Have things gotten really worse, or have I just become an Old Fart?

[woo me with science]

12. Yes, it really is worse.

This is not politics as usual. We are witnessing a global corporate expansion that is deliberately and systematically dismantling/usurping the democratic, representative governments that previously have protected at least some of us from the predators who raze and farm human lives for profit. We are waking up to realize that a sick, unsustainable system has been built around us, that a collapse is coming, that those who have the power to do something about it are incentivized to collude and propagandize instead, and that the protections we always assumed would be safeguarded through a "representative" government are not there anymore.

Other countries have already experienced first-hand the unfathomable pain and death and despair that occur when corporate profit motive supersedes the lives of human beings. In this country, we have always been trained to think of devastating poverty and tyranny as something that happens "over there," for reasons that are often deliberately left unclear. But we are not special to the corporatists, and they are coming for us now. They are building global plans, and we are headed down a road that may very soon show us what it is like to live under the rule of faceless corporations that see us as living "human resources" to be squeezed and discarded for maximum profit.

That's a lot to take in. No wonder people are feeling grumpy.