Rant on, brother. People see government as "the enemy", and prefer to believe less government and a lowered political awareness will somehow lead to Better Everything. As a result, corrupt politicians and corporations have their way with the government, and by controlling the creation, review, and enforcement of laws, they have their way with us.

But despite year after year of, say, Exxon reporting billions upon billions of dollars in profit, people never make the connection between deregulated moneymaking empires and a lower standard of living in the population.

We keep clinging to the belief that rich people are rich because they work hard, and that if we work hard too, we can be rich, that the poor are poor because they're too lazy to work, that survival of the fittest should be applied toward healthcare and education and job support and social security, etc, and that delusional individualism is killing us slowly each day.

We laugh at people in European countries and look down on their "socialized government", mocking their universal healthcare and guaranteed college educations and shared risk management but through it all, things keep getting worse under our system. Yet we're still fundamentally opposed to any kind of regulation. We still want to believe in the monomyth of self-sufficiency, while the rest of the world is increasingly realizing that people need to support each other to thrive. It's nuts.

Ah well. We reap what we sow, eh? :O)