@disquisitive Yes, bitterness does thrive when you work your ass off and get nothing to show for it while someone lazier gets ahead through cronyism. Then again, I’d wager that you are more privileged than you know. You probably never got wiped out by something like a car accident or major illness either, or else you’d know that life can throw some pretty nasty curveballs that can bring even the greatest of us to our knees.
When you spend a year or so trying to get any job you can but most of the places you go won’t even take your application because they already got two or three thousand to sort through in the hour or two since the posting went up. Learn a trade? I have two, and it’s not like CNC machinists earn poverty wages. Go to college? My GI bill wouldn’t have covered even half the in-state tuition required to finish my degree, and most people don’t even have that.
So if you want to know why bitterness thrives, take a look in the mirror; people who cannot understand that toast doesn’t always fall butter-side up heaping derision on those who don’t realize how lucky they are cause a lot of bitterness. If it were as easy as you claim, if hard work were all it took any more, then rest assured that the world would be far different than it is.
But it’s easier to call people lazy than to acknowledge that the world as you know it no longer exists, and it’s blatantly obvious that you went the easy route on that one.