I was a kid in the 70s and people were far gloomier about the future than they are now, especially after I moved to the USA. Think of yourself as swimming in the open ocean: you can't feel the big waves (low frequency/long wavelength), just the chop you are trying to paddle through.

I think there are a lot of good things happening. There's finally progress on climate repair (tiny, but nonzero) which means we may have more time to fix things.

The last 40 years of entrenched bullshit is finally tottering due to its geriatric constituency, so I think there's a good chance for positive change on the horizon. And even the re-emergence of some of the worst people (let's just aggregate them into "the racist shitheads") I see as a positive sign: they were always around, but in the background. Now they have emerged because it's clear they are on the wrong side of history and they know that if they do nothing they will be greatly diminished.

There's no gleaming path to the future like you used to see in glossy utopian pictures in the 1970s. It will be bumpy. But overall I think the derivative is positive.

I'm not sure the USA will get its shit together, but it's only about 4% of the world's population.