One thing I believe we ought to reflect upon is that many of us grew up in a rather stable era of American society, even with all the social turmoil of the 1960s.
There has been since WWII a sense of stability in the world order that was something different than in many periods in our past.
The more I read about our past (often in conjunction to doing genealogy research) it seems there was always a great deal of turmoil, angst, and dramatic change.
Thus, what we are experiencing today in regards to Trumpism and Republican wealth-laundering doesn’t really strike me as that different from the abuses of leaders in the past. Some of whom were very much hip deep in dirt.