Apocalypse Then?

There is something troubling about the state of modern affairs that bears questioning.

We are living in times where everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) has a vague sense of society as a whole having gone off the rails completely, to the point where there is a conspiracy thing for anything and everything under the sun.

In the United States there is partisan bickering over basic and vitally important things like gun control and heal care. Both sides cynically manipulate their party base, blatantly lie over what they are trying to accomplish, and engorge themselves on riches created by their excesses. We had a shooting in a kindergarten (!), and the immediate response was as predictable as it was pathetic - the NRA blamed the shooter, and the Left blamed the guns. No one spoke about violence in art and culture, mental illness, family issues...but the news began a ridiculously uninformed comparison of Israeli gun laws vs. American ones. There is no discourse, no debate, no openness to discovering solutions to problems. Just talking points, talking heads, and talking stupidity.

We have a new legal system that exempts the lawmakers from the laws they pass on the public, selective laws which exempt bankers who are "too big to fail" and therefore cannot be prosecuted or punished for their rampant and open disregard for the law, and a Congress which is a revolving door from lobbyist to lawmaker and back again.

And we all let it go, holding onto increasingly shrinking little pies in the sky of our little lives, our shrinking wage jobs and engorged mortgaged homes, our gas guzzling and wallet emptying cars and our made in Taiwan baubles. We accept narratives that place the blame of unemployment, shoddy education, merchandise that breaks or wears out ten minutes after you buy it, on ourselves. Our work. Our effort. Not the people who are responsible. All of western society has this tired resignation, an almost serf-like mentality, to the goings on of world power and special interest groups. Little me? What can I do?

There is a small little void in our sense of history - the modern happenings of our day are not seen as history. The wars in Iraq, the election debacle in Florida, even 9/11 - they take place post history in our perceptions, our narratives, our lives. We seem to have a sense that we ALREADY live in the apocalypse, that the story if history has already been told and there is nothing more to add.

Where does this come from? And how does one escape it?