New Delhi, Sept. 14 -- A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across an AI video on Twitter peddling a schmalzy, sepia-tinged vision of 1990s America. Algorithmically generated teenagers in baggy denim and oversized hoodies wax eloquent about malls, corner stores and backyard hangouts-white-flight suburbia recast as some sort of halcyon paradise. "The 90s miss you bro," says one prepper, with the self-satisfied smirk of someone who never had to actually live through the decade.

But the 1990s weren't all boom-boxes and mallrats. They were also the decade of the LA riots beamed live into living rooms, of Monica Lewinsky and the Clarence Thomas hearings dragging sex and power into the national spotlight. It was the decade of the Waco siege and t...