Things are off-the-charts bad. As they have been for many years.
I don't know if this is generally the lot in this culture of an honest man, an artist and a scholar, who tries to live and work deliberately and honestly, but I do know that it is the lot that fell to me in this culture along these lines. The folks in charge seem a bit craven, but the prosperity of the industrial mechanism seems to wipe away all sin in that regard.
So, you know, let's see where it leads.