Context is everything
One thing I really like about watching the show Mad Men, is how the iconic events we're taught about that happened in the 60's are presented in order, in some kind of context, with a pacing consistent with the events of the show. It makes it easier to imagine what it must have felt like to see that stuff on TV as it was really happening. The ones who thought they were seeing the end of the world unfold, don't seem so alarmist in that context.
We didn't narrowly avert a civil war in the sixties, we lost one.
We didn't narrowly avert a civil war in the sixties, we lost one.