This is a big topic that I’m going to write about without nearly enough research. Because to give it all the thought it deserves … I’d never get around to writing. I’d just disappear into the research.

I’ve been around to see five decades from beginning to end, and I’m going to rank them from best to worst.

We like to make generalizations about decades, and I’m right there with the masses. It’s been going on for a while now, too. I mean, the Gay Nineties? Talking about 1890-1899 there. And the Roaring Twenties? Almost a century ago.

This is through my experiences, of course, and my take on things as they unfolded around me … but I think the average American who went through the same five decades would put these in a similar order.

OK, ranking the past five decades, first to worst:

1. The 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The putative “end of history,” which was a wonderful notion that didn’t quite work out. Strong economic times, mostly. Things rolling along fairly well. Terror out there but not all-consuming. The one Iraq War but nothing else major. Also, the zenith of American print journalism in terms of pay, opportunities and profitability.

2. The 1980s. Morning in America. Two World Series wins by the Dodgers. The Miracle on Ice. (Hey, I’ve gone all sports here.) A generally optimistic time, fairly good economy. Isn’t that all a big part of these decades? Does it seem like things are getting better or getting worse? The 1980s were pretty much a “getting better” decade. The social upheaval of the previous 15 or so years seemed to cool, too.

3. The 2000s. We all rode the finance/real estate bubble, and it didn’t collapse until 2008, so that’s most of a decade of houses worth way more than we ever thought they would be, and what turned out to be illusory wealth, but at the time … The Electronic Age had arrived, and that made our lives easier and more entertaining in a lot of ways. The War on Terror began in 2001, and that was no fun. And things got rough economically at the end of the decade. Yeah. But some of us needed to be shaken awake and benefited from escaping ruts.

4. The 1960s. Remembered now for Culture Wars and assassinations, but they didn’t really get cranked up until the final few years of the decade. The first half of the decade (aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis) was a sort of extension of the “Leave It to Beaver” faux innocence of the 1950s. The U.S. still near the zenith of its power, prosperity pretty much everywhere.  By the end of the decade, things were getting sketchy, for sure, as Vietnam hit home. Lots of uncertainty and a sense of dislocation, by the end of the the decade, with some major demonstration somewhere, about something, a regular feature of the nightly news.

5. The 1970s. I’ve felt for a while now that this was the crappiest decade in the past 50s years. The upheaval of the 1960s continued into the 1970s but the naive optimism of the 1960s was gone. The social unrest continued, however, and was actually worse because it picked up a selfish, cynical and even violent feel. Also, this is when doing drugs went from a fringe activity to a mainstream one. Heroin, cocaine, etc. Some truly awful music, as embodied by disco, the collapse of sexual mores, the rise of AIDS, some bad economic years, the bad end of Vietnam, Watergate, the doubting of government institutions. Bad times, and they seemed sure to get worse. If you aren’t sure about this, go back and look at the clothes and the haircuts of just regular folks, and that alone may be enough to bring you around. When most people agree the country is going to hell in a hand basket … that’s a bad decade.