Other than opting out to the extent that we are allowed and making personal contributions as you have done, there is no option but to vote for the lesser evil. Given how much it is clear that you care, surely you don't want the greater one.

Selfishness, as you imply in my view, exists across the population. It is not simply the province of politicians. Politicians, like billionaires, simply have more opportunity to practise it at the expense of others. However, as a generalisation, the everyday 'man or woman in the street' is complicit and just as uncaring about how they damage even their immediate contacts, let alone remote populations or the whole 7.5 billion across the World.

I don't believe that you are a 'doomer' but rather a realist. At the same time, I believe that you can take your own challenge to the rest of us and start doing in a slightly different and, perhaps, more positive way.

Yes, I know that sounds absurd because there is no doubt that, given the list of positive contributions you have made and still make, clearly you have been and are 'doing' incredibly positive things. However, as an educator, I'm sure that you will be aware that modelling is one of the most powerful ways to teach and to change behaviour. What you do is an excellent model. So, why are you berated as a 'doomer'? I'd suggest it is because you highlight so much of what is wrong - and although I totally agree with your perspective and have 'tried' similarly, I now see how the negative turns people off. It doesn't matter how true it is, indeed I suggest that the more truthful & obvious it is, the less most people want to face it.

The reality is that most 'ordinary' (of course no one is but I mean in the context of the polity) people have little opportunity to change the culture or major decisions of the powerful, except over usually very long time periods. Most people, too, in my view cannot cope well with pessimism, callousness, parsimony, bullying, aggression and all of the negative features of our societies that you have mentioned. It hurts and they shut down or shut it out. Some, as in my case, simply give up and decide to quit life altogether.

So, you are not 'trying', you are doing but you may not see the results of your work during your lifetime. Regardless, the fact is that you will effect change on the part of some and even if that is just a few, it still is important. As the unfortunately now regularly demeaned Margaret Mead said,

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world for, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”

My suggestion that you accept your own challenge, then, is that you can, without any additional effort or sacrifice of principle, do more by focusing, in your writing, on positive activities towards change.

In other words, if you were to edit the negativity out of this piece and simply and clearly delineate the positive practices and why they make a difference, my view is that your doing will positively affect far more readers and therefore effect greater distribution of your message and result in more change for the better.

Of course, I'm simply someone who cares and does what little he can. Perhaps I have it entirely wrong. I don't live in your nation but one that has all the same hallmarks of insanity so I feel that I understand and empathise with your frustrations.

I also feel, however, that to some degree at least, what you've written is a release - an outburst of frustration. I feel sure that you are capable of far better than that.

Regardless of whether I am right or wrong, I thank you for expressing your views and being strong and bold in doing so. I am someone who is not phased by straight talking, no matter how hard it may be to take. I respect those who tell it as it is because I know where I stand in relation to them and therefore can trust them.

Thank you.