Start with four years with most of the mass media demonizing President Trump and ignoring his administration's accomplishments.
Over four years of claiming Trump - Russian collusion, with no evidence .. ignoring lots of evidence that Trump's policies concerning Russia were actually harsh, not friendly at all.
Add COVID-19 in 2020, the COVID 19 partial lock downs, and the COVID-19 recession.
Then Black Lives Matter and Antifia riots in many American cities.
The arbitrary school and business shutdowns by state governors led to no obvious slowdown of the COVID-19 spread by the Fall.
Then the 2020 election with too much fraud -- over 1,000 affidavits sworn -- yet no state politician had any interest in investigating, while some blocked investigations.
We suddenly realized the obvious: Politicians don't want anyone to think elections are dishonest. So if they don't look for trouble, they won't find any trouble.
The worst part of 2020 was social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter accelerating their censorship of non-leftist beliefs.
I personally do not understand why Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, or anyone who does not favor socialism, would use those platforms.
Their censorship became obvious over a year ago -- it got a lot worse when the Hunter Biden laptop computer became public information via The New York Post.
Then 2021 started with needless riots at the Capitol building on January 6 (the election was settled on December 16, 2020, by the state legislatures, not by anyone in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021).
Plus a few Antifa riots on January 20, 2021, that were barely reported by the media.
We now have socialists in charge of our government. And they have plans to stay in charge of our government.
The only thing to prevent that would be for them to implement socialist policies for a few years, making voters more interested in free markets again.
In summary, there are many good reasons to be pessimistic about the present.
So it is no surprise that many people think the world is going downhill.
There are ALWAYS many people who think the world is going downhill. This is nothing new.
Why is that?
Maybe because there are a lot of bad things that COULD happen ... for people to worry about.
Maybe because our imperfect memories tell us that our childhood was the good old days. Our personal "golden age".
As we get older, there are more responsibilities, such as supporting a spouse, children, a mortgage and car payment.
We gradually gain more wealth, that could be lost with a bad investment, and we buy more possessions, that could break, or be stolen.
Maybe even more important: Our minds are not as sharp as we age. We hopefully have more wisdom, but less memory, as we age.
Our muscles are not as strong, as we age.
The person we see in the bathroom mirror starts looking like one of our parents.
Our bodies are going downhill, but that doesn't mean the whole world is going downhill.
People are fearful of many things that rarely happen, such as plane crashes, and not fearful of common events, such as falls on ice, that sometimes cause serious injuries.
Every plane crash in the world is highlighted by the media. Not one safe flight makes the headlines.
The media is biased toward reporting violence, and other bad news.
We choose to watch violent movies and television shows.
There will never be a news report that says: "BREAKING NEWS: There was no violent crime in the village of Mayberry last month".
There have been some bad times, when it was hard for many people to avoid being pessimistic:
The Great Depression
World War II,
Korean War,
Vietnam War
COVID-19
In general, life for most people gets better in the long run.
Even the climate has been improving for hundreds of years.
Never mind the "coming climate crisis" hysteria we have been hearing for 50 years.
We have warmer winter nights in Siberia and Alaska than 45 years ago.
That's no crisis.
Or even a problem.
It's good news !
There's air pollution over Asian cities -- that's a real problem for people who live there -- yet most environmentalists ignore it.
We have a new virus. That's bad news, but it is not very dangerous if you are under 60 years old, and less dangerous than ordinary influenza for children.
The good news is several private companies have developed vaccines in record time.
