> We've seen a collapse in respectability of politicians, for example. Not because the politicians have changed even slightly, but because we have much better visibility into what they're actually like and how the political sausages are made.
Some of that, perhaps, though I suspect most people don't care too much — most people don't read beyond the headlines, from what I've heard.
I'm assuming you mean US politicians in particular? Because in the UK, Johnson and Truss were genuinely exceptional in how bad they were. (And I'm currently living in the half of Berlin which used to be DDR, which had a government so bad the country stopped existing independently).
For the USA, I remember mocking GWB when he was your president (I even got quoted on the radio for it); the political Overton window I grew up in doesn't, can't, include either of your main parties, but even so, Trump does seem evil compared to GWB's nice-but-dim Forrest Gump.
> look at the difference in image of Musk vs someone like Gates who was world's wealthiest before the internet got big.
Late 90s, I was a teen, friends were talking about how evil he was, sharing pictures with Gates' face pasted onto WW2 dictator's rallies, etc.