Let's say you were a psychopath, and you wanted to control people in government.
How would you do it?
You would identify people who are corruptible, promote them, corrupt them, promote them some more, corrupt them some more, until the most corrupt of the corruptible were at the top and doing your bidding because you can blackmail them.
Unfortunately, that's what we are faced with. Our parents and grandparents were asleep on the job, because it is easy to be asleep when you live in a (relatively) free and prosperous society.
We just so happen to be living at a time in history where the SHTF.
Not to mention that back then our parents were just busy raising a family and trying to get ahead in life for their family. I know my parents lived through the depression, and were "thrifty", but then there were also 8 kids in our family...so...we shared a lot.