There it is; that, right there, that's at the core of the dysfunction in this society, us. All of us contributed in some way, but we’d rather blame someone else, and we’re encouraged to, old tactic for distracting the masses when things get tight, can’t have them gazing up the food chain and discovering the redistribution scheme. We all allowed this disconnect to occur. There’s no connectedness in society, just snarling, because we’re in a place where we’ve been told we have no power, and inside their system, we don’t. It’s a mining process of the spirit, the human spirit, to run the machines that extract the wealth. It’s nothing new at all, just a repackaging of the same types of systems that humanity has evolved away from before, complete with global military omnipotence, economically controlled access to healthcare in the hands of the aristocracy, a jobs market that borders on sharecropping in some sectors with chains like Walmart pushing employees toward public assistance, endless war machine occupations of foreign lands that trigger stock surges, and arms merchant enterprise that foments violence across the planet for profit, and a return to profiting from bondage in for profit prisons with stocks traded on Wall Street and convict leasing.
Ours is not a healthy society. And the power structure is counting on us remaining that way. Your vote will not be enough. Not now. We tried that. The substantial people have two parties from which to choose. The people have none. Goldman Sachs is always in your white house regardless. I do wonder if this system will last another 100 years. Maybe. But eventually humanity will evolve on to something else; this is unsustainable in terms of a human evolutionary scale. Just as humanity evolved away from feudalism, so will it evolve away from this twisted version of “capitalism”, and really, from capitalism of any kind, which by the way has always subsidized some, any big time sports team owner with a nice shiny stadium knows. It was always rigged. Some of that can be tolerated by a society.
But neither capitalism nor empire can ever be content or satisfied, even the Athenian democracy/empire went tits up, expansion to infinity, profit margin growth to infinity. And no, that is not the nature of the human spirit, but the power structure needs you to organize yourself around that thought. It is true however that it will always be the nature of some humans who must be kept in check. Might be better to look at the arc of humankind than the arc of America, not long enough.
Say what ya want, it won’t work forever, this expansion. So maybe you think nothing’s going on with the planet and never could, ever. Ok, thanks for your time, take care. Or maybe you think, meh, I’ll be gone. Which brings us back to connectedness. To your descendants. But that’s kinda tough in a society that doesn’t know its ancestors past a couple-300years and lacks that spiritual connection.