Probably 2000. The 1990s were a pretty optimistic time, the Cold War finally ended and people were looking forward to humanity finally coming together and looking toward the stars or some shit. Francis Fukuyama said it was the "end of history" because we had everything figured out, democratic liberalism was the optimal political system, free market capitalism the best economic system and the world was America's oyster. Then 2001 hit, and people got a wake up call that not everything was going to be rainbow and sunshine into the future and Bush dragging us into a war started the left off on its journey to their current state of derangement.
After that it's history. Basically I think the turn of the millennium is the last time the majority of the west had a hopeful, positive outlook. The period between the fall of the USSR and 9/11 when people thought everything was going to work out just fine.
You're not wrong, but the emphasis is on "decent", not great.
Things have been on a downward spiral since 9/11, but in hindsight the first 12 years since that were not all that bad at least comparatively.
Basically it seems like things have been on a sort of a half life where every several years things get progressively worse, first you had the post 9/11 era, then you had the post Great Recession era and now we've been living through the post Gamergate era.
This era has been the worst and I'll tell you why, because so many of your average people have become flat out evil, the sheer maliciousness of so many people today is appalling, 9/11 was an awful tragedy but it was an attack on America from outsiders, the Great Recession was a rough situation but it was also something caused by an abstract system, all of our problems today are thanks to ourselves, we have turned on each other, this is not something from outside, this is from within.
What we have been experiencing for the last several years could be described as a society wide nervous breakdown, it's simply not fucking normal the way a large number of people have been behaving.
I think in the post 9/11 and Great Recession eras you could at least still believe in the good in your fellow Americans, that we were all in this together and if we worked hard together we could survive, but we've turned on each other, now I live in a world where many of my fellow Americans literally want me dead.
That is what seems so apocalyptic about this situation, this isn't America being attacked by something, this is self destruction.
I'm speaking about America but of course this isn't just happening in America either.
