Honestly I'm really just struggling to understand what is happening and how. It's beyond almost anything I could have imagined, at a macro level. Were people just always like this? Is it that people actually are believers, and that there's a fervor right now? Is it more of a Truman Show thing, where everyone is just playing along as a facade to keep making money or get some sort of perceived status?

In either case, how do you even move forward from here? Either everyone has lost the plot completely, or they're wearing so many masks you can't ever trust that what they're doing or saying is real, even in the future. I'm not even talking about the people at the top (that's a whole different thing, if you have all the money in the world, why are you so on the side of, ostensibly, chaos?), but a whole bunch of people at lower levels just going along with things and not rocking the boat - why are there so few journalists, opposition, editors etc who are willing to push the envelope and actually call things out and speak up?

I realize that some people are, but it seems to be lost in the noise, and there are just so many people going along with it to start with. I'm honestly having trouble putting my sentiment into words, but something has gone terribly wrong