Totally not interested in wading into the political discussions that will no doubt ensue but wanted to take up some of the comments the OP made about ATC and the type of job they do.
I had the opportunity to sit down next to a radar controller recently while they were on the job and was blown away by their multitasking ability and how they could hold information and situational awareness.
On the radio you often have long silences and delays in responses or get a 'standby' and I used to imagine they needed the time to put down their coffee cup, take their feet of the table and get organised and that their "sorry you were in with a ground station, say again" meant they weren't paying attention to your call.
I had no idea how much time they spent liasing with other controllers/towers etc behind the scene which explained a lot of the dead air and standbys you get.
I was most stunned though by how they could be having a thoughtful conversation with me while aircraft were making calls in the background (sometimes multiple consectutive calls when people hit the button near the same time) and they would pause mid sentence with me and pass instructions to each aircraft, sometimes giving quite complicated and thoughtful calls - to change speed, offer route changes etc and then explain to me what was going on ("yeah see how ABC is catching DEF so if I can slow down ABC by 20 knots they will maintain separation until they clear XYZ who is going to climb in a minute and RST is going to want to get an early descent so this will make it easier for that to happen in about 5 minutes" they then suddenly stop again with me, hit a button and call the controller on the next sector saying "can I descend GHI into your airspace after postion X?" and then they continue on with our previous conversation while drawing a line on the screen to calculate when someone else will reach another position...
I was amazed. I gained new respect for them. Another pilot with us asked later, are you guys gamers? Several nodded.
non political interlude concluded.