Every now and then you have the realization that these are more or less the good old days. That this will be the idealized era, later, despite how it all may seems day-to-day.
Stagnation from a position of decline will have relative superiority. The stress and unease will be forgotten, whether we survive or not/in either case. And the rest will be survivors bias, and how it all seemed inevitable in retrospect.
If you can have a song that is earnest in its recollecting without the rose-tinted glasses or losing the shape of the thing in the glare of some golden era, maybe this is it.
and when the fog rises / somebody sighs
who is not in disguise anymore
Alongside the well detailed and comprehensive inclusion of the faults, there is included even a kind of nostalgia for the collapse. There is a fidelity and as fair an account as is possible by one who remains to do it.
Plainly & Painfully 