> We've seen a collapse in respectability of politicians, for example. Not because the politicians have changed even slightly, but because we have much better visibility into what they're actually like and how the political sausages are made.
Some of that, perhaps, though I suspect most people don't care too much — most people don't read beyond the headlines, from what I've heard.
I'm assuming you mean US politicians in particular? Because in the UK, Johnson and Truss were genuinely exceptional in how bad they were. (And I'm currently living in the half of Berlin which used to be DDR, which had a government so bad the country stopped existing independently).
For the USA, I remember mocking GWB when he was your president (I even got quoted on the radio for it); the political Overton window I grew up in doesn't, can't, include either of your main parties, but even so, Trump does seem evil compared to GWB's nice-but-dim Forrest Gump.
> look at the difference in image of Musk vs someone like Gates who was world's wealthiest before the internet got big.
Late 90s, I was a teen, friends were talking about how evil he was, sharing pictures with Gates' face pasted onto WW2 dictator's rallies, etc.
> Because in the UK, Johnson and Truss were genuinely exceptional in how bad they were.
How are you measuring that though? What about the politicians that managed to set the British Empire into terminal decline? In hindsight they must have been a bit below average. It isn't crazy to say that the least competent politicians turn up at the nadir of the UK's international importance, but logically speaking the people who mucked up at the peak were probably making worse decisions.
First, that most of that decline is relative power rather than absolute: the UK is no longer astride the world, but because so many others have gained power to kick my parents and grandparents' generations out of their countries, not (in all cases) because the UK became objectively weaker.
Second, that the politicians who caused the decline were doing a lot of smaller mistakes over a longer period.
Those other politicians probably were indeed as you say below average, but Johnson and Truss weren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel, they were the wood of the barrel itself and the floor underneath it.
Some of that, perhaps, though I suspect most people don't care too much — most people don't read beyond the headlines, from what I've heard.
I'm assuming you mean US politicians in particular? Because in the UK, Johnson and Truss were genuinely exceptional in how bad they were. (And I'm currently living in the half of Berlin which used to be DDR, which had a government so bad the country stopped existing independently).
For the USA, I remember mocking GWB when he was your president (I even got quoted on the radio for it); the political Overton window I grew up in doesn't, can't, include either of your main parties, but even so, Trump does seem evil compared to GWB's nice-but-dim Forrest Gump.
> look at the difference in image of Musk vs someone like Gates who was world's wealthiest before the internet got big.
Late 90s, I was a teen, friends were talking about how evil he was, sharing pictures with Gates' face pasted onto WW2 dictator's rallies, etc.