They don’t protest it because a few years later something worse was going on, and a few years later something even worse, and so on. Nothing gets fixed, it just gets concealed behind some new scandal that people worry even more about. That’s why national unity and trust in institutions is almost at rock bottom, and why groups are starting to riot more often or resort to mob justice on social media

So what do citizens do short of a revolution (no sensible person ever wants that)?

I wonder if returning soldiers from D-Day and Iwo Jima would have allowed themselves to be crushed in similar circumstances. I doubt it very much.

(Seems to me both the zeitgeist and ethics have changed greatly in the past 75 years. The question is why.)

BTW, I note this story is now here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28079154