While I mostly agree with you Scott, and do think that parenting is a big part of the issue, if we take a step back and look at it from a bigger picture perspective, what is contributing to less than optimal parenting?
A person could argue that things like inflation far out pacing pay increase, and an increasing divide between the have mosts and the have moderates and leasts is making it harder and harder for one parent to stay at home, for the family unit to not be under financial stress, etc.
Because my step father is most likely a sociopath (he's been to prison multiple times for fraud), I ended up reading a fair amount about the ASPD spectrum (formerly referred to as psychopathy and/or sociopathy) over a period of time (partly because I was born almost the exact opposite, very high affective empathy and conscience, and I just couldn't and didn't understand that people like him could exist, but just knew from hard experience that they did).
I have come to the conclusion that the biggest picture perspective can be boiled down to the following: More and more people on the ASPD spectrum (over time) have come into positions of enormous material influence, wealth, and power (especially in the US, but in the rest of the world as well), and either unconsciously and/or consciously are trying to remake the world in their distorted image. There is a trickle down effect, sort of societal induced kind of entropy. I think this issue transcends mundane, surface politics and sides of an aisle to be honest--it seems pretty obvious that these plutocratic forces fund and play both sides of the aisle in the US.
The wet dream of every clever, relatively more self controlled, and financially wealthy ASPD person is total control. I think for the first time in known human history, there is the accumulation of resources and wealth into the hands of a relative few, along with advanced technology (that allows for mass spying and data collection), that is making that wet dream become a potential reality (and perhaps plan). It has been tried in the past in various different ways and guises, but the masses don't respond well to outright dictatorship-there tends to be revolutions. I think the current crop has looked at, and learned from, the past and realized that to be successful, they had to build "golden cages" rather than outright dictatorship.
More of a gradual whittling away of rights, resources, etc for the masses. And ever increasing survival pressure, but slowly, but while dangling the carrot of the "American dream" all the while. Most people are relatively unconscious pawns in all this. Deep down, I think most people really don't want to know just how bad things really are, and how bad the plans for them/us are. It is potentially more terrifying than any hollywood horror movie premise, because it is real life and engenders such an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness/helplessness.
So instead, we focus on lesser evils, pick a political side to rarara or disparage in the attempt to not become fully conscious of all the above.
I think if we could somehow get rid of all or most of the ASPD folks in positions of enormous influence and power, we would start to see things improve socially. But as that is nowhere close to probable to occur, I think we're likely up the creek without a paddle, short of some kind of naturally caused/facilitated collapse or the like.
