How the idea of the common good evaporated.

I like this insight by Charles Hugh Smith. I loathe the cowardice, obtuseness, and malevolence of federal, state, and local authorities. Some officials are still sane but the news is full of examples of those who simply refuse to use state power to carry out government's four most sacred duties:

• keep foreign primitives out,
• crucify domestic primitives,
• get out of the way of entrepreneurial dynamism, and
• don't screw with the money (destroy what citizens have built up).

They refuse to act because the wishes of ordinary citizens who have to deal with "diversity" and "Lord of the Flies" neighborhoods are a matter of indifference to the dregs of society who call the shots. The genius of the Founders and Ratifiers has been utterly subverted and our political, social, institutional, and cultural bedrock is now a ghastly joke. Think I'm joking? Consider that one of the CEOs of the social media giants who presume to magisterially decide what it is mete and proper for you to read, hear, and say is Jack Dorsey, someone who looks like he just left Woodstock 20 minutes ago in his VW bus. Rip van Winkle with a nose ring in need of a shower and a visit to the barber. What normal American doesn't think to himself or herself, "My kinda guy."

Smith:

There is no way America would be as corrupt as it now is if the Fed hadn't provided trillions of dollars to those most anxious to corrupt every institution that might limit their greed and power. If money wasn't [sic] free, the predators, parasites, zombies and monopolists couldn't borrow such enormous sums to jack up their share price and buy political influence to protect their winnings.

The Fed's policy of permanent, expanding manipulation has picked the winners in our economy--the predators, parasites, zombies and monopolists who use Fed free money to strangle competition, eliminate transparency and corrupt anything that might represent the public interest or the common good, because these are anathema to the predators, parasites, zombies and monopolists.^[1]

As I've pointed out earlier, low interest rates keep stock prices high as well by punishing savers who have to embrace risk-on investments just to try to stay ahead of inflation, let alone enhance their nest eggs.

Mr. Smith put it all together with this article. The money has flowed into the hands of the dregs of society and they buy sociopath politicians and whatever tools they need to protect and increase their power. The interests of George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, Mark Zuckertrucker, the Koch brothers, Google, the Fed, General Electric, Gillette, the courts, the top military brass, and a host of other swine are not OUR interests yet they're out there taking a jackhammer to our bedrock institutions and values.

Notes
^[1] "Want Hope and Real Growth? Let the Dead Forest of Corruption and Fed Manipulation Burn Down." By Charles Hugh Smith, ZeroHedge, 11/2/20 (bolding removed).