while I know some in each group that are indeed relatively normal, they are far outnumbered

I would also believe this if my experience working and interacting with young people said the opposite and if I didn't have an almost unhealthy and unnecessarily over the top level of deep scepticism rivalling the depth of the Mariana Trench for most news sources.

I think the experiment of soft parenting should be retired a failure

Having seen what some parents are calling "gentle parenting" (which is basically not/minimising yelling and screaming and using reason and logic and age appropriate consequences which may include making them understand how actions/behaviour got them ostracised from a group over corporal punishments, there are very definitely still firm boundaries and saying no) I'm not going to entirely disagree with that. Allegedly (from other people saying it not just my biased observations) the "gently parented" kids that are the same age as my kids are generally more mature/compassionate/understanding than similar aged peers. I've observed similar with some of the kids that I coach, but within the centre itself we have had thankfully very few "interesting" experiences with the newer/wronger (non-word) interpretation (mostly with parents who fail to make us stop telling their precious snowflakes "no" or sitting them in 1-3min timeout when they persistently break rules/do the wrong thing).