Well, history shows us that this kind of thing happens from time to time. No society continues upward indefinitely; they all collapse at some point, or at least regress while other societies overtake them. This happened famously to the Romans, where they lost specialization of labor and technology and turned into feudal serfs. It happened to the Hittites, whose culture we have little left from. China turned inward for centuries until around WWII. Later, under Mao, they oppressed educated people, putting them to work in the fields instead of using their talents; only recently have they recovered from that stupidity. Britain used to be the world's most powerful empire and look what happened there.

And you're absolutely right about truly despicable people profiting from this. I think Alex Jones is a prime example of this. I know someone who's a big fan of his; it's really discouraging how even a reasonably intelligent (but fairly gullible) person can be taken by a con-artist like him and even people close to them can't sway their opinion.