This Was Always the Plan
Rage, apathy, and broken systems serve the powerful
It feels like we’re living inside a broken loop - one where the loudest voices win, the most shameless get rewarded, and the least competent somehow keep rising. The deeper tragedy is that, after a while, we stop being surprised. We start to expect dysfunction. We joke about it. We vote for it. And then we live with the consequences.
Those consequences are not abstract. They are personal. You feel them when you try to schedule a medical appointment and get sent down a rabbit hole of disconnected systems, insurance disputes, and long wait times. You feel them when you look at the cost of a college education and wonder how anyone is expected to pay for it without going broke. You feel them when your paycheck buys less, even as your workload grows more demanding. For many, this is not an ideological debate. It’s daily life.
Meanwhile, those in power, elected officials, media executives, algorithm designers, thrive on our fatigue. They treat leadership like content. Politics has become performance. Accountability is now optional.
And facts?
They’re just one option among many, increasingly irrelevant in a landscape built to reward volume over substance.
Today, a politician can lie brazenly on a Monday and turn that lie into a fundraising campaign by Tuesday. A public official can fail in full view and still get re-elected - not despite their failure, but because they made the “right” people mad. This isn’t just a glitch. It’s the strategy. Because when lies and truth are treated as equivalent, the only currency left is outrage. And outrage keeps us busy.
We should be asking better questions. How is your healthcare system actually working? For you? Are you confident you’ll be seen when you’re sick? Can you afford higher education without being shackled by debt? Has your income grown in step with inflation, or are you running faster just to stay in place? Do you believe your children will live in a better world than you inherited?
These aren’t new problems. Healthcare didn’t break last year. Wage stagnation didn’t begin last quarter. Education didn’t become unaffordable in a single policy cycle. These are decades-long failures. Failures of design, of enforcement, of courage. And at every step, we’ve been told that the fault lies with “the other side.” As long as we stay focused on blaming each other, the people actually responsible never have to answer for anything.
The deeper issue isn’t just incompetence. It’s complicity. And not just theirs - ours. Because we let this happen. We helped it happen. We told ourselves we were too busy to check facts, too tired to research candidates, too cynical to believe in reform. We decided that rage was enough. But rage, when it isn’t paired with responsibility, is just another tool for those in power.
We claim to hate corruption, yet we elect the corrupt. We demand transparency, then ignore the public records. We punish honesty and reward charisma. And when the system disappoints us, as it inevitably does, we fall back into the same pattern: complain, scroll, forget.
Because real accountability isn’t satisfying. It’s slow. It’s tedious. It requires us to do work when we’d rather be entertained. Reading legislation, tracing money trails, and showing up to local elections - none of it feels as good as shouting online. But it’s the only thing that actually changes anything.
The truth is: the system isn’t broken. It’s functioning exactly as designed. Rage keeps us distracted. Confusion keeps us compliant. And exhaustion ensures we don’t fight too hard. As long as we’re yelling, we’re not organizing. As long as we’re sharing memes, we’re not studying records. As long as we’re fighting each other, we’re not fighting for better.
The result is a system where the most visibly ineffective somehow appear to succeed. Where public failure becomes a performance, not a liability. Where leaders are judged not by what they deliver, but by how well they polarize. And as this dynamic repeats, something quiet but devastating happens: we lower our expectations. We stop asking for competence. We stop demanding ethics. We learn to accept dysfunction as destiny.
The cost of that is real. You see it in hospital bills for substandard care. You see it in kids graduating into debt they can’t repay. You see it in job markets that reward survival over growth. You see it when a sense of future stability - of being able to build a good life - feels like a myth from another generation.
We are not powerless. But we are deeply distracted. We have been made to believe that awareness equals action, that performance equals participation, that expression is enough. It isn’t. Real change requires showing up, over and over, even when it’s boring, even when no one’s watching.
It requires asking hard questions about why we continue to elevate leaders who fail. It means interrogating why we choose spectacle over substance. It means turning our exhaustion into clarity, about what matters and who benefits from our disengagement.
We don’t need louder voices. We need deeper attention. We don’t need more outrage. We need more precision. And we don’t need new enemies. We need new expectations - of ourselves and of those we empower.
If we want a better future, it won’t come from memes or takedowns or cable news debates. It will come from a generation of citizens who are no longer willing to enable the worst performers in public life.
Because until we change what we reward, we will keep getting what we deserve.
And that is true everywhere – at work, in our communities, and in our homes.
Have a wonderful Sunday!
With gratitude,
Adi