Anything done in this culture must be against the grain. There is immense industrial prosperity, with which the people presently in charge have absolutely nothing to do -- a legacy of the post-WW2 industrial structures. At present, the game is that one goes along with the crooked game as a crooked game, or one dies in the street. (Unless cushioned by sufficient wealth to avoid dealing with these sorts of encounters.)
At the second setback, the peculiar goings-on at the JD, I was surprised that my pointing out the specific problems was taken as a general criticism of the system, a sort of d --- all, make all things new, etc. In retrospect, I should probably have thought closely about that reaction. It did, in a manner, indicate the nature of things.
In the widest possible view: making the citizenry accountable for the direction of the civilization & culture puts the minds and consciences of the citizenry in play, in a way fundamentally different than in previous, more primitive (or perhaps primordial) systems.
Importantly, this deliberate corruption isn't a delict to those who are doing it -- they generally seem to think that we should evolve past such compunctions, and I'm more than a bit concerned that we might.
On a completely separate note, it appears that 20 F with a wind chill in the single digits is apparently the low bound for restful sleep in the open. A moveable marker -- when things had just begun to go bad, I couldn't sleep a wink without 40F and sunlight.