Obama's Rutgers speech was structured as five numbered 'points' — and the first took direct aim at nostalgia as a political weapon. He acknowledged that it was 'part of human nature, especially in times of change and uncertainty, to want to look backwards and long for some imaginary past when everything worked, and the economy hummed, and all politicians were wise.' Then he demolished the premise with data. Since his own graduation in 1983: crime rates, teenage pregnancy, and poverty were all down. College education, life expectancy, and minority representation in business and politics were all up. Marriage equality was the law of the land. Globally, the Iron Curtain had fallen, apartheid had ended, polio was virtually eliminated, extreme poverty had been cut drastically. 'The reason America is better is because we didn't look backwards, we didn't fear the future. We seized the future and made it our own.'