Well a start on the governmental side seems to be coming from the House Freedom Caucus as they are standing tough against the sort of government under Boehner/McConnell/Obama that makes good people despair. Boehner is trying to force them to knuckle under, and I think a really big part of that is because they provide an alternative narrative that is a huge threat to business as usual because it breaks up the learned helplessness.
I think that’s the problem, people in this country are sort of like the rat in a maze who is entirely too used to being shocked when it pushes one button, and fed when it pushes another. The rats need to break out, find the maze-making/rat trapping s.o.b., and give him/her a good (if squeaky) seeing to!
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with cause and effect, just arbitrary “rules” which seem to be designed to induce learned helplessness (which I am pretty sure was a term coined to describe rats tortured into a state of fear/paralysis in maze experiments).