America runs on Dunkin’, Labubus, and stories. And why not? Everyone loves a good story. As shared by Hollywood screenwriter Michael Jamin, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is not about skipping school; it’s about Ferris saving his friend from suicide.

Stories run everything, from the stock market to your favorite movies to even how you treat yourself.

Speaking of which, last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth retweeted a clip of some pastor advocating for the 19th Amendment to be repealed - ya know, the right for women to vote! The pastor advocated for “women submitting to their husbands” and for household voting to return.

So it obviously went viral.

My first thought: “This guy is wildin’.”

My second thought: "What delusional version of history is he living in???"

Which got me thinking.

We have lots of distorted stories we love to tell ourselves, and there are even a few surprising ones we fall for as Americans. The myths we allow to settle in our minds until they feel true, even when they oppose reality. I don’t mean the stuff of harmless nostalgia per say, but rather the mythologies that shape our policies and our lives.

Every country has its founding myths - stories forged in a specific moment that hang around long after they’re outdated. Sometimes they unite people, sometimes they justify bad policy. Sometimes they’re just marketing slogans that refuse to die.

America has plenty. While each generation tells itself it’s “different” from the last, some myths are bipartisan, multi-generational, and seemingly immortal. Here are some of those.`

When it comes to our great cities, many Americans (sadly) believe them to be hubs of overwhelming violence and pollution, and suburbs to be pristine paradises in harmony with the earth.

The summary of this mythos:

This mental model is stuck in the Industrial Revolution, when cities were Dickensian smog factories and rivers caught fire. This myth also keeps people’s minds frozen in the times of the crime-wave 90s, when cable news had Americans convinced every downtown was a war zone. Neither is really true anymore.

The Reality:

Our cities have, on average, become much safer compared to decades prior, and cities tend to have lower carbon emissions, on average, compared to suburbs.

For example, New York City’s average household is responsible for only about 2/3 of the average emissions of a typical U.S. household!

Turns out, driving to Walmart leads to way more pollution than walking to your local cornerstore! Suburbs are made up of massive yards that need watering, two-car garages, and strip malls as far as the eye can see. Dense cities are usually much ‘greener’ per capita for several reasons: public transit, shared infrastructure, smaller living spaces, and fewer big yards to water and fertilize.

Cities enable walking, biking, public transit, whereas suburbs require cars for everything.

This strong American bias against cities goes back decades.

Just look how our perceptions compare to reality: US crime rates have been falling, but most Americans think they’re rising (you can ignore the UK data).

“‘Truth’ is no longer established fact supported by data, it's a consensus of loudest opinion.” - Kyla Scanlon

No joke - you might think of an image like this one when you think of American farmers.

Oh, my bad, maybe something more like this:

But I really doubt this one comes to mind:

Maybe you even think of something between American Gothic and a Dodge Ram truck commercial; salt-of-the-earth folks working their family land, feeding America.

The Mythos:

The Reality:

First of all, <2% of employed Americans work in agriculture.

Giant corporations like Tyson, JBS, Cargill, Smithfield dominate meat production. Honestly, we should really refer to this as industrial farming, especially for meat.

Contract farming has turned actual farmers into indentured servants, trapped in debt while corporations control every aspect of production. The "family farm" often means a family in debt to Tyson, raising chickens they don't even own, like indentured servants.

Most of the value production in agriculture comes from large-scale operations, even though most of the farms out there are small-scale, but we obviously know how well the word “family” does in marketing.

Giant meat monopolists often appeal to the mythos of the American farmer, which (1) evokes a positive image; (2) makes it very difficult for politicians to oppose their interests; and (3) allows them to hold back progress for animal welfare (even easy wins like cage-free chickens), all while receiving billions in annual government subsidies.

Yes, there are definitely many real, regular small-scale operations owned by families out there just trying to make a buck and also treat their livestock properly. Of course! But… they’re not necessarily the ones who are running the show.

I’ll never forget growing up as a little kid and asking my dad, all excited, “If you could travel back to any period of time, which would you choose?” He scoffed. “None.”

I get it now.

Let’s just look at how the reality was for most Americans during the 50s, a time that is constantly romanticized by many people on social media.

The Economic "Paradise" Illusion:

For starters, the 1950s poverty rate was ~22% vs. ~11% today.

Most families had ONE car, ONE TV, ONE bathroom. And while our homes today continue to grow in size as our families get smaller, your parents most likely grew up in a house around 900 sq ft (!!!) vs 2,500+ today.

Travel? Forget about multiple vacations or traveling outside of the country. In 1990, only 5% percent of Americans had a passport. Today, that number is 48%.

Instead, enjoy your (maybe) once a year trip to the lake or some amusement park in your death tube while Dad is pounding brews and Mom is popping her pills. No seatbelts, car seats, along with minimal safety standards.

Astonishing there were this many deaths with so much smaller of a population.

The "Healthy Living":

Life expectancy was way lower — 70 years vs 79 today. Have asthma or some infection? Tough luck, enjoy the smoking indoors.

"Mother's Little Helpers" (think barbiturates, tranquilizers, and amphetamines) were prescribed like candy.

Lead was basically in everything: the paint on the walls of your house and what you drank from, pipes that delivered your shower water, and the smog you breathed in from all the air pollution.

There was definitely no Clean Water Act or EPA.

On the image below: “This isn’t NYC today. This was 1973, just after the EPA was created and before it transformed air and water quality. In those early years the agency enlisted photographers to catalogue environmental disasters before they were cleaned up.” - Thea Riofrancos

Thanks to tariffs, many foods will definitely become more expensive (like coffee), but as of yet, we’re still at historic lows of spending on food as a percentage of income.

Not only that, but we rank on the lowest in the world for income spent on groceries as a %.

Alright, want to grab a bite somewhere with friends after work? Good luck - most people just cook at home.

But the "Family Values"!!!

**reloads verbal machine gun**

Want to access credit as a woman without your husband's permission? You couldn’t do that until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 (!!!!). Before that, financial institutions could discriminate based on sex or marital status when evaluating credit applications.

Women who wanted birth control needed their husband's signature, and, in 1965, 26 states prohibited birth control for unmarried women.

Don’t forget about marital r*pe being legal in all 50 states - the first partial prohibitions weren’t until the mid 70s!!

And then there’s obviously the whole racism thing (kind of a big deal!!!). For example, Black families couldn't access GI Bill benefits for suburban homes. The good old days, amirite?!?!

By the 90s, barely 50% approve of marriage between Black and white people!

The Silent Suffering:

Domestic violence is like a "private family matter”. Homosexuality is illegal, and interracial marriage is banned in 16 states.

Currently, there’s this increasingly popular narrative of men facing their hardest challenges ever these days. I’m pretty skeptical, tbh - mainly given the fact that these people pushing this narrative rarely have any robust evidence to extrapolate across decades and decades (if not centuries) to prove their point. It’s mainly just ~vibes~.

Of course, there are plenty of ongoing issues to solve in this domain among gender (like how to catch men up in education and employment), but worse than the past, especially regarding “their happiness”????

Are we forgetting the stigma of trying to talk about your problems as a man back then? Just commit social suicide while you’re at, as opposed to today, where seemingly anyone can grab a virtual mic to broadcast their woes, find a therapist, or consult a friend.

Veterans from so many wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam) are just going about their lives with untreated PTSD, oftentimes just offing themselves. Nobody knows what dyslexia is, let alone “shell shock”.

Was there actually something to be happy about back then? Yes, of course! But we should be acutely aware, at least for the sake of our ancestors, of the era of abundance that the average American is experiencing, in comparison, despite the work we have to do still.

I get it - every generation thinks the world is ending and the past was better. But by comparison, we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, health, and opportunity for the average person in the U.S. Yes, we have real problems (housing prices, job market, plummeting social life). But, you can acknowledge both in the same breath.

The danger lies in trying to solve these problems by returning to mythical golden ages that never existed, no matter how many times grandpa’s dementia-damaged memories try to infiltrate your brain.

Pete Hegseth wants to go back to household voting? Brother, we had that. It was called "women are property."

So what happens now?

Well, there’s a lot of uncertainty. Will our job market continue its decline?

Will Tim Apple and the other corporate kings continue to kiss the Trump ring and normalize bribery?

We can avoid romanticizing the decades that our grandparents were actually desperate to escape, and maintain our optimism for growing the future, while also trying to avoid the naiveté of myth-making.

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

_{The vibe-killer disclaimer: The opinions in this post and all other posts only represent myself and do not represent the opinions of my employer or any groups I am a member of.
This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice}