>> I'm 48, and I can't remember any other time where I've actually despaired about the future for my (step) kids, and where I've felt that the government really is out of control.

That is said by every generation. Every generation going back hundreds of years. In the 1950s, the glory time for today's elderly, comic books we the craze. A hundred years before that doctors would regularly tell people not to read as it could cause illness, especially in women. Some thought chess angered the blood. But they all drank and took opium with abandon. Today doctors tell kids to reduce screen time, while loading them up with ADHD meds. Nothing changes.

The definition of "old" is when you start lecturing on how young people were so much better in your generation. It's just nostalgia. Old people forget the evils of the past and see new evils everywhere in the present.