I don’t remember the 1970s, and for that I’m forever grateful.

No one who does remember remembers that decade fondly, it seems. So I pose this question to Dispatch readers of a certain age: Was our national malaise really worse then than it is now?

It was in some respects. I’ve never had to wait on a gas line, for instance. And not since I was a teenager have I worried about an expansionist superpower in Asia dragging us into conflict.

But that last part is changing. And some hallmarks of the 1970s, like inflation and losing long wars and corrupt Republican presidents narrowly avoiding being toppled by Congress, have already returned.