Ah, the 90s—People had more hair then!

C-Span, May 2018.

Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, explains why the best choice you could make in American history was to get born, like him, in 1979 ("The Best Year of Our Lives"):

The sneerers argued that the Ocasio-Cortezans exaggerate the burdens borne by twentysomethings, which is fair — this is still a rich country whose young people are relatively privileged.

But as a statement about generational experiences, [Charlotte] Alter was basically right. If you were born around 1980, you grew up in a space happily between — between eras of existential threat (Cold War/War on Terror, or Cold War/climate change), between foreign policy debacles (Vietnam/Iraq), between epidemics (crack and AIDS/opioids and suicide), and between two different periods of economic stagnation (the ’70s and early Aughts). If you were born later, you experienced slow growth followed by financial crisis followed by a recovery that’s only lately returned us to the median-income and unemployment stats of … 1999.

Given that the Cold War and the crack "epidemic" were both basically over by 1991 or 1992; and the US involvement in civil wars in Nicaragua (1978-89) El Salvador (1979-92) Guatemala (1981-93), arms sales to Iran (1981-85) and Iraq (with intelligence backing, 1982-88), invasion of Panama (1979-80), and conquest of Grenada (1983) surely added up to something debacle-like; and the federal response to AIDS started getting serious in 1993; and the bottom 50% emerged from wage stagnation between 1995 and 2002 and then stopped—

Via Washington Post.

—I guess he must mean what our friend Boswood suggested:

https://t.co/JLWzFB60GE Douthat writes a column about how great things were in 1999 without mentioning the name "Clinton." @Yastreblyansky @Mr_Electrico @bluegal

— Boswood (@Bosengood) April 7, 2019

Or maybe it was something else. But when he says

it was the just-enough-internet era. There was just enough internet to boost economic productivity (the Facebook-Amazon era has not had a similar effect), just enough to encourage subcultural ferment, just enough to challenge cultural gatekeepers and give lonely teenagers succor

Something tells me he just misses being a teenager himself. Which is kind of cute when you think about it.

I'm not having a midlife crisis, I'm having a midlife opportunity

The World Naked Bike Ride, London, June 2010. Photo by Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images, via The Guardian.

David Brooks, reporting fearlessly ("The Middle Age Surge") from Generation X, has some great news for you all: the Baby Boomers lied to you. You know that moment in your fifties where your marriage breaks up and you move into a townhouse apartment and begin exploring the possibility of joining a religious cult and try to transition out of the political hack journalism you've been doing for twenty-odd years into some more adventurous line like being a public purveyor of Philosophy for Life?

Turns out it's not a crisis at all! That's one of those awful things they used to have back in the 20th century, but nowadays it's just an occasion for spiritual growth.

This according to the new book by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife (Random House, 2016), apparently aspiring to a post-midlife career as the Gail Sheehy of smarmy Christianity.