I really like this article. I often find myself displaying many of these same tendencies. The article hints at a class war that the general population is unaware of because (cue absurd paranoia) the people in power always have us distracted the from important problems. I dislike protestors that smoke pot and play guitar rather than studying/obtaining the skills required to better society, but the occupy movement was on to the problem. Big corporations and money run the government and, as a whole, the general public lacks the funds to change it. We need to educate, infiltrate, and modify. The problem isn't that young people can't make change, it's that after they put in the leg work to do so they want the monetary reward that everyone else in that position gets so the cycle never changes. Luckily there is at least one Snowden. tl;dr
I just downloaded the book; im excited to read it
About the statement on young people, there is (generalization incoming) sort of two groups in my generation that seek change (25.) There are those who buy into the system and are as you describe, but there are those who do not buy in and rather separate and build among themselves, avoiding the pitfalls you describe. You'd get either to admit Snowden is a hero, but one group is trying to abandon a system that they think can't be repaired. The other is trying to keep it on life support. Yet another book added to the queue.