There seems to be a lot of learned helplessness and proud disengagement from generation X and the millennial generation. "Oh well, what can I do" is a large part of why about half of eligible voters sat out the 2016 election. It's also the basis for a lot of anti-mustachian behavior.
Disengagement and a focus on oneself was perhaps a predictable outcome from the first American generations who were unable to do as well as their parents. The experience of gen X and millennials is to have no pensions, no unions, investments wiped out in 2000 and 2008, no ability to buy a home in one's early 20's, sporadic access to health insurance, student loans for often-useless degrees, and not starting families until in one's 30's due to a focus on career. Contrast this lifestyle with the experiences of the baby boomers or silent generation, who could get solid-paying union or union-influenced jobs that would allow them to buy a tract house straight out of high school. People now work very long hours and drive very long and costly commutes. This extension in the time it takes to build an adult life meant people had less time for civic engagement. It's hard to be confident from a bedroom in your parents' house, much less run for public office in your 20s as generations of Americans had done before. The inability to achieve cultural norms (generally, of consumption ability) made many young people think they needed to focus on their own lives rather than addressing societal concerns.
Of course, one way out of this crisis of confidence is offered by ideology. Confidence could be regained by joining people who see everything through an ideological lens that says the cause of our dissatisfaction is some other demographic group (minorities if right-wing, the 1% if left-wing). Thus the only people with confidence to speak or participate in government are the simplistic ideologues. Meanwhile the pragmatists are still trying to boost their confidence by focused on advancing their careers or consumption. Political participation became a mark of being a brainwashed wingbat, while obsessing about careers, BMWs, and houses while not caring about politics became the new way to be sophisticated.
The problem is that politics matter a lot. Take your same skillset and career experience and drop it into a country with authoritarian government, high corruption, poor educational infrastructure, or ethnic conflicts / fragmentation. How successful would you be in Zambia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Sudan, Sri Lanka, North Korea, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, Ukraine, or Pakistan? No matter how hard you work in those environments, there is a low ceiling. At some point, you must pay for private education for your kids, private security guards, bribes, more bribes, extortion fees, and high inflation - all in an environment where long-term investments (e.g. a factory, modern equipment, or a nice house) don't make sense because of the risk it will be seized/stolen or you'll be forced to flee.
No amount of "hard work", "resiliency", "work ethic", "strength", or "grit" allows a person to escape the constraints of their surroundings unless they apply those qualities to flee to places with better political systems. Even then, the life of a refugee is far from easy.
The other problem is that ideologues cannot solve problems BECAUSE they are not pragmatists. Ideologues are more interested in virtue-signaling one another to gain status within their in-groups (loud forced public prayers if right-wing, language codes and thought crimes if left-wing) and force-fitting facts into ideological narratives. The more pragmatists avoid politics, the more we end up with dysfunctional government, conflict, and the sort of apathy-spiral seen in failing nations.
History is full of examples of countries that went from functionality and prosperity to a collapse of freedom and the economy within just a few years after corrupt, hyper-ideological government took over. Germany in the 1930s, Argentina in the 90s, Venezuela in the 2000s, Iran in the late 70s, Greece in the 2000s, Turkey in the 2010s, etc. It is naive to think something makes the U.S. immune no matter how bad our governance gets.
MMM is a decent role model in this regard. By refusing to fall into the trap of consumerism/careerism, he became FI and then applies some of his time working as an influencer - advocating for bike lanes and a low-consumption high-fitness/resiliency lifestyle. Yet he would have done better to incorporate civic engagement into his pre-FI life. If all Gen Xers and millennials wait until they are millionaires to volunteer on their first campaign, the world isn't getting better anytime soon. It's time to get over the socioeconomic insecurity and the shortsighted focus on one's own bank account. Civic engagement is a part of a balanced lifestyle. You can arrange for your own personal form of advocacy to fit within the context of your social life, family life, and interests. The alternative is to passively consume Netflix and Facebook on your iPhone while working long hours in pursuit of some benchmark of consumption, at which point you expect to finally find the confidence to express a set of values. I wonder how many multi-millionaires in Venezuela wish they had spent their time differently in hindsight, now that it means nothing to be a multi-millionaire in Venezuela.
It matters a lot and there's a lot you should be doing.