[So, my conclusion is that this apathy you mention is due in large part to the deceit shown on the MSM evening news and socialist controlled newspaper system across the nation.]
Bread and Circuses - brought to us by, guess who, the collectivist sponsors of the MSM.
The appetite of tyranny always feeds upon the tyranny of the appetite.
The collective feeds upon the appetite of the individual; and BIG money is spent in finding new and creative ways of manufacturing those appetites.
Apathy seems to be a condition desired by our collectivist would-be bee keepers. Apparently appathetic bees make better consumers; they never question what is being fed to them.
"Buy more, bee happy" is a central thematic pilar in George Lucas'
THX1138.
Many of us are beeginning to recognize that communism and corporatism are really just two forms of the same thing: collectivism. (Robert Heinlein illustrated both forms of collectivism in Starship Troopers.)
The collective's nature is to subjugate the individual for the benefit of the collective hive.
IMHO, the explicit intention of the writers of the Declaration of Independence was for the collective, the state, to serve the individual by preserving the individual's inalienable rights; and not for the individual to serve the collective, as is becoming the case now - and as has been the case in the cyclical past.
Fascism is classicaly defined as a governmental structure which becomes the object of mandatory worship and servitude.
This was precisely the reason the 1st amendment is first. A wall was errected between the religion of secular humanism (aka Baal) and the institutional tool of government - which is the Republic; and the individual was empowered with freedom of speach in order that they may give warning and form a defense against the tyrannical instinct of the hive.