You know, Jim, that column did not strike me at all the way it struck you. To my ear, Micheline Maynard’s “We didn’t know how good we had it” sounds not only true but positively conservative. She writes:
The other day I found myself carrying home a loaf of bread in my bare hands because the bakery had run out of bags. Back when we didn’t know how good we had it — circa 2019 — I might have been annoyed by the inconvenience. Now I was just glad the bakery was still in business.
I have at times felt much the same kind of gratitude. Haven’t you?