Now that the Fog of War has well and truly descended upon the global playing field, and the news is lying to us all the time, we can step back, ignore the rabble-rousing, and ask some deeper questions.  What exactly is the United States doing about its population increase?  What is the United States doing to modernize its agriculture in the face of oil imports being cut off and the climate changing?  What is the United States doing to increase the productivity of its work force?  These questions merely beg the question of what Albert Bartlett would have to say about that kind of thinking, for things can not increase indefinitely.

It is interesting to see the kinds of terrorists backed by governments around the world.  There are assassins who go around killing Presidents and microbiologists and the like, because they are told to do so.  There are also corporations who go around killing people with heart disease, cancer, and medical mistake in much larger numbers, and are given immunity from lawsuit by law in some cases when they do so.  There are laws preventing people from receiving effective plant-based medicine, and causing lots of untold deaths via that angle as well.  The food, and soil itself, has been stripped of its vitamins and minerals, with the good food being grown special for the elite class.  We know what the United States is doing about its population increase.  The repeal of Obamacare and lack of access to basic nutrition, housing, medicine, and education are just small pieces of the bigger picture.

The United States is one of the top three oil producers now.  It doesn’t intend to change its agricultural practices of stripping the soil bare of the microorganisms required for soil health any time soon, nor does it intend to stop watering the desert and causing sinkholes.  The other countries will lead the way into restoring their traditional and effective agricultural practices long before the United States manages to do so.

There are less working age people with full-time jobs than there have been for a long time now.  The robots have taken over manufacturing, and are working their way into retail, as well as agriculture.  Inequality of income is also mirrored in inequality of employment.  Productivity is up, but so are the unintended consequences, the casting off of risks onto those who can not bear them.

This is how roads and bridges fall apart while B-21 bombers and fast-breeder reactors that don’t work yet get built.  There are places where, when Empire centralizes, and squeezes its fingers for more star systems to slip through, you can find yourself outside of the grasp of Empire.  These places increase as the grasping hands of the senile and greedy squeeze tighter.  Empire loves to seed excessive violence in these places, in the hopes that they will beg to be back under Empire’s boot heel.  That’s why they’ll infiltrate and fund your local protest group.

Some analysts think that the psychopaths and sociopaths who populate the working groups to steer civilization have no right or wrong, no good people or bad people, only winning the great game in mind.  I’m not so sure, actually, that winning is the goal.  It was the Gnostics who clued me into this.  When God is not a good guy or a bad guy, when utopia does not exist, when perfection does not exist, then we might as well run this place ourselves.  However, running this place ourselves is not the same as winning.

Surviving another day is not the same as being the best, nor should it be.  Those who are at the top know that they don’t know everything.  They are not omniscient.  They are therefore also not omnipotent.  Not even close.  If they’ve been playing the game long enough, they know that they’ll never be these things, and stop trying to win, just as the old Buddhist monk stops trying to be happy.  He simply is, right here in the present, and losing is sometimes better than winning, getting lost is sometimes better than following the well-trod path forever and ever without straying.