The Difference between a 23YO American in 1980, and a 23YO American in 2025

[Dock_Yard]

90. US societal decline during my life span, divided into fractional Thirds

I'm in my 71st year, born in late '54.

Lately I have been making the conversational point that the First One-Third of my life, America was steadily advancing the life/liberty/happiness (and financial) interests of "the average Joe". And that the Last Two-Thirds of my life, America has suffered a complete reversal of that trend.

The unmistakable turning point: Year 1980, the election that resulted in RayGun. I was 24, in my first full-time job in the high-tech engineering world (designing the optical guts of the Hubble Telescope, if you're curious). I detested that administration:
> its embrace of phony christian evangelicalism,
> its over-the-top patriotism for all the wrong reasons,
> its moderate & periodic bullshit, and
> its utter incompetence both pre- and during ronny's dementia, with a semi-culted first lady calling most of the shots for the last 2-3 years.

But to my young-ish self at the time, it SEEMED like we would get back to the progressive chase we'd been on.

As it turned out over the following 45 years, we never could achieve that resumption. 12 years of gop strangle-holds on the oval office, congress fracturing under radical right-wing factions, etc. We thought Clinton would straighten everything out, and he made good progress on balancing the federal budget, yet little got done to close the vastly diverging wealth gap between the rich and the middle class. And under the radar all along, "democrats" across the entire south and fly-over states were getting pulled into "conservatism" (HA) via their incurable addiction to nonsensical political crap cloaked in phony christian preaching. The early rise of right-polarized "news" channels on cable, plus the later explosion of social media has only locked millions of unintelligent, low-info people into the cults they find themselves in.

The 1/3rd vs the 2/3rds of my life. It's sad to contemplate, and, while I'm moving on to live out my personal goals, I'm unable to assess the broader/societal trend any other way.