For a while, it looked like the latter at least might be slowly improving. I thought I’d heard more sentiments about the former as well. Things looked like they could get better. Not good, not for a long way still, but better at least. And that’s the way mentalities and cultures tend to shift: not suddenly, but creeping over the decades, centuries maybe, generational differences accumulating into an evolution.

In particular, if the powerful need to wrap their transgressions into some glamour of civility, if they need to at least pretend to follow some rules, that’s an indicator that these rules are valued in some way and might provide some leverage for improvement.
Rainbow capitalism makes for a good example: Companies co-opting queer symbols for marketing is distasteful, but it implies that inclusion is valued enough to make it worth pouring money into signaling.

This rapid pivot from faint hope to an escalation of ever more overt regressions, their crude bluntness tearing them free from all social restraints that might reign them in: That is the madness, the novelty.