Pasty faced millennial here.

Also EE dropout (working on that).

I hope I am as enlightened and put together as you when I'm 50. Cheers.

But I do have one answer for you:

I lost hope for this nation when Trump was elected this last time. I couldn’t understand how people could not see the obvious.

Facebook.

My 'moment of clarity' was when I saw a local news station running clips of college girls' enthusiasm for Trump, just after the election. The sentiment was along the lines of "He's so strong!" or "I really feel like he gets us, you know?" and almost directly quoting some meme's I'd seen.

And seeing die hard libertarians I know swallow Trump's accumulation of executive power, via their perception of events, drove it home.

...Walk the street, and look around. I'm using 'Facebook' as a catch-all here: algorithmic feeds and influencers are warping reality for smart folks, both ways. Every generation is caught up in it, but I feel the age extremes (Boomers and Z) are most vulnerable here.