Comment by Aunche
> A foreign enemy keeps us from focusing on our own domestic policies.
The nice thing about fiction is that you can make anything sound plausible. Ironically, what people consider the most prosperous time of America happened to be the time when America was opposing a vague foreign adversary. If anything, nihilist platitudes like this that have created a void in civic engagement that megacorporations and malicious actors are happy to fill in.
> Ironically, what people consider the most prosperous time of America happened to be the time when America was opposing a vague foreign adversary.
It happened to be at a time when the rest of the world's industrial capacity had been almost completely destroyed by a devastating world war which hardly touched US infrastructure.