What is going on?

We in the US of A survived a surreal election year.  Now we are panicking on command for a series of legal changes our own leadership put in place to force themselves to fix the problem.
They didn't fix the problem, so the ridiculousness continues.
Thirty years ago, I read a science fiction book in which there were no countries anymore.  People lived in corporatocracies ruled by a board.  The ruling class were the major share holders, the people in the c-suites of each little "city-state" were the political leaders and dictators.  People trained to work in that company, they were schooled according to the needs of that industry.  People that lost their job had to leave, and if they had a spouse and family, they lost them.  The spaces between the places were filled with the desperate that were born outside of the protection of one of the business monsters (and thus not schooled to the needs of one), and those that had been ejected from their own birth-company.
The story centered on the changes in mindset a good little company worker had when his spouse did something that got her fired.  He ended up going with her, and his very low opinion of those people not employed and living outside was changed in a slow but eye-opening way.  He had seen them as barely human, unintelligent, incapable of producing anything of worth, and criminalistic (of course all activities outside the companies were criminalized by the companies).
It was not a great book, and the fact that I remember it a lot anymore is a sign that there are things going on that we need to pay attention to.
It is hard to pay attention.  Most of us are dependent on the media, which is frequently (if not always) owned by corporate America.  Fifty years ago, every snow storm was not a state of emergency.  When a nightmarish murder occurred, people were shocked, but didn't start talking about tearing down the whole neighborhood where it occurred because it was "those poor people"  When prices went up to ridiculous levels, we didn't blame those darn minimum wage workers for wanting to make enough to not be homeless and hungry.
Most of us are asleep at the wheel.  We have a job, get a raise every so often, granted it is usually less than the amount that the cost of living went up, but it is better than before that.  We make a budget, take every credit card they let us have because our budget doesn't cover anything unexpected, and just keep living from paycheck to paycheck.
We work most days.  We are tired. We are stressed.  The news about the economy is scary and since it blames those darn minimum wage workers, those stinking illegal immigrants taking all those jobs that pay less than minimum wage, and those entitled individuals that think that just because they are blind or 90 or lost their arms and legs fighting for their country that someone should give them about what a minimum wage worker would make.  And, those people take drugs, drink cheap alcohol, smoke cigarettes, what the heck is wrong with them.
Granted, they can't afford a psychoanalyst to help them make sense of the fact that their life sucks, but how dare they use our money for that.
Which leads to corporate welfare.  We hate giving the poor and maimed barely enough to live out of our hard earned tax dollars, but we are scared to stop keeping the owners of big businesses set up in style.
It is OK to be a failed individual living on the street until you overdose/freeze/or are murdered, but a corporate big-wig with only one house?-unthinkable. 
All those scared people with jobs, watching the news don't get that those big businesses need employees to work just as much as the employees need a job.  Sure, most of them now have enough money to sit on their butts for 400 years without working, but those guys like to eat and eat well.  That requires someone to grow the food, pick the food/butcher the meat, drive it to market, process it, cook it, and serve it to them.  I have not met a lot of rich women that knew how to plant/pick/comb/weave/sew cotton to make clothes, forget the whole silk and wool thing.  And if no one is in the sweat shops sewing up those designer frocks, what can they outdo each other with.  Rich people like electricity, heat/air/plumbing.   They like their cars big and functional.  They like to go on vacation and have someone carry their bags, put a mint on their pillow and bring them breakfast.
The question is not what do we do if they take our jobs, the question is what do they do when no one is working for them?  Being filthy rich is not more fun than being homeless and poor when you can't make people do what you want, sell you what you want, treat you like your special.
The point is, they are not better and more deserving than the rest of the people.
But there are people that will do anything for money, and not just the rich, but the people they hire to kill for them, to destroy for them, to do those things that make regular old Joes that work for a living, afraid.

So what can be done?  We send our young people to wars because someone said to go fight and die for wars that only benefit the rich.
 What is wrong with us?
Are we just lemmings on an overpopulated planet?  (Hint-hint, the Lemming-thing was made up by someone for TV in the 50's.  We humans just might be the only "Lemmings" on this planet.)