of military adventures without clear endpoints and the need for administrative flexibility (rather than deference to scientifically illiterate courts).

The US military is practicing using air- and land-based anti-ship missiles in ship sinking exercises as it prepares for a war against China.

While many Americans think of summer as the perfect season to hit the pool for a float, U.S. service members in the Pacific are thinking about what they're going to sink. In live fire exercises dubbed 'SINKEXs,' troops in the region have already sunk two ships from the air and the land, with one big aquatic finale expected before Labor Day.

The exercise comes as the U.S. military as a whole is looking for ways to poke holes in China's Anti Access Area Denial, or A2/AD network, a series of seniors and weapons that are designed to make it very dangerous for any U.S. ships, planes, and troops to operate in and around Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.

“We have to root out corruption that siphons off our strength, guard against those who would stoke hatred and division for political gain as phony populism, invest in strengthening institutions that underpin and safeguard our cherished democratic values,” he said, adding later: “That’s how we’ll prove that democracy and that our alliance can still prevail against the challenges of our time and deliver for the needs and the needs of our people.”

The theme of this year's Bucerius Summer School on Global Governance, a Hamburg-based international conference consisting of dozens of young leaders from around the world, was 'Facing New Realities: Global Governance Under Strain.' The reality this American observer had to face? That in the eyes of much of the world, the United States' light has dimmed

'But I couldn't imagine living in a place where my children would have to practice' ' here, she made mocking quotation marks with her fingers - 'active shooter drills.'

The United States' most famous exports used to be Coca-Cola, Levi's and jazz ' not to mention such ideals as freedom, civil rights and the rule of law. Now, we're best known for rampant gun violence and gruesome school shootings.

In 2008, Fareed Zakaria wrote: 'At the politico-military level, we remain in a single-superpower world. But in every other dimension ' industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural ' the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.' In 2022, that vision of a 'post-American world' has gone from theory to truth.

It might not be too late to effect a reversal. But if we want to preserve our stature, we should begin to act ' holding our former president accountable to the rule of law would be a start ' and realize that as we do so, the next generation of leaders is watching.

The world is taking our decline seriously. It's time we did the same.