My wingnut cousin posted a Norman Rockwell retrospective thing on FB, saying “He captured America as it was.”

I was going to let it slide, till someone commented, “Back before the moral collapse of American culture!” and he agreed.

I replied, ” I would say that what Rockwell portrayed so well was not who we were, but who we wanted to think we were. And as America was changing from mostly rural to mostly metropolitan, that appealed to people who felt like they were losing something.”

After a little more back and forth, my cousin said, “America was a kinder, gentler and I think happier overall place than what it’s devolved into being.”

But the ‘kinder, gentler’ America he remembers is almost entirely because he’s a straight, white, Christian male. And Rockwell’s paintings? They were really 1950s nostalgia about the prewar period, because it wasn’t really like that even in the 1950s.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised by the nostalgic myopia. It was the Zenith of white men in America, and no doubt being forced to share privilege with others feels like oppression. Still, it’s a whole lot of Americans’ experience one dismisses by seeing that as When America Was Great.