1. We never did have a second nuclear war. Could have been a war in the early 60s that ends with a mildly irradiated US ruling a severely irradiated world (bad) - could have been a war in the early 80s that ends with civilization in the Northern Hemisphere mostly wrecked and billions dead. (worse)
2. The Civil War and Reconstruction could have gone much worse. And I'm not even talking about a Confederate victory - imagine a rapid Union victory in 1861 where McDowell takes Richmond - or a McClellan win in 1864, where he walks back Lincoln's woke social experiments.
3. American democracy is not as strong as we once believed - this is bad, but we could have found out earlier. There's a timeline where Alfalfa Bill Murray becomes POTUS in 1932 and is able to consolidate power, IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE-style. We're not an Axis power there but it's still bad.
4. There were a lot of problems with the society where the Industrial Revolution happened and modernity started, but it could easily have happened in a much worse place. Maybe you _could_ enslave the working class if you put your mind to it. Or women.
5. Technology is possible. Not hard to imagine a world where there's no such thing as personal computers. Or go bio. There's penicillin. Did you know the son of the President once died from an infected blister? (Well he did) This is wild stuff! Forget the stupid jetpack.
6. The victories of liberal democracy in the 20th century were by no means inevitable. German authoritarianism could have had continental Europe - a couple of times. The USSR could have marched all the way to the Atlantic in a different WW2. The US choosing democracy wasn't inevitable either.
It's not been a simple or straight line progression, but the last two centuries have seen people become freer and richer pretty consistently.
My life is vastly better than my grandfather's, and unimaginably so than my great-great-grandfather's.
