I agree, but I'd add the failure of Christian eschatology to materialize at the millennium. Whether openly stated or not this was a huge chunk of the right's vision of the future. There were a lot of people who thought 9/11 and Iraq was the beginning of the end times, which are followed by the return of Christ and the literal kingdom of God on Earth. Now they have their own race war doom, China will eat the world doom, etc. They're waking up to the failure of their own myths as well.
Both the secular left and the religious right are having their "the flying saucer didn't come" moment. The angst comes from the secondary implication that the future is not set and magic will not happen and that we are actually going to have to deal with our problems.
This also explains the rise of neo-Nazi and similar ideologies among not only disaffected former conservatives but also among some leftists and libertarians. (Yes, a good number of the latter have gone alt-right... more than the remaining leftists and libertarians would like to admit.) Those ideologies have at their core the idea of resisting cultural and civilizational decline. I personally think their scapegoats, theories, and solutions are all BS but they're getting somewhere because they are talking about the problem.
This will continue and will get worse until people get their heads out of the 20th century and start articulating new visions of the future. Star Trek and the Left Behind series are not going to happen.
Both the secular left and the religious right are having their "the flying saucer didn't come" moment. The angst comes from the secondary implication that the future is not set and magic will not happen and that we are actually going to have to deal with our problems.
This also explains the rise of neo-Nazi and similar ideologies among not only disaffected former conservatives but also among some leftists and libertarians. (Yes, a good number of the latter have gone alt-right... more than the remaining leftists and libertarians would like to admit.) Those ideologies have at their core the idea of resisting cultural and civilizational decline. I personally think their scapegoats, theories, and solutions are all BS but they're getting somewhere because they are talking about the problem.
This will continue and will get worse until people get their heads out of the 20th century and start articulating new visions of the future. Star Trek and the Left Behind series are not going to happen.