@quinn (2/2) The high crime rates of the 1970s and the Cold War did a lot to warp entire generations' modes of thinking. The TV news used to be rational and balanced, but the advent of 24/7 news has made even the moon in the sky a sensationalist event. The internet opened up the world to us briefly, but by the time it was rolled out to over 300 million people across such a vast continent, the for-profit misinformation machine had taken over. Ergo, the gaslighting you mention, etc, etc, etc...

@quinn - (1/2) I'm a 52-year old American reading this thread for my own benefit. I just want to say I don't think there's any one thing to blame here; it's a syndrome of situations going back as much as 400 years that got us to where we are now. I know that growing up access to any information was limited to our school textbooks, which were written as if the world started in 1620 and planet Earth is the size of the 50 states. Our ability to travel was limited to how far we could drive.