Technology

I'd say the 70s was the pivotal decade there with the oil crisis, the party was effectively over for the Democratic FDR post-war reality, and the economic anxieties resulting from deindustrialization began to have impacts in the rust belt. Mao's death effectively ended China's Cultural Revolution, and Deng implemented economic reforms to open the country to capitalism, with a huge industrial push and creation of economic zones. While labor power in the US had achieved a great deal in to the 60s, the Taft-Hartley Act from back in '47 kneecapped the ability for labor to fight the death of the US industrial manufacturing core. Because of course capital is gonna capital, and if they can't exploit workers as well domestically they can in some other country. Especially when they use their hegemonic influence to keep other countries open to private capitalist exploitation, like arming fascist coups in even moderately socialist countries in the global south. The global fight against communism is a backdrop to all this.

And here we are today as these routes of externalizing the exploitation necessary to maintain this standard of living and consumer economy dry up, and this economic reality turns inward.