Nikki Haley, the microscopically popular presidential candidate, is trying to sell nostalgia to Republican base voters who think it would be awesome to magically turn back the clock to a purportedly idyllic America. Over the weekend, her heart went aflutter about the good ole days:

“Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out.”

Wait a sec. Life way back when was “simple” and “easy”? That doesn’t seem to jibe with the America I experienced growing up. For instance:

I was having a “simple” “easy” day in elementary school math class when the loudspeakers announced that the president of the United States had been shot dead.

I grew up in the era before seat belts, when car crashes as many as 55,000 Americans a year – roughly 27 deaths per 100,000 population. Today it’s down to 14 deaths per 100,000.

I grew up in the “simpler” “easier” era when as many as 1000 American boys died senselessly in Vietnam every month, totaling more than 58,000 by the end. Today as tourists we visit Vietnam, and in America we buy clothes manufactured in Vietnam.

I was having a “simple” “easy” night, playing Scrabble with my mother, when the radio on our kitchen counter blared the news that Martin Luther King had been shot dead at a motel. (That was five years after Medgar Evers, another civil rights leader was shot dead in his driveway.)

I seem to recall that the inner cities of Newark, Detroit, D.C. L.A., and many more went up in flames – which was no surprise because, in that “simpler” “easier” era, African-Americans were fed up with decades of racial discrimination, redlining, police brutality, and the exodus of jobs.

It was “simple” and “easy” back in the good old days to breathe smog and other airborne poisons because there were no federal rules and leaded gasoline was the norm. The New York Times, recalling the smog that often engulfed NYC, wrote: “You could touch the air in New York. It was that filthy.” One city-based lawyer recalled, “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills. You’d look at the horizon and it would be yellowish.” Urban air today is immeasurably cleaner, thanks to the federal crackdown led by the EPA.

It was “simple” and “easy” back then to inhale cigarette smoke – voluntarily or not – because smoking was ubiquitous in every nook and cranny of bars, restaurants, offices, everywhere. Today, the share of adults who fire up cancer sticks is 68 percent lower than in the good old days, because duh freedom of smokers to sicken the rest of us has been radically curtailed.

It was “simpler” and “easier” back then to have your baby die during childbirth. In those good old days, there were more than 20 deaths for every 1000 live births. Today, according to infant mortality charts, it’s down to 5 deaths for every 1000 live births.

How “simple” and “easy” life was back when our waterways were so badly polluted – again, because federal standards didn’t yet exist – that one mighty Ohio river actually caught fire and 35 miles of the southern California coastline were caked in oil.

I was having a “simple” “easy” morning, driving my mom to the train station, when the car radio blared the news that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was being operated on at an LA hospital for the removal of an assassin’s bullet in his brain.

And I guess that life was “simpler” and “easier” way back when females were so ill-educated. In the ’60s, less than 50 percent of young women completed high school or went further. Today that figure is 91 percent. Speaking of which:

It’s indeed ironic that Nikki Haley wants us to pine a return to the good old days – despite the fact that Haley, by dint of her gender and skin color, would never have risen to governor and U.N. ambassador back in the good old days. Or had a political career at all.

I’ll cede the last word to Marcel Proust: “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”