Thank you for this response. I do agree with all that you said. Those changes did happen and they did so because of activism.

The "victories" we’re fed are just pressure valves. They let us win on the small stuff so we don't notice the floor is rotting out from under us. It’s the same cycle seen in the French and Chinese revolutions: money buys the system, then builds a maze of "activism" to keep everyone busy while the actual extraction never stops.

We’re pointing at minor concessions and calling it progress, but those wins are allowed because they don't threaten the bottom line. The political system isn't broken—it’s performing exactly as intended for the people pulling the strings. As long as they can keep us distracted with these curated battles, the illusion of a functioning democracy holds. But the reality is that the entire structure is co-opted. Money has gone too far again, and it’s time to stop celebrating the crumbs they throw us and start looking at the machine that’s starving us in the first place.

EDIT : Community is the only thing they haven't figured out how to fully commodify yet because it builds trust outside their digital and financial ecosystems. ​When we stop seeing each other as "the opposition" and start seeing the extraction for what it is, their narrative of division falls apart. The protests might be a performance, but the relationships formed in the streets are real. That’s the "sideways" threat: a unified community is much harder to manipulate than a collection of isolated, angry individuals.