You’re Not Crazy. It IS Rigged.

You’re not crazy. It is rigged.

You’re exhausted, pissed off, and low-key ashamed that you’re not “doing more.”

You watch rights erode, cops gear up like an occupying army, politicians lie straight to your face, and somehow the story is still that you are the problem because you’re “apathetic.”

The truth is uglier and simpler: the system is built to keep you numb, scared, and convinced that nothing you do will matter.

The solution is not fixing your mindset. The answer is learning to see the game that’s being run on you.

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The system is built to scare you quiet

Start with the obvious: the modern American state is wired for control.

Militarized police, sprawling surveillance, and harsh criminal penalties create a constant background threat. Harsh federal charges and long sentences can flip a single bad night into years of your life disappearing.

Regular people can do math. Even if they don’t sit down with a spreadsheet, they feel it in their gut:

• Worst case for speaking up or stepping out of line? Prison, job loss, losing your kids, being blacklisted, being labeled dangerous.

• Best case? Maybe something changes a little, maybe not. You probably never know if you mattered at all.

When those are the stakes, “keep your head down, keep your job, don’t attract attention” stops being cowardice and starts being basic survival logic.

Imagine a single parent with two kids, no savings, and a boss who’d drop them in a heartbeat. They’re not going to gamble their entire life on a protest, a strike, or an action they’re pretty sure will be ignored or crushed.

They’re not apathetic. They’re cornered.

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How we got from rage to “whatever”

People weren’t born checked out. Apathy is something this system earned.

Decades of broken promises, corruption, corporate capture, and gridlock have trained people to see politics as a rigged theater where the script is written by donors and lobbyists.

Elections come and go, but the same interests stay rich, the same communities get hammered, and the same talking points get recycled.

Then there’s the media environment:

• Every day is a new scandal, outrage, or “historic” crisis.

• Yesterday’s horror is forgotten in 24 hours.

• Contradictory narratives scream at you from every direction.

It’s psychological smog. You breathe it in long enough and “I don’t care about politics” starts to feel less like ignorance and more like a shield. Tuning out looks like self-defense: if nothing is real and everyone is lying, why let it fry your nervous system?

What gets called “apathy” is often just burnout mixed with betrayal.

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Everyone waiting for someone else

Even when people do care, there’s another trap: the coordination problem.

Millions of people are angry. Most of them are scared. Each person is quietly thinking: “I’m not going to be the first one to risk my job, my body, my family. If a lot of people move, I’ll move too.”

But everyone is waiting for “a lot of people.” So nothing big happens. Not because no one cares, but because no one wants to be the first nail sticking up when the hammer comes down.

On top of that, polarization and culture-war bullshit do the system’s favorite job for it. Instead of “we’re getting screwed by the same people,” the story becomes “the real enemy is my neighbor with the wrong sign in their yard.” Media and politicians feed that because a fragmented public is an obedient public.

Division and mutual suspicion make solidarity almost impossible. No solidarity, no sustained action. No sustained action, no real threat to power.

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You make sense in a rigged game

Here’s the part nobody tells you: your reactions make sense.

• Feeling numb after constant bad news? Normal.

• Ignoring political stories because they all blend into one long scam? Normal.

• Focusing on rent, food, kids, sanity over “Saving Democracy”? Normal.

If you feel like nothing you do matters, it’s not because you’re weak. It’s because the institutions around you have spent years proving that your time, vote, and voice are expendable while money and connections are sacred.

A lot of money and power are invested in you staying exactly where you are: exhausted, isolated, and convinced that you’re alone in feeling this way.

That doesn’t mean there’s no way out. It means the first step isn’t “be braver” or “care more.” The first step is to recognize that your so‑called “apathy” is a logical response to structures that punish engagement and reward silence.

Once you see that, the shame starts to crack. And when shame cracks, space opens up for something else: choice.

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Your first move

This isn’t the part where you’re told to become a perfect activist overnight. That’s just another way to set you up to feel like a failure.

Try this instead:

• Before you close this, pause and name which part hits you hardest: fear, numbness, or “nothing matters.”

• Message one person who feels like you do and send this post with a line like: “This is exactly why I’ve been checked out.”

If you want to go further, stick around. The next post on “A Curious Stack” breaks down how your feed and media diet are engineered to keep you numb, and how to start breaking that spell without lying to yourself.

You’re not the problem. You’re the terrain they’ve been trying to control.

The fact you’re still questioning it at all means they haven’t won yet.

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Stay curious.

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