Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
Long term, Americans have been bad at making idiots feel shame for their idiocy. There is less of a societal push to make people conform to societal pressure. On one end, this leads to great creative freedom for artists. On the other end, it creates the born again movement.
Medium term, LBJ oversaw the collapse of economic leftism as he was trying to include civil rights legislation and the Vietnam War. This lead to the stagnation of American salaries, but it took a while for people to notice that quality of life wasn’t improving for everyone. Also, conservatives realized they could create parallel media in a way to control public sentiment.
Short term, the Great Recession and COVID made it clear that quality of life wasn’t as bulletproof as people thought. As a response, some people want to bring back “the good old days”, not realizing/remembering that the good old days had a lot of bad to it that was covered up.