You don't want to fall into a "siege mentality:" a strong feeling that you are in constant danger or are surrounded by enemies.
Still, you can't help feeling you are in the midst of groups of really terrible, ignorant people. People more ignorant than you, and they all have more money and power than you do.
"Paranoia" - a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others.
Still you remember William S. Burroughs pointing out that "a paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on."
And you come across this quote from Burroughs... and you realize you are indeed a shit spotter:
"You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. … We have observed that most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus. Now your virus is an obligate cellular parasite and my contention is that evil is quite literally a virus parasite occupying a certain brain area which we may term the RIGHT center. The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. And right here we must make a diagnostic distinction between the hard-core virus-occupied shit and a plain, ordinary, mean no-good son of a bitch. Some of these sons of bitches don't cause any trouble at all, just want to be left alone." - Wm. S. Burroughs