I. Retrospect
Bring yourself to any one of the myriad towns on the Jersey shore—any of them will do. Now, walk down the boardwalk. See a magic show or a kooky museum; go to a photo-booth with a friend, or get a caricature done if that’s your thing; play a token game at an arcade, or a game of chance in a casino. Then, take a ride on the Ferris wheel while gnawing on that ubiquitous saltwater taffy and watching the sun set over the great American continent.
The shore towns know people go for that youthful vibe. Wildwood blasts that brassy “wild, wild, Wildwood days,” theme song every few minutes while telling you to watch the tram car (which is actually just a bus) because it knows you’re here for something wholesome and nostalgic. No matter how much you mature, the shore will be there and it’ll stay tacky for you when you come back.
Really, the shore vibe has developed into something so ubiquitous that we forget it’s an imitation—of the “gay nineties,” America’s first consciously cultural decade.
These “gay nineties,” are a reference to the 1890s, looked back on by the war generation as simple, charming, economically prosperous, and morally strong but just decadent enough to not be uptight. “Back in my day when we used to go to the shore and Coney Island we were just less cynical. The economy was good and everyone was plucky and proper.”
Stars and Stripes Forever. Wildwood’s brass sound is meant to be an imitation of the loud patriotic marches that were popular in the 1890s “when America was a proper country.” The “tram car” harkens back to when there actually were trams. Those photo-booths? Once new technological novelties you could only find on the shore. The museums and arcades showed fascination with modernization that “naive” America had in that decade, gone in the detached, cynical, ironic war generation.
But of course, the economy wasn’t as great as it seemed in retrospect. The Panic of 1893 was so crippling for the economy that it was originally called the Great Depression, before the later known depression of the ‘20s (now it is often referred to as the Long Depression). Unemployment rates reached as high as 17-19% nationally. On the idea of the country being more cohesive, what about the violent Pullman strike? Labor relations were certainly not cohesive, were they? And the period from 1882 to 1901 saw the height of lynchings in the United States with an average of over 150 each year.
Yet, the war generation was convinced it was a better time simply because of the vibe. And when they went to the shore, they wanted to be reminded of it. It’s not that they didn’t care about the bad parts of the decade, it’s that the late Victorian vibe was just different enough to the rising modernist, lawless feeling world to serve as a convenient escape. In fact, the “gay nineties” wasn’t even a contemporary term, as it was first used in the 1920s.
Nostalgia is one thing, but when large groups of people earnestly support the removal of the income tax (as many did in the early twentieth century just because the economy seemed better in their childhoods) that good feeling becomes dangerous.
II. The Twenties and Fifties
A common sentiment in that era was that the 1890s had a feeling associated with it. The 1900s and 1910s were just passing by. ‘Only ‘90s kids relate. We’ll never get that again.’
Looking back, it sounds insane that anyone could suggest a feeling of jubilee could never come back. What about the Roaring ‘20s? Art Deco? What about the new fashion? What about jazz and speakeasies? That’s because for a new generation, the ‘20s became their version of the youthful, meaningful gay nineties. They rallied around a decade their parents continued to call meaningless. Of course, this decade wasn’t as singularly prosperous and optimistic either. The Great Gatsby shows a remarkable cynical take on opulence and the American Dream. The Glass Menagerie, set in the ‘30s, is littered with a characteristic depression-era moodiness.
Then, another generation came—the one that’s still the most prevalent in Congress today. It shouldn’t be a surprise that almost the entire political spectrum reveres the post-war ‘40s and ‘50s. Conservatives continue to say it was a time of “strong moral values and conformity” while liberals continue to say it was the era of the post-war consensus and still-intact New Deal policies. They both ignore McCarthyism, rising racial violence, the Korean War, and the children of thalidomide. “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life,” said historian Richard Hofstadter on how the United States was declining—in 1955.
All that while post-war American culture became so widespread that we still refer to the ideas of how society allegedly was in that period as “modern,” at least in common parlance. Want a modern house? Let me direct you to the mid-century works of Frank Lloyd Wright. Want a car to get you around our “new” suburban culture? Borrow some optimism with that cool turquoise ‘57 Chevy Belair that still showed up in an ad as late as 2022 to represent the brand. Everything after the ‘50s—because, trust me, life goes on past the post-war consensus—is now “post-modern” and strange. Everything before is now “pre-modern” and obsessed with form and appearance over function. We look at the way society was run then and say “that’s as good as it gets.” By even calling that era “modern” what we do is minimize everything after it because it implies moral and societal thought peaked in the ‘50s. In that way, every conformist era in American culture (the ‘80s, 2000s) becomes a variant of the ‘50s. Every rebellious era becomes the ‘20s or the ‘60s. Every trip to the shore becomes a trip to when the country was “better.” And all of it is fake.
III. Generation-Z
Generation-Z might be the most nostalgically driven generation in decades—not only are we nostalgic for our direct youth but also to times we never even lived in. In some ways, we are even rejecting modernity (both practically and in the sense of the ‘50s). We see large brutalist structures go up—fully function over form as was the norm at a time—and we retreat to the idea of a simpler existence. Even the word “aesthetic” has linguistically shifted from a noun to an adjective to describe something pretty. The idea of “tradwives” in general is trending both on TikTok and in mall shelves. Even Pepsi, which has always marketed itself as the “hip” drink over rival Coca-Cola, switched to a slightly more maximalist logo design in 2023 to appeal to the youth.
But here’s the problem: if we wish to return to particular decades simply for the vibes we associate with them—even when many abhorrent things happened or standards for respect were lower—we’re implicitly saying we’re fine with those pitfalls because that vibe, that aesthetic, is worth it. Or worse, we’re saying that to go back to that vibe, we need to go back then as a society in terms of values.
In much the same way as liberals and conservatives in the 20th century were for long in agreement that the ‘50s were the peak of America, the left-right spectrum now (especially the nostalgic Generation-Z) is in agreement that our time is not prosperous. Leftists say that capitalism has gone too far while rightists say that it’s the bureaucracy and regulations that have led to the bad vibes. The furthest on the left call for violent revolution against the American state because of detached nostalgia for a time when the Soviet Union dented global capitalism for the first time. The furthest on the right want women to stop voting and go back to being housewives because ‘the country was on the right track when that was the norm.’
Both of these extremes are dependent on a non-sequitur. Just because something was one way in the past (e.g. the economy was good), does not mean that to achieve that standard, we need to go back to abhorrent social policies or other facets of cultural regression. In other words, if we chase the memory associated with a particular time because we like one aspect of said time, we trap ourselves endlessly repeating the mistakes that have led to our demise. Just because you like the straw hats of the ‘20s and the “general idea” of a good economy, doesn’t mean you need to campaign to bring back the gold-standard and make it a cultural taboo to go outside without a hat. We don’t need to seek form over function in the pre-modern sense because the pre-modern cultures which valued form are easier to see in the media than ever before.
IV. Prospect
It’s easy to look back on that snooty Mr. Hofstadter and shrug him off. The “anti-intellectualism” he was describing in his time obviously didn’t end up crippling America. Culture did change to become less elitist (we lost the Transatlantic accent because it started to seem out of touch, for example) but the ‘50s and ‘60s saw more Americans attending college than ever before. Just because—in our era as in Hofstadter’s—the foundations of institutions seem to be shakier in light of cultural change, it does not necessarily mean we are in decline. A subtle drop in college class sizes doesn’t mean we no longer respect the value of a good education.
But we shouldn’t ignore obviously negative changes. The already fragmented political spectrum becomes worse when reactionary frustration comes into it, like it does with Generation-Z—the generation pulled to extremes. “If Congress is filled with people from the ‘50s who want to bring us back, people who don’t care about me, who are completely unrelatable to me—I will place myself in opposition to them. I am the resistance and they are the tyranny.” That is the vibe that develops.
Fewer people in Generation-Z are choosing to study liberal arts subjects, and why wouldn’t they? The reputation—vibe, you could say—is that they’re elitist, ineffective, and unprestigious. “College is expensive. Why would I get a useless degree like English.” This is reductionist, obviously, but when you have a society which increasingly is suffering, increasingly visibly, the common reaction is to “stick it to the man! Kick the establishment! Drain the swamp!”
That’s when the “income tax ruined America,” argument comes back in full-force and is most effective. You have an entire generation which feels that to some extent it has been abandoned—that’s why you have conspiracists. When schools don’t care about teaching the value of facts (not just processes) you have people learning “alternate facts,” which are absolutely just lies.
The internet has liberalized access to practically infinite information but it has also made it extremely easy for “vibes-based” grifters to gain popularity by vouching for obvious conspiracy theories. You have entire communities on platforms like Reddit based around the idea that they’re extremist—not a specific type of extremist but just “not moderate.” Obviously paradoxical “ideologies” which could obviously never even be implemented (e.g. Anarcho-Monarchism—anarchy but with a monarch to make sure no one makes rules) are finding crowds because 1. As previously mentioned, the system has seemingly abandoned them and they’re looking for a way out. 2. Because we don’t take as much care around ensuring the prioritization of pragmatism, not vibes.
This critique isn’t coming from a detached academic like Hofstadter, it’s so obviously visible (and yet unreacted to) that it’s pierced into the country’s political scape. The rising authoritarianism of the “Make America Great Again” is so vague that it’s successful. What do they want? Do they want freedom? Then why are they making the government more powerful than ever before through “Unitary Executive Theory” and similar measures? Why is due process so obviously being subverted? These policies have no ideological alignment to each other, nor to any idea of what a once great America even could be interpreted as. What they have is that vibe. And that’s all they need. They needed that vibe of winning that came when Kirk spoke louder than his opponent (because he had a mic and they didn’t) and the smug satisfaction in his smile at the end.
And when one side does it, the other feels compelled to respond. American political debates have become absolutely horrendous to watch because the “own the libs” and “silence the fascistic deplorables” ideologies have become so widespread that gone is even the idea that both sides want the country to improve. Why? Because they’re chasing different vibes, different decades, and not focusing on decent, sensible policy from two separate viewpoints. They don’t give voters a choice anymore, they care about looking like they’ve really shown-it-to-the-other-party! “We can’t afford to fall behind!”
What even is “ideology” besides framing a complex worldview under a set of circumstances so they make sense to your people. Without focusing on what politics is really about, you have a field that benefits absolutely nobody; facts are different to both sides because the facts of the ‘20s are different to the facts of the ‘50s and the facts of now. No one can argue if they can’t agree on the basics. As much as I am a great proponent for using the free access to knowledge that the internet provides, I’m greatly disappointed that we’ve detached ourselves from the realities of our communities because we want the satisfaction of having been right all along.
The sound of silence, the disconnect that arises between factions, only makes it easier for others to take you less seriously and forget you exist. It’s more democratic and respectful of your own rights as a human to preserve the sanctity in your own voice, to know you can respect the ideas that come out of your own mouth, to know you can take yourself seriously. And only when we come to realize that we all speak earnestly and sincerely can our communities heal from the bitterness of a “democracy” without debate. It ascertains that we’re all concrete, genuine, legitimate, able to be trusted—not some pawn of one of those detached crowds we all claim to dislike as if feelings don’t get more specific than approval or disapproval.
Read the facts, ask questions, demand the answers; do something direct and real. Make it palpable enough that it becomes impossible for anyone to deny. Make it practical and nuanced enough to craft the realest difference. Never allow anyone to deny that you’re dissatisfied, nor that you’re precise and reasonable. Don’t let anyone shame you for not being loyal enough to some political ideology, accuse you of not having principles or wanting change, of being some unempathetic centrist just because your beliefs go beyond two points on a two-dimensional political compass. It’s this very integrity that stands out in a realm of talking-heads repeating the same things, unaware of anything else. It’s this very malleability that saves democracy, not undying loyalty to the extremes.
Even vibes aren’t completely bad—nothing is. They may even be necessary to some level in a democratic system because people and groups work by them. We shouldn’t feel guilty for being taken in by them and vow to their complete elimination after one read-through of a writing piece because that would just be another one of those unreachable extremes. Admitting that shouldn’t lessen any part of my rhetoric. And if you still see validity in my argument after that little bit of nuance, that is the most concrete assurance I can give you that the opportunity for change is real.
Yes, American politics are in a bad place. They absolutely are because we’re obsessed with the nice warm feeling of the sand on our feet, the smell of the salt in the Atlantic, the loud-brass music that silences everything else. The sea storm might as well be coming and we’d be too rooted to even believe we can do anything about it at all. We don’t often vote for the future, we vote for an idea of the past; we don’t check the price before getting on the Ferris wheel; we often don’t even watch each other to help, only to prove ourselves capable of being taken seriously.
But we can change.
It’s not too late.
And it doesn’t mean we all have to abandon the shore forever.
