I'm 77 and I remember the 1950s. I began kindergarten in the Allentown public schools in 1952. As with many cities in the broadly-define rust belt, the 50s and 60s were an economic golden era here. There were many well-paying jobs for men who did not have any college and often not a H.S. degree: Bethlehem Steel, Mack Truck, Bell Lab/Western Electric, GE appliance division, cement plants, Pennsylvania Power and Electric, Lehigh Structural Steel, and a large number of construction jobs. The standard of living wasn't as high as it is today, but people compared to their neighbors and those at their place of work. Income inequality was far less than today. A man without even a H.S. degree could earn enough to support his family on one income. The Allentown School District ranked among the top in the state and nation. We also had thriving parochial schools. Our downtown had three department stores, including the regionally known Hess's. The city had many immigrants with a lot of religious and nation-of-origin diversity, but was very nearly lily white. Except for PP&L, all of the businesses I listed are gone, the city is far poorer than the suburbs, and the school district is perpetually short of cash. The children of those blue-collar men always assumed they would follow in their father's occupational footsteps and these families were not focused upon education, even at the junior and senior high school levels. It was a shock to the system of both the city and its blue collar families when these jobs vanished over a short period of time. We experienced White flight as the Hispanic population rose rapidly to become a majority of school students.
Allentown is rapidly rebuilding economically, after lean decades. Many northern and midwestern cities followed this path, although quite a few never recovered.
The South still had de jour segregation -- of everything in the 1950s and into the early 1960s, so yes adults younger than me grew up in an era of intense racist division. The Southern White Evangelical churches became political when the segregated academies they established to defeat school integration lost their federal tax-exempt status. These are churches where a majority of delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention just this past week nearly met the 2/3 vote required to ban member churches which allowed women to preach in their church. In 1963, Richie Allen could not sleep or eat in the same establishments as his White Little Rock teammates. We had the South turn from D to R over the issue of segregation. That was in the mid and late 1960s. So, yes, a lot of people your age, as well as mine, grew up under an intensely racist and misogynist regime. Many are nostalgic for that time. The fact that you and I aren't nostalgic for the 1950s and early 1960s does not mean many other Americans aren't.
The traditionally religious were used to an era in which their sense of morality permeated all of government, media, and society at large. Views on the rights of women, LGBTQ, Blacks, and Hispanics have evolved rapidly. As with abortion, birth control, no-fault divorce becoming mainstream, many older, especially White, male, Christian conservative, Americans could not adapt to the change. Young White men, with poor education and job prospects, are angry that their prospects aren't as bright as their fathers experienced. Under 29 men, not just White, have moved fairly sharply toward what we regard as right-wing, racist, misogynist viewpoints. They doubt they will ever own a house or even be able to attract a wife and are often unwilling to compromise and accept the modern gender roles with more equality and parity for women. Their fathers and grandfathers were patriarchs who did not share housework or often child parenting duties. Our city had a surprisingly large number of men-only clubs, which allowed men to escape their families.
America has progressed and generally wealthier, but many have been left behind. They are both nostalgic for the social position of their parents and grandparents and they are angry. I think today it is more misogynist and anti-LGBTQ than it is racist, but there is an awful lot of racist. They aren't so much anti-Constitution as harking back to what was viewed as Constitutional in the 1950s-60s and also not proscribed by federal statute.
I have no difficulty believing many voters feel nostalgic for the 1950s and early 60s. In addition to the social and economic factors, that was the time of American near-hegemony. Vietnam exploded much of that.