He pushed the whole “the government is the enemy” mentality which has made it almost impossible to have national healthcare among other things. The republicans also jumped into bed with Christian fundamentalists at this point and the NRA went from being for gun regulations to no regulations. It was a continuation of the backlash against the 60s that started with Nixon.
I’ve been on both sides of it. One of my favorite IT moments was changing to a new phone. I couldn’t access my email until I did a two factor auth process. Of course they emailed me my code to access my account to unlock my email. Good thing I also had a pc at home with access to my email.
Then I was supporting a lab. One woman was clearly aggravated when she called. She said no matter what she did her screen was blank. I head right over and just look at it for a few secs. I check the lowest hanging fruit solution first and see the power light on her monitor isn’t on. I see it is unplugged, plug her monitor in and problem solved. I’ve never seen a more embarrassed person than her. lol
Networking has to be the most thankless job in IT. You are invisible when the system is working, which is 99% of the time. It stays up like that because they are monitoring it and maintaining it behind the scenes. When it fails though the failure can be catastrophic for everyone, we literally cannot do any work without it. Then everyone’s eyes, and criticism, is on them.
I remember reading about a geologist who was standing on what he thought was solidified lava until he realized he had slowly moved and the bottoms of his boots were melting.