When was America at its peak

[OSR stands with Israel]

I would say 1983-2001 if we are going for a 15-20 year period

if we are going for a 5 year period 1996-2000 barely edges out 1984-1989.

[Sumner 1868]

Peak what?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Peak what?

Greatness

[HillGoose]

January 2, 2019.

If you just want a period I think American politics had a great mindset, 2001 - 2004 fits pretty well. Avenging 9/11 and making the world a better place all day every day brah.

[Dr. MB]

December 1, 2010-December 1, 2014

[HillGoose]

December 1, 2010-December 1, 2014

That's interesting what's ur logic?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It really depends on the metric, but by quite a few metrics we've seen better days.

[Dr. MB]

December 1, 2010-December 1, 2014

That's interesting what's ur logic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_Hawaii

[Lechasseur]

It really depends on the metric, but by quite a few metrics we've seen better days.

Agreed

[Lechasseur]

I'd say either around 1960 or around 1989

[Blue3]

1989-2003

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

1945-1970.

[Former President tack50]

January 2, 2019.

[MR DARK BRANDON]

1981-2001.

[darklordoftech]

April 19, 1999 (Clinton had survived impeachment, but Columbine hadn't happened yet)

[dead0man]

Early 2016

[YE]

It really depends on the metric, but by quite a few metrics we've seen better days.

[Del Tachi]

The "interwar years" of 1991 to 2001.  Communism was defeated, we still thought terrorists couldn't reach us, the economy was booming, wages were growing, oil and housing were cheap, smoking, teenage pregnancy, divorce, and suicide rates were all falling, technology was booming, pop culture and music were relatively good, and our biggest political arguments were about giving condoms to high school kids and whether or not the president was getting a blowy in the Oval.

[Pyro]

1491.

[beaver2.0]

1945-1973

[Beet]

The end of the period is 2001. The blows to American confidence can be delineated specifically.

In September 2001, two passenger planes flew into the World Trade Center (WTC) and knocked them down, killing over 2,000 people. Not only was this one of the largest mass casualty events in U.S. history, but it rocked the centuries-long assumption (that even lasted through WWII) that America was protected by two great oceans and Americans were fundamentally safe from Old World strife. It ended the notion of American invincibility.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina washed up on the shores of New Orleans, proving that a modern-engineered major American city could descend into chaos -- something many people didn't imagine. This was a huge blow to national confidence and the national image, and finally destroyed the Bush presidency.

Then in January 2006, as the Iraq war raged on, Palestinian Hamas won elections in the Gaza Strip. This seems like a small, obscure, and insignificant event, but it posed a fundamental problem for American ideals: If democracy is so good, how could it empower a terrorist group like Hamas? People began to think perhaps dictatorship is a better solution for the Middle East. Perhaps Iraq was better off under Saddam. But if that is true, then democracy is not universal. And if democracy is not universal, then the founders were wrong in the Declaration of Independence. You see the problem.

As the summer of 2006 wore on, houses sat on the market without being sold. Inventory grew and, after seven years of steep rises, prices began to stagnate. Alan Greenspan retired, seemingly an icon, and passed the reigns on to Ben Bernanke. By March 2007, subprime lenders began to fail as banks no longer wanted to buy their loans. Five months later, the credit crunch began. By the end of the year, Gulf oil producers were rescuing major American banks, like Citigroup. In March 2008, Bear Stearns nearly collapsed. By the end of 2008, the entire American economy nearly collapsed, something virtually unthinkable only a couple years earlier. This was the end of the revival of neoliberal economics that began in 1944 with the publication of Frederich von Hayek's Road to Serfdom, the author who Margaret Thatcher once banged on the table and declared, "This is what we believe." American economic ideology, at least in its fundamentalist form, was over.

The next major blow as not until early 2014, when Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula, bloodlessly, like the Anschluss, without firing hardly a shot. Weeks later Putin followed up with an attack on mainland Ukraine. Obama failed to respond, refusing even to call what had happened an invasion for fear of offending the Russians. This was the first violation of national borders in Europe since World War II, and the first major territorial attack on the post- Cold War order. And it was a complete success. At this point the Russians also held Edward Snowden, who at one point had in his possession over 1 million documents from America's National Security Agency (NSA), the center of U.S. signals intelligence.

By mid-2016 a series of major blows occurred against America. The Russians had clearly penetrated the deepest levels of the CIA, in addition to the NSA, and started releasing CIA source code via Twitter with taunting messages. These releases continued into early 2017. At that time, the New York Times was forced to report that the agency still had failed to locate the source of the mole, although one man who apparently took home secrets documents that dwarfed even the Snowden release was arrested.

It was also revealed that American politics had become so polarized that water no longer stopped at the water's edge. The political base of one party was willing to disregard a foreign attack on Americans if the victims happened to be members of the opposite party, even if that attack damaged national interests and helped another country's interests. This poses, yet again, major problems for democracy - for a major argument in favor of autocracy has always been that allowing a domestic opposition weakens a country. That is why it has always been called the "loyal opposition." The notion is that even though they oppose the government, they are still loyal to it. If that is no longer true, then any form of government that allows an opposition to itself does indeed put that country at a structural disadvantage compared to autocrats, who can count on a united power structure.

The blows to the United States since 2001 have come in two main types: Pillars of American security and invincibility (the World Trade Center, New Orleans, the Economy, the post-Cold War order, the Security State) that were thought invincible were suddenly shown to be vulnerable. And if all these pillars are vulnerable, what other unthinkable vulnerability might there be?

Fundamental beliefs (democracy always works for good, neoliberal economics is right, the opposition is always loyal) were called into question. The rise of autocracies like China and Russia saw increasingly assertive proponents arguing that there is nothing special about democracy and human rights. A president was elected who cares nothing about it. In 2017, the State Department removed these as goals of American foreign policy.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Objectively, the 1990s. The USSR was dead, China was still not much of a threat, Russia was destroyed and beginning what many thought was a process of westernization and Islamic terrorism still seemed far-away. America was the sole superpower and the economy was booming.

[Alabama_Indy10]

1981-2001.

[Politician]

1945-1973

[YE]

1945-1973

Yes and no. Our faith in institutions and our economic policies as a whole were higher then than now and while we were making progress on civil rights at a faster clip then than we are now, I can't say America was at its peak then since objectively our treatment of minorities is better (though nowhere near as good as it should be) now than then. I just can't.