Well waves of woe come in many forms, and people have their own interpretations of how heavy they are.
I was especially affected mentally by the 'war on terror' version. If I had been born some years earlier or later, or my life and mood and hopes and fears and what sort of attention I was paying to things had different timing, then it could easily have been the austerity years or the Thatcher years/death of 'post war consensus'/rampant social conservatism and reheated cold war paranoia periods that broke my spirit instead.
There are a bunch of major issues to deal with this century, and there is a lot of baggage from the past and long shadows cast by the past. But the priorities and failings of the establishment are not new, there is a certain consistency even when the superficial signs may not seem to resemble what has gone before. The paranoid strain of US politics isnt new either, there is a very long history of that stuff but admittedly the internet gave such elements new found reach. Even so, that horrible mindsets impact on politics around the globe isnt brand new, and I could probably build a case that particular forms of paranoid and ugly politics have had global impact for the entire time the USA has been interested in throwing its weight around in terms of global power, and the entire atomic age.
New bullshit can be alarming, but probably still a good to consider that in many cases it fills a gap where old bullshit died out, including with the passing of generations and their scars and hangups and narrow beliefs as new generations emerge with fresh ways to malfunction. And I think its important to remember the old humbug that no longer works, and not just think about the new humbug as being piled on top of all the old shit, suffocating us to new depths. The culture wars are one example, they exist in part because in so many important and meaningful ways, social conservatives lost a lot of battles in various countries in recent decades, and the culture wars are a desperate attempt by them to find new ways to win. In amny cases they still struggle to gain a foothold, it isnt working out too well for them, and so their cries become more desperate and vulgar.
I learnt may things from the war on terror era, including how to get the balance in my mind good enough that I would not be utterly eaten alive by paranoia. I have learnt the importance of paying attention to the terrible shit, but also the need to find hope in all the places that it can always be found, in order that I not end up utterly crushed and distorted into that which I hate. I reached the brink back then, but somehow I got through it and came out the other side without a dodgy worldview sticking, and a strange paranoid turn I made during the darkest days meant I rather randomly ended up learning about pandemic detail that seemed paranoid and useless at the time but actually came in handy all these years later! I did have to tune my filters via a mix of success and failure to make sure my instincts for which dots to join and which to ditch ended up productive rather than deranged. This pandemic was perhaps the first real major test of whether I had succeeded or failed, and I think I ended up getting it right to a much greater extent than I dared hope in the untested years before this pandemic.
One thing that has certainly changed compared to a stifling decade or two not so long ago, the 'acceptable boundaries' of mainstream politics have widened again somewhat, the very narrow 'middle ground' (that never really was in the middle) got broader and plenty of the population sense that the possibilities of the left and the right are back in play. Its happening gradually in countries like the UK, but particular movements and events can provide more rapid periods of momentum which can certainly seem alarming if the forces in question are the opposite of our own political preferences.