> So when people massively vote for extremists, it's fine, but when they massively get informed and decide to try to do something constructive, it's... "never clean"?

I was implying a revolution, which is almost always bloody and destructive, and almost never ends the way people want it to.

You completely missed the point on everything else. “Society” as a whole is both a bottom-up and a top-down construct. In more functional times, both sides influence and are influenced by each other. My contention is that the top is exerting enormous and extraordinary influence on the bottom to prevent any sort of reform, going so far as to sabotage their education, flood the media with propaganda, and actively implement divide-and-conquer strategies. Under these conditions, you can’t exactly blame the bottom for failing to find their footing.

You especially can’t blame them when most of the candidates who promise to “do something” are either co-opted or compromised from the start. The media says, vote for change! They just fail to mention that change is not on the menu of options. And woe to the few men of means who try to run for Congress to actually get something done; they don’t last long.

These conditions have only gone on for as long as they have because as Adam Smith said, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” But there isn’t much wire left in the walls to strip out and sell. The pain has been unevenly distributed, with just enough people enjoying a decent standard of living to prevent any real mass movement. That won’t be true for much longer; we are running short of runway.