Yeah, basically this. 9/11 fundamentally changed the American psyche and ushered in a massive ramp-up of the neoliberal system. Covid didn't really change a whole lot of anything (the biggest problem with it in many ways) but did utterly and fully convince me that we're doomed as a species.

Nothing has ever illuminated for me so clearly that an unmanageable number of people are too stupid, hateful, or whatever else to work together to overcome an existential crisis. A significant amount of people would rather feel correct and kill all of us than work out their issues. So if humanity is like 30-40% evil, and about 40-50% "neutral" (aka myopically self-interested but not actively violent or hateful), that leaves only 10% "goodness" at most. And I'm sorry but a group that's only 10% good doesn't deserve to go on running things.