Hey! Makes me remember that Socrates quote about disobidient kids:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Overall I'm starting to appreciate the balance in things and even though change might be overall beneficial, maybe it should happen organically. And that's coming from a boderline pathological contrarian, who tends to be anti-establishment by natural sentiment. So it's not like I couldn't find things to complain about, but then there's that tendency to make things worse. On the other hand, you probably can't just do nothing either. Per defnition, that is. Like "doing" nothing itself seems oxymoronic. In that sense, circling back to the political stuff, I'm all for checks and balances. Like having an upper age limit for political offices makes sense. Having to pick between two 90 year olds doesn't.

In terms of lost values I'm missing personal integrity, but granted I'm a bit of a hypocrite myself. I suppose power was always something you shouldn't give to people who've been looking for it, but it seemingly has gotten worse. In my humble opinion the ends don't justify the means, for the most part, but to some life is just Game of Thrones I guess. I genuinely hate that machiavellian stuff.

Edit: Oh, by the way. Remember when I told you I was trying to write a novel? It's weird because as soon as I'm trying to write actual narrative I'm instantly blocked, but then when I'm writing stupid comments on the internet I effortlessly ramble for days. Ironically enough maybe even about narrative. Go figure!