Why?  Why do the authorities allow the criminal gangs that terrorize neighborhoods and entire cities to thrive as they do?  Politicians, attorneys general, district attorneys, and the FBI have the power to destroy the gangs and prevent most of the crimes they commit, the murdering and raping and human trafficking and the endless flood of drugs across the border, the hateful murdering murdering murdering of faithful husbands and little girls in their Sunday dresses.  Yet the people with the power to stop men like Hamal and Lupo and Parker often facilitate their activities.  Maybe the majority of politicians and their appointees are corrupt, but not all.  Are those uncorrupted individuals so often ineffective because they are cowards or lazy or stupid?  Does loyalty to party, class, club, or ideology matter to them more than doing what is right?  Why?  Why can't such people see that the crime and anarchy they permit to flourish in poor and middle-class neighborhoods will eventually metastasize into the enclaves of the elite where they live their privileged lives?  Why do they have contempt for those not in their circle?  Why can't they see that being of the people rather than ruling over them is the only way that they themselves will survive?

Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance.

When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity.  Whole societies do go mad.  History is filled with chilling examples.