Not engaging and not voting is a sure way to have all your rights taken away. But I've lived a long time, and I can assure everyone that there never was a "golden age" when everything was balanced and equitable and happy - this "journey backwards" is actually a journey into regressive darkness and repression, which nobody in their right mind would ever want to go back to.

The 50s was complete turmoil, the 60s was full of drug abuse and hate, the 70s were homophobic and spiteful and horrible, and I could say the same thing about every decade since then.

The answer then is glaringly obvious - we DON'T go backward to those sorts of times. We go forward and progress and rise above them. We embrace science and technology, we embrace liberal education, we embrace humanity and give up the in "god we trust" legacy of blindness. There is only one moral and healthy way to grow and that is by going forward into a new age of peace and progress.