Since the survivors encountered Negan and the saviours it's been "survivors try to fight group, get beaten, get given a ridiculous set of rules by the people who beat them and after that they slowly lose it until they eventually fight back and win"
It was that way with Negan and it seems to be going the same way with Alpha.

Only difference is that they've had seven years between Negan and Alpha, but they don't seem to have made much progress.
I was delighted to see people using shield walls in 10-01 but it seems to have fallen to the wayside.
As well as that even after beating Negan the survivors must have known about the risk of human enemies, yet most people seem to have only basic training and are armed and armoured extremely poorly.
As well as that they seem to never use force multipliers.
For example they could have trained a few people to be half decent scout-snipers in that 7 year period and crafted a few ghillie suits; which with appropriate tactics and training will make a person almost invisible.
They never claimed much in the way of tech either. They went into a city to grab a cart, however they must have known of at least a few military bases, there they could have grabbed up things like tear gas, gas masks and most of all, night vision equipment; the latter of which keeps for a long time and is pretty hard wearing (case in point I have an old cascade tube that I've turned into a night scope; for stargazing. It's from the seventies and is only now starting to show signs of age in that it isn't as bright as it used to be), stuff that was made post 2000 would still hold up very well now; powering it may be an issue as batteries have a finite lifetime, however making batteries that produce the 3-6v needed wouldn't be all that hard and they have working walkie talkies, so they clearly have batteries.

Those seven years seemed to have been relatively peaceful so why Eugene wasn't making more bullets I don't understand either, some communities had it hard but others had an alright run and evidenced by the fact they still have school lessons there is spare time to innovate.

I understand they want to rotate the cast and don't want to make everyone a walker killing machine however the whisperers just feel like Negan reimagined and the survivors seem to have made very little progress when it comes to surviving, the only thing they seem to have gotten better at is medical treatment post ZA.