I remember when I was growing up in rural upstate NY back in the late 1960's, a "welfare rights activist" was brought to our school. She was enormous, unmarried, with a brood of children, and was apparently outraged at the pittance she was being given to survive on. At that time, in that place, I'm pretty sure no one was buying it. There was a lot of whispering behind hands and outright revulsion. We thought the whole notion of being an "activist" for this particular cause was outrageous. Mind you, this was not a wealthy community. It was mostly farmers getting their first taste of an increasingly inflation/recession-driven economy. Now she'd probably have thousands of followers on some social media platform, and be held up as a positive role model of "democracy in action." Where I grew up there was no cable TV, high-speed internet, and we had a party line for our telephone service. Today this woman would have these "essentials" provided for her. In my old age I'm thinking we are forever destined to repeat the same cycles you describe above. This isn't an aberration, and it is currently being encouraged and fueled by an elite of bad actors. The next stage, beyond our current welfare state, will be the cashless economy and Universal Basic Income. Think it can't happen? How many of us thought the notion of an American President attaching his name to free smart phones for the poor was impossible when it happened during Obama's Presidency? We're deliberately being divided, to be left snarling over the scraps of a once great economy. I'd love to believe The Donald can reverse all this in 4 years while we slip back into comfortable slumber, but they call it The Deep State for a reason and it has one Hell of a head start.