Citizen's United
And you didn't even mention the Citizen's United decision by the SCOTUS and its toxic effect on the political discourse.
I think most people just want to live their lives without a lot of bother and they get annoyed when external circumstances force them to start paying attention. But once they do pay attention big changes can happen quickly.
So the powers-that-be may be able to keep things bumbling along for another 5 or 10 years but at some point the shtuff hits the fan and a lot of clueless people are going to be wondering "Wha' happened?". I kind of think the middle to latter half of this century may get pretty ugly with the effects of the climate changing rapidly and wars over resources. I feel there's a good chance the world population of homo sapiens will be substantially lower in 2100 than it is now in 2011.
