As opposed to any other period of American history?

No, in addition to.

Eh, not necessarily. This could be the last period when things were still really really good.

Barring disruption of the government, the future will be fairer and more just than today, just as today is fairer and more just yesterday.

The problem is, the next time we have a genuinely bad government, that government will own us all.

Can you imagine a Stasi or a KGB with the power the FBI is demanding, or the power combined with the legal carte blanche that the NSA already has?

That's really not as far away as you seem to imply.

Just look at the difference between current politics and forty years ago. If politics changes as much to the extremes in the next 40 years, you get your genuinely bad government in far less than 40 years.

Add in the known tendency of humans globally to take refuge in extremism and racism in a recession, well, one more deep recession could do it.

The US 40 years ago was a relatively backward, sexist, racist, and homophobic. Politics has gotten an order of magnitude better since then, and the people are greatly more virtuous. If we get a similar change in the next 40 years we'll be living in an amazing society.

Look up "regression to the mean" ... :)

And to believe a strong statement like "an order of magnitude better" I'm going to need some stronger evidence. For a hand-wave I'll be willing to agree with "not much worse, if you look from the right angle of perspective". In case you hadn't noticed, but you got a misogynist hateful clown running for president that's currently blocking my view of this supposed order of magnitude betterment. And there's crowds cheering him on. It's an order of magnitude improvement like dada was to classicism--entirely orthogonal.

I largely agree with you, but what do you think changed? Biologically we haven't changed since much darker ages. That leaves culture, and culture is inherently consensus-driven.

What happens when the consensus breaks down?

We've changed massively - that was the point. Who's to say the next 40 years is the same direction?

Also many things have improved, but certainly not everything.

Can you provide any examples of things that are less fair and less just now than they have been any time in the past 100 years?

I'm pretty sure there must have been a few times in the past 100 years where the US's crimes against humanity as broadly detailed in the CIA torture report wouldn't have been as widely & flat-out ignored ... (as the forces behind your collectively turning a blind eye aren't very fair or just either)

Exactly, I just finished listening to an NPR interview on a book about the underground railway and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Out of your 100 year window range, but a nice example of just how malleable the institutions of government are to the forces of oppression.

I think the degree to which people were aware of the impact they had on the world, in contrast with our blithe willingness to ignore that, is going to be looked upon unfavorably. Previous generations were generally ignorant, misinformed, and lacked the resources even if they wanted to change that.

What's our excuse now, other than habit and our own worst natures?