Have you ever wondered why Pepsi tasted so much better in the 1980s in those long neck 16 ounce glass bottles than it does in today’s oil based plastic bottles? Or why the quarter pounder was better when it came in those Styrofoam containers and you had to put the burger together yourself? Or perhaps why just about everything was better back then?

It seems the past is full of things that were much better then than today’s current incarnation. Pepsi is still made the same way today as then, so is glass really a factor in taste? Or is it that Pepsi in a plastic bottle seems like a cheaper product? I admit, I’m meandering away from any sort of topic, but it’s not just Pepsi that was better back then. It seems that most other things were as well.

Let’s take a look back at 1988. Die Hard hit the theaters. The action film that started it all. Every action move there after was a Die Hard rip off. Gas was about 80 cents per gallon. Both our leaders and the leaders of other countries were heading toward legendary status. Eric Davis was still the best Red on the team. What happened between then and now that has seen glass replaced by plastic, a gallon of gas shoot to three dollars, and our leaders are making Warren G. Harding look like JFK?

It really hit America during the early 1990s, about the same time the Grunge scene elevated from Seattle clubs to earning raves nationwide. Bands like Nirvana hits the charts with this angst filled music that really tapped the nerve of the country. Popular art has always imitated real life, and looking back at these artists really answers a lot. The younger generation, then called Generation X, became disillusioned with the whole process in which our leaders participated. The younger generation, by and large, saw scandal after scandal during the Clinton administration, and just quit caring anymore. Where the days of jelly beans and Gipper phrases were replaced by White Water and Lewinski scandals were the days that really catapulted America to its current state.

While that disillusionment is still rampant in the younger generation, which I believe is mostly responsible for the high levels of drug abuse in our country, our leaders are giving plastic bottles when we need glass. I honestly think this drug problem we have is a direct result of the disillusionment of the younger generation beginning in the last decade of the last century, and there is no end in sight.

While our elected leaders push for more law enforcement, our law enforcement personnel numbers fall ever lower. While our elected leaders cry foul over this or that, our younger generation is going farther and farther away from the values our older generation were raised with. Why is that? Why are morals and values disposable notions in today’s society? It’s simple really. We imitate what we see. When the people we elected to lead us are no more moral or virtuous than the common criminal, then why should anyone be?

Leaders, of any kind, are role models whether they want to be or not. The President of the United States is the ultimate role model, but when he is seen as a war monger or if he is seen as a flirtatious adulterer, what model is that for the younger generation to follow.

In a time when we still live in the greatest country the world has ever seen, we can still become what we once aimed to be. We only got lost somewhere along the way. That road we started down in 1776 is still there. It may be less traveled now and grown over, but we can find it if we wish.