Irrational rulers can’t control the world how they want to. They can’t get what they want. Reason is required to be effective. But they can control and hurt others. They can put people in jail, redirect train cars away from a wheat harvest, or get someone fired and blacklisted from other jobs (as Wynand did). They can move off the gold standard and inflate the currency, raise taxes, use laws and lawsuits to stop you from starting the business you want to, deplatform you, debank you, defraud you, bomb or invade your country, regulate the products you buy so they’re worse and more expensive, etc. They can create disasters not only for themselves but also for others.
I don’t think it’s hopeless. I think you can make a try at a good life. If you don’t try to do something big, the elites/rulers/powerful are unlikely to try to squash you personally. If you’re good at stuff, you can often navigate society in a way where bad stuff affecting large groups doesn’t ruin your life (it helps to e.g. not be poor, which is reasonably manageable in Western countries today despite all the extra difficulty).
But I don’t think the drooling beast is just ignorable. If you put no effort into avoiding conflicts with power, and no effort into navigating life to avoid being squashed by Goliath, then you’re at high risk. Saying the beast doesn’t own the world in some moral or spiritual sense, and knowing the beast is not successful or happy, and knowing the beast can’t cause the outcomes it wants very effectively … helps some. But it isn’t the full issue.