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Their claim is that the country has been ruined by the left, and they want to restore it to its former glory. It requires ignoring the fact that the country has taken a hard right shift since the time they are idealizing.
As for the cognitive dissonance, Stephen Colbert (during The Colbert Report) played around with this self-contradiction. His book is titled "America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't"
Edit: autocorrect
They also never call out by what metric America isn't great anymore. There are plenty of metrics it's not, but they won't call those out.
Is it peacetime? Because we're the most peaceful we've ever been right now. Is it the economy? It's the strongest now than it ever was. Is it family values? First quantify what that means. Is it divorces? Those are down for the first time. Is it orpahaned families or something? Education? Well those are liberal values so they can't use those.
Or is it all just racist and homophobic dog whistling, meaning they want to go back to white nuclear families - they just can't say that.
Really it's all just "My nostalgia is more fun than dealing with today's problems". Nostalgia just ignores all of the problems at the time. "The 60s were better!" Just ignore Vietnam, the separate drinking fountains, the upcoming cold war, also the fact that the reason you had a good childhood was because of the social protections you had that you dismantled
Maybe with other countries. We seem pretty much on par with civil war days in terms of internal conflict.
And there's a bunch of proxy conflicts the US is definitely involved in and at least partly responsible for. Not to mention the "global war on terror".
Just because US soldiers aren't dying en masse doesn't mean it's peacetime.
Has it taken a hard right shift? There's far more civil liberty (the underlying thing most loud conservatives want to curtail) than "back in the day".
Sure, there's a much greater schism between ideologies these days, what with the normalization of social media and media in general... but I'd be hard pressed to say that the country is a lot more right leaning than it used to be.
I think they're probably referring to tax brackets and how much the ultra wealthy were taxed back in the 50s or something
Ah, so one of many factors means a hard right turn...
The left-right analogy was always about economics. And the backsliding of union participation and regulatory capture, lack of antitrust enforcement etc is definitely a shift to the right. Basically the New Deal has been allowed to be dismantled.
The majority of the people are significantly more left leaning, but our politicians continue to drag the country to the right. (Particularly economically... Socially they just drag their feet, but we've had some progress) This is because the only "people" they care about are corporate people (as in corporations are people).
However, while the vast majority of human people are far left of anything happening in politics, what remains of the right is becoming more and more violently entrenched in their conservative ways... Basically the schism is because most of society is progressing into the future, while a small group refuses to come with us, and is determined to hold us all back.
You bring up a valid point. There are many facets of life and a left/right divide, and some of them did shift left.
But compared to the 50s (which is when many right wingers idolize), particularly starting with Reagan, we've seen:
Push for theocracy
The war on drugs
Less "society" and more individualism. This is especially true regarding regulation of harmful activities for profit, such as corporate pollution
Reduced enforcement of those laws that we do have, as long as it's a corporate entity and/or for profit
Massive consolidation of all industries. Competition is now mostly an illusion.
Strong push against workers' rights. Reduction in union protections, minimum wage laws, OSHA powers, etc
Active, planned takeover of media. This was started by (IIRC) Roger Ailes that if the right controlled the media, Nixon would not have been impeached. He went on to found Fox News with that philosophy, and proved it correct with Trump. See also: Sinclair
While this mostly happened at a state/local level, it has been nationwide. Government was intentionally ruined as an effective organization, and now provides way fewer/worse services
These are just a few ways that the country has shifted right, but they are so impactful to the average person's daily life.
I mean, if right wing people want to admit they are against civil liberties and they want to go back to the good old days of no civil rights then I wouldn’t interrupt them while they make that mistake.