Our parents and teachers grew up under the Warren and Marshall courts.
These were hardly all good, but they were a rare time of stability, sanity, and defense of civil rights out of the courts. Which is a blip in the history.
On the whole, the SCOTUS has always been a force for evil. It has always leaned against civil rights and towards statism and fascism. Towards maintaining and enforcing the police state. The current state is returning to the norm, not an anomaly. But with so many of society's elders being raised on a reasonable court, they forget.
It is a 100% politically-appointed institution with zero oversight and lifetime terms. It's obviously a bad idea. Just another of myriad compromises in the founding of our nation to cater to regressive-thinking, anti-civil rights right wingers that have always been a major part of the American experiment.