Do you think it is more dark, grim and unpleasant than the TOS era of Vietnam, the draft, miscegenation laws and race riots? Serious question.
No. Because the consensus in society at the time is that these were BAD things and massive collective effort was being applied to fight them. TOS' storylines mostly reflected this: when Ronald Tracy went crazy on Omega, Kirk identifies him as a rogue element out of his head and puts a stop to it. When the the people on planet Neural start fighting a proxy war on behalf of the Klingons, Kirk regretfully evens the odds. When the Romulans violate Federation space, Kirk defends the border and restores peace. When Matt Decker looses his mind from a combination of trauma and survivor's guilt, Spock relieves him of duty, and later use his sacrifice to help save the day. Daystrom's killer robot is a costly mistake by a well-intentioned genius; NOMAD is just a huge but deadly misunderstanding, etc.
The implication from the 60s and 70s is that a lot of dumb stuff has been passed into law and all you have to do is correct those problems and things will be okay. We're in a stupid war to save a country that doesn't want us there? Pull out! Jim Crow reduced a quarter of our population to second class citizens? Abolish it! People are being lynched and driven out of town in race riots? Call the Feds! Lots of problems, but they all have solutions.
Then you get into the 90s, by which time the solutions actually ARE the problems. You have a government that passes "tax reform" that does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do, redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. You have institutions that raise prices on tuition and healthcare while offering the same or lower quality service than they did before. Houses get more expensive and less safe; you get more and bigger wars for stupider reasons and half the country is calling you a traitor for opposing them; you get corrupt politicians getting reelected because some of your neighbors think corruption is a sign of initiative; you get corrupt CEOs getting promotions and bonus packages and rapists avoiding jail time because they're such swell people.
the 1960s managed to hold on to its optimism with a sense of shared struggle and collective action that made people think they could actually change the world for the better. 50 years later, trying to change the world for the better gets you labeled as an asshole and a troublemaker, while the people who go out of their way to destroy anything they don't approve of get labeled "Director" or "Chief" or "Mr. President."
It's one thing to have a shit ton of problems that everyone is trying to solve. It's quite another thing to have a shit ton of problems that everyone is trying to PREVENT you from solving.
One of the things I've always loved about TOS was it dared to show a better tomorrow even when things were pretty terrible.
Exactly my point: TOS, like 1960s counter-culture, dared to hope for a better tomorrow. Someone says "We can do better!" and the crowd says "Hell yes!"
2010s is an era where people hope for a better tomorrow over the howling of those who like the problems as they are. Someone says "We can do better!" and the crowd says "Fuck you!"
