Incentives and consequences mold society. The extreme rich have a near monopoly on the incentives that create government policy via their economic power. They're above the law. Using whatever means the public has to impose consequences on them is all that's left over. A rapist is the president they rallied behind. They should be afraid.
When fear mongering around the national debt occurs I feel inclined to encourage people to research modern monetary theory. I am not an economist but it's obvious that many cultural assumptions around how money works are either intentionally wrong or the residue of outdated thinking.
You can't have a functioning democracy without consequences for the bad behavior of wealthy people that mask their sociopathy in mounds of legalese, financial abstraction, bought off politicians and media PR. If the law doesn't do it, then the burden fall on the shoulders of private citizens. We've demonized people for this view but I think it's heathier that we culturally normalize it and stop pretending.
This is the same tool the right has used to destroy progressive democracy online. Dump tons of money into pro libertarian right wing bots and overwhelm the voices that call for money out of politics and universal heath care with screams of "libtard" and "woke".
All the right wingers yelling about elite conspiracies, pedo's etc. Trumpism is a group of them wallowing in plain site. Right wingers sure got quiet. It's called white identity politics and big tech sure flocked to it when the door opened. DEI for wealthy white sociopaths
Charlie Kirk was a theocrat. He hid behind freedom of speech with the intent to remove it for everyone else once in power. Freedom of speech is completely incompatible with theocracy. The reason people like Peter Thiel prop him up isn't to make people smart - it's to dumb them down and legitimize the worst in people for political gain.
I'm more concerned with the fact that billionaires have a monopoly on the incentives that create policy and can afford to fund large scale social engineering operations to get whatever they want. Charlie Kirk doesn't exist in a vacuum. Peter Thiel funded him and Thiel has said openly he wants a dictatorship. That is why Kirk was in the propagandist role he was in, and why he is now dead.