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?
Carl Sagan released his book The Demon Haunted World in 1995, where he championed the scientific method and critical thought and lamented the dumbing down of (particularly US) society, so no… It’s not new.
I will add that your premise is wrong on the 60s. The leftism in the 60s was counter-culture, it was small and it was mostly confined to the youth… It was certainly not the prevailing attitude of the country. It was not unlike the leftist groups you see in the US today - small, loud, and a reaction to the heavily conservative country they find themselves in.
Like most (all?) big counter-culture movements, most of the people who were “in” it were not really there for deep seated beliefs. It was cool, there were parties and music, sex and drugs were plentiful. Then it was time to grow up put all that stuff behind them.
I don’t mean to disparage the whole hippie thing. Lots of people really believed in it and do to this day. I just think the majority were there for the fun then got back to “real life”.
I think this time will be different because there isn’t a “normal” to go back to because it’s literally not there anymore. You can’t have a career or a family or ow. A house like you used to. The right wants tradwives but not to pay a man enough his wife can bot have to work and that’s why that shit isn’t going anywhere. Society is going to have to change a whole lot and not backwards