The anger and anxiety over learning that mistakes in the past could lead to catastrophe in our present could lead one to find a dumping site for those bad feelings, ergo, the need to find fault with people from the past "who should have known better." Fact is they didn't know better, and when people started to raise concerns, people they thought they could trust lied to them early and often.

People became accustomed to thinking that voting for political representatives unburdened them of having to learn about what their representatives were actually doing and how it would impact them. Politicians tell us what we want to hear so we vote for them and then we go back to living our lives while paying no attention to them. SS and Medicare are what happen when people pay no attention over generations.