The idea that the world is corrupt and unfair was the subject of medieval morality plays and sermons. They taught a vast population to reconcile itself to misery and subjugation by promising rewards in the afterlife. But in a democracy, everyone is moderately free and potentially subject to rewards in this life, though few receive the rewards they think they deserve. Thus, the perspective of the medieval morality play—that the world is hopelessly corrupt—gets deployed to rationalize injured merit. – American Scholar
