Today as I took public transit through neighborhoods with storefront after storefront vacated and/or boarded up, I witnessed a family (with a very elderly wheelchair-bound female relative) talking about how Grandma was going to be 100 years old and how she should be congratulated by Willard Scott and "President" BO. These poor people were all aglow with this idea (no disrespect intended for the elderly lady) and they would not, could not, see how the country was disintegrating around them.
I have seen generations here of exactly what you describe. I started out in social work 30 years ago, until I realized that finding that one needle in a haystack that realized the Democratic party would never do anything but give them a hand out, instead of a hand up, I gave up.