I agreed with you up to "life long politicians are to blame". This infers perhaps if we had term limits, we wouldn't have this problem which is laughable. It's way more complicated than that. The west has always had a weakness since the civil rights movement started destroying the objective moral code and replace it with subjective morality. This led to the degradation of the society and all people in power began to justify immorality on these grounds. Its been a downward spiral since then. Universal suffrage democracy and forced racial integration are bigger culprits than term limits.