Media sensationalism and bubbles are driven by several cooperating incentives: consolidation of traditional media ownership into fewer and fewer corporations all which have similar goals; more competition from non traditional outlets; suspension of traditional journalistic principles; cozy relationships among journalists, politicians and academics that tend to a very narrow Overton Window; a climate of fear regarding cancel culture.
Fortunately, alternative perspectives are easier to find than ever before.
They killed far more than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... 1965–1966, 500k - 1m
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Laos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Cambodia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Myanmar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squads_in_El_Salvador "The paramilitaries committed the vast majority of murders and massacres during the civil war and were heavily aligned with the United States-backed government"
But, in general, I do have a sense it was a uniquely optimistic decade for many people in the former First World, mainly because the Cold War ended and there was a sense that we had "won". Western Europe in particular demilitarized a lot as a result, the EU was formalized, the Good Friday Agreement was signed, Oslo Accords happened, end of apartheid etc.
For Americans I think 9/11 derailed things again.
Outside of the former First World, I'm not sure they'd see the 90s the same way.
but yeah it wasn't that great anywhere south of cancun or cairo
The long steady progress happening in many countries just doesn't provide any headlines.
Bit of both really. I'm a decade older and therefore able to remember both the sense of imminent doom that hung over the Cold War - the risk that the two world powers might just obliterate each other with an hour's notice and billions dead - and also the "end of history" period in the 90s. The optimism after the Soviet Union collapsed ...
... and then the gradual back-filling of everywhere east of the Iron Curtain with capitalist corrupt states. 9/11 happened, and the world went mad with vengeance in ways that it hasn't really recovered from.
Even in the past decade we've gone from "social media and the internet enables revolutions and democracy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_2011 , almost exactly a decade ago), to "you get a revolution whether you want it or not, and revolutionaries are often terrifyingly illiberal".
The big one is of course China, which has seen a complete transformation in material conditions without transitioning to even the slightest bit of liberal democracy.
I genuinely can't tell how much of this perceived trend is real, and how much of it is a shift in my own perspective. And even then: am I just becoming more aware of how the world has always been, or is an increase in media sensationalism to blame (either for my perspective shift, or for an actual shifting reality?) Does it all come down to the impact of social media, or other technologies enabling oppressors? Is it the increasing concentration of global wealth? Was the latter half of the 20th century just an anomaly where much of the world was turned off to authoritarianism by the second world war, and we're at a point now where that's worn off and we're getting back on with the normal trajectory? Was it just my American information bubble telling me that things were ever somewhat better, even for a few decades?
I don't know what to think, but what it feels like is that this train is going off the rails.