In assessing the present condition of things, the endemic corruption and open hostility on the part of our alleged representatives to the needs and concerns of the mass of the population, the question tends increasingly to revolve around whether politics is getting worse, or whether we are just getting a better handle on how bad it has always been. It does seem that western democracies, having failed to deliver on their promise of enabling the mass to take control over the conditions of our own lives, have delivered instead corrupt oligarchies serving vested corporate interests at the expense of everyone else. Less representatives of the popular will, our illustrious representatives better resemble wholly owned subsidiaries of financial institutions and transnational corporations whose idea of social responsibility is to instrumentalise global production for their own self-enrichment and reduce the global economy to a giant casino.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/04/politics-getting-worse/