Your essay: you are much more optimistic than me. It reads like a description of where we were in 1993. Please tell us what happened, now that it is 20 years further down the road.
Part of it is the lost culture war. Bill Clinton so lowered the bar of the Presidency as well. People to this day are in denial as to whom and what he is. The crimes he committed in office going back to his stint as Attorney General of AR in the late ‘70s are staggering. I believe absolutely that both he and Gore were complicit in selling nuclear secrets to Red China. Treason of the highest order.