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.