20 years ago in the US was an anomaly. Remember "The Matrix" when Agent Smith said that 1999 was our society's peak? He was right, the movie makers just didn't realize how right they were at the time. Many things have indeed gone downhill since then, thanks to Bush.
For the stuff about war, what you're forgetting is all the stuff that came before: Vietnam, Korea, WWII, various other police actions, Beirut, etc. The 60s and 70s were a particularly turbulent time in recent American history. Do you see the National Guard out, shooting American protesters today? Nope. But they did exactly that in the 60s.
You're factually wrong about many things here. Civil/human rights were much worse in the past; just look at how hard it was for black people before the Civil Rights Act of the late 60s. You think today's incidents of cops shooting unarmed black people in the back is bad? It was a lot worse in the past, people just didn't care and no one had cameras to record it all. Rodney King was the first big instance of this being recorded by a bystander. Someone else mentioned gay marriage; 30+ years ago gay people had to hide in "the closet", many of them marrying heterosexually just to hide themselves. Crime is lower today than in the past, despite what some alarmists would have you believe. Go look up the actual stats. Crime in America has been on a downward trend for decades.
Income inequality is not at an all-time high. It's a lot worse than it should be, I agree, but go back to the Gilded Age and compare. It was worse back then. They didn't even have simple worker protections like 40-hour work weeks and OSHA to keep from getting maimed or killed on the job.
Yes, in many ways (but not all), things are definitely worse for Americans than in 1997, but overall things are a lot better than there were in the past before that. The 90s were simply an exceptional time, especially if you were a white American: the economy was booming, we were in a big lull between military adventures, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War was over, the Internet was becoming a household item (much like electricity or the telephone or the automobile became commonplace decades before, radically changing society). It was a great time to make money, buy a house, not worry about nuclear annihilation, etc. About the only people who were having a really bad time were the people in former Yugoslavia.