I agree with most of what you say but I think it’s both. People are tired of voting and paying taxes when it all seems to just go towards paying rich and connected people bloated salaries to blatantly sleep in parliament in front of cameras. But the wealthy elites harnessed that and took advantage. And infected conspiracy theory circles and started putting so much bullshit out there that ‘truth’ seems to be optional these days.

I’m showing my tinfoil hat here but in my view this started happening some time after the Arab spring when powerful people shat themselves and realised how powerful social media could actually be.

Trump was totally packaged as a rebel and a renegade coming to change the system. Around 2015 I remember even ‘progressive’ minded people saying things like “he’s a businessman, not one of these useless assholes, he’ll get things done!” In South Africa, there was the same rhetoric surrounding Cyril Ramaphosa in the beginning.

I don’t want to sound like self aggrandizing asshole here but I think that maybe people in general are even less smart than I thought. Because just before everyone started thinking that capitalist businessmen were going to save them, social media was all about Anonymous and Zeitgeist and how awesome socialism is and how much capitalism sucks. And seemingly overnight, while still looking for the same kind of change, they fell for a slimy capitalist swindler selling that change.

Honestly my sincere hope and probably the main thing keeping me going is that this all collapses under the weight of pedophiles and incompetent podcasters and news readers put into positions of power, and then the pendulum swings back and we get the change that we actually need.