Was the Pre-Trump World Normal or Abnormal?

[endicom]

National Review
Victor Davis Hanson
Aug. 21, 2018

The ‘unpresidential’ outsider disrupted America’s transformation into a ‘lead from behind’ nation.

Much of the controversy that surrounds the policies of Donald Trump can be explained as a reaction to the past. He was either clumsily disrupting the sacrosanct or trying to resurrect what was lost.

In other words, what you feel about Trump is inseparable from what you think of the world before Trump.

Was the status quo, especially in the years between 2009 and 2017, normal or abnormal — at least compared with the prior half century?

More... https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/trump-disrupted-american-transformation-into-lead-from-behind-nation/

[Absalom]

The answer to that depends on one's perspective of history.
Suggest the Civil War re-defined our nation, as it confirmed
Southern decline and its agrarian/rural focus as well as Northern
ascendancy w/its industrial focus.
Yet perhaps more critically, that change caused
culture/society to de-emphasize the spiritual and promote
the material, as economic well being became an end in itself.
Is Trump's governance taking us back to pre-Obama and Bush? If so; so what???
Or is he taking us back to Founders such as Jefferson, Madison and Monroe???
The perspective of plain people about change will give us the answer.