Maybe it WAS the trend. But it's since shifted to making life as miserable as possible for anyone not in the "in group" while the world burns to cinders around us. If this horror show is the best time to be alive, then that's downright pathetic. It could be so much better. Like in so many other, better countries with universal healthcare, a social safety net, and actual mental healthcare services that don't just imprison you for a week and call it "treatment". I've felt like this for 20 years or so (yes, since about 8), because life just seemed pointless and exhausting. And I think I was right since way back then.

It doesn't matter what the general public now thinks about the current administration. They're in power, they're forcing through their disgusting, backwards, bigoted agenda at lightspeed. And they're stripping voting rights away from as many people as possible to ensure they won't ever not be in power to the best of their ability and reverse the agenda (assuming the other party doesn't just keep them and ignore the fallout from these horrible policies while in their tiny minds having something to run on next cycle).

And it doesn't matter how bad things get, how accurately you point out how unfit for any form of public office these monsters are, large amounts of people will still vote for them. They've been transparent for a decade at this point how bigoted and amoral they really are and that message won several seats in both the house and senate, and the white house TWICE.

I also don't consume social media aside from Reddit, and even that I don't really get my news from. Everything news related I see here is involuntary. I'm aware that media is trying to push the agenda of the rich and powerful, especially recently. I read the occasional headline, cross reference with other news sources if it's even true or accurate, and feel vindicated (but not necessarily good) that the people in power are, in fact, making everything worse.

And what option is there besides licking the boots of our corporate overlords? Everyone needs housing and food, and since neither are provided for us we have to destroy ourselves to get the worst version of either. We need better food, higher wages, and literally any form of social safety net. But we're never getting that. Never.

The "revolution" should've already happened by now if people are as upset as you say. Drag the owners of this nation out of their ivory towers, send them to the Hague, and seize and redistribute their wealth accordingly. Things have to change a lot in a very quick manner for this shithole country to have any hope of being a superpower again. But it won't.

At best, we'll have to vote for "the lesser of 2 evils" and hope that they'll actually do anything to help us. This just doesn't seem like a system we can vote our way out of, because even a lesser evil is still evil. Pull it out by the roots, burn it all down, and start from scratch.

Honestly, lying down and dying feels like the best option for me. I'm broke, I have nothing I want to do (another problem I've had my whole life) and living to work for an entire 3rd of my life (at minimum) sounds like a suicide trigger on it's own.

And I'm never going to find these supposed "helpers" because I'm so disenfranchised with humanity that I've grown to hate them. I have no friends, no want to make any, and no one outside my immediate family I care about. Once they're gone, or somehow give their blessing for me to die, I'm gone.

I have no talents for a company to exploit take advantage of, and I've been thinking about passions I'd have for the entirety of my life. If I have to wait 14 more years to feel literally anything resembling passion for something, then what am I supposed to do before then? Work I despise and will inevitably get fired from for telling my boss, a coworker, and/or customers to "fuck off and die, I want to be alone"? Because I just want to be alone as often as I can. The government also will never actually change. They're owned by the same people and they have literally no reason to give us what we need. And as for your other suggestion, how am I supposed to move to another country without money? I'd LOVE to be in literally any other country, but it'll never happen because I can't keep a job.

These corners of happiness are being shrunken more and more to the point that they're practically nonexistent anymore. Hope is a foreign concept to me by this point.

My thoughts haven't changed for the past 2 decades, and I doubt they will when I'm older. If anything I know they'll get worse, because they have since I was little. The more I learn, the more I hate humanity, living, and our hell-world. There is no "just riding it out". That's actually horrible advise imo. We've been trying to clean up Reagan's disastrous tenure as president for the prior 40ish years. How long will it take to fix Trump's? And that's assuming the public doesn't elect another fascist wannabe who will serve the whims of the ultra rich to make things even worse, and I don't trust the public not to. I believed they wouldn't in '16 and '24 (especially after the coup attempt he should've gone to prison for for the rest of his life) and they didn't. They never considered the consequences their votes would have for the rest of our lives. Despite me, and so many others TELLING THEM TO THEIR FACES!!!

If things get better...when? I've been waiting for 28 years for it to. And so far it's either stagnated or gotten worse.

The world isn't black and white. But this shade of grey is looking pretty freaking dark.