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?
In the 60s the counterculture decided that all authority and anything taught to them was wrong and they thought they were smarter than anyone else and their gut feelings were just as valid as education. Hippies and conspiracy obsessed right wingers converged towards things like quack medicines, conspiracy mongering, etc. Anti intellectualism, hand in hand with anti authoritarianism, has become the norm. No one with a normal personality would run for office now because the knee-jerk response is to pile hate on them so you only get dysfunctional people running for office. Watergate was a major influence as it confirmed, to them, that the gov was full of dirty secrets and actors. The assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK and the failing Vietnam war and draft added to the “everything is broken” mindset. The internet has only made things worse by allowing these people to find each other and reinforce their beliefs.
One of the biggest backlashes against the 60s was that people were tired of the constant protests and the collapse of cities like NYC which led to Nixon winning on a “law and order” platform that Reagan would later use. Then in the 80s you saw the rise of evangelical Christians against what they saw as liberalism in society. Reagan ironically used the “don’t trust the man” mentality to destroy a lot of business restrictions like the Fairness Doctrine in the media.