You'd think 'The Greatest Generation' was somehow better equipped to face WW2 but it definitely wasn't. FDR is one of our greatest presidents and yet he was viscerally loathed in his lifetime by people that considered him a socialist, naive, incompetent, all sorts of things he was not. Amazing that the press totally collaborated in masking his disability whether they liked him or not. I read about that stuff and there are so many things that sound so familiar it could be happening today.
I think when we look back the nostalgia tends to cloud the lens.
In the 50s and 60s there were still large areas of the US with segregated schools, bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc. Hard to draw direct comparisons to today as views have changed so dramatically. True there was prosperity and technology and democracy, but not quite for everybody.
Last time I saw a truly United States was 9/11. For a short time we were all on the same page. I imagine it was like that after Pearl Harbor too.
Unity, or at least practical coexistence, needs real leadership and that definitely isn't coming from the identity politics idiots we have been electing and appointing. Reagan may have been the last decent example of real leadership.