I think FreeLikeGNU has a point here… the happier America as described has generally only been a reality for a subset of the population. Can we really suggest that is/was the ‘character [of] America’ as a whole?

The whole “MAGA” thing feels related to this point. Its like a large group of American’s feel the oppression, fear and lack of optimism and, in their anger and frustration, have embraced a view that what made America great was the division and exploitation rather than the optimism.

I’d argue causality — that they were purposefully led to that view by exploitative fuckwad Republican leadership that cared about Party more than the country and who used the fear, and exploited the crisis, to gain and maintain power and now don’t want to give it up. But we don’t really need to understand why or who led that change to also step back and be sad that the change happened.