1) I think “being negative” is going to become a great deal more popular. And a lot more common. Fear and anger are on the rise. Most folks only get in touch with it when their bellies are empty or their health wanes. But, I can see it in expressions of culture. Folks are more angry and more afraid.

2) The current pace of spending on healthcare is unsustainable. There is a factor of math at work. You simply can’t expect to raise the cost of care 9% year over year when the ability to pay for the same services raises 2%. Graphed out those two lines run away from each other. Obamacare accelerates this cost curve. When the profits dive, desperation sets in. Where this goes. How it plays out. Only time will tell.

In all seriousness thank you for writing this – I truly believe we share some fundamental deep-down sort of things. I am sure you have experienced the lump in your throat before, that comes when you think these things through and mean them and know enough to mean them. To know that people would not only do these things which are so terrifying, but also to come up with them. We are both (as far as we are claiming) reverse engineering these strategies, coming at them from outside.

But Jon, if you didn’t already know it comes down to good and evil. There are in fact only two teams that comprise all other teams. You’ve probably thought of, how far back do these connections behind the scenes go – what factions formed when, etc. What is the point where you can concretely say, these parties were acting separately and NOT on a secret team. You may have noticed that it seems like whoever the big player is at any given moment, these structures are shifting and players adapt their roles over time. You may have also noticed all roads lead suspiciously to fascism. And that on some level, anyone really can plug into the economy especially if they understand these things, and yet the arcs of progress seem to remain the same. Slavery, plantation crops, development of weapons… These things developed slowly and steadily until chemical advances in the 1800s. Oil first becomes popular as a source of artificial light (kerosene) allowing for expansion of leisure time and greater industrialization. Next, another refining product, gasoline allows for
mass individual transportation and so our economy changes again. Each agent on the board can now go anywhere much faster, complicating the entire system. Plastic and synthetic rubber, more petrochemicals, also change our entire culture as things can be cheaply packaged air-tight, but also have many more broad impacts. Communication developments allow for unprecedented human coordination. By WWII we have complex global intelligence networks, devastating weaponry and have expressed an initial willingness to Love the Chemicals. After we set two Chemical Superpowers against each other, it becomes clear less people will have to die if there is just One Chemical Superpower.

Where is this going? As I said there are only two teams. One team is violent, one team isn’t. Sometimes members of the same team think they are fighting with someone on a different team… But in fact they are on the same team. That is why revolutions go hand in hand with police states. The myth is that anyone who acquires power with violence is somehow different than anyone else who does that. All violent roads lead to the ultimate expression of violence which is fascism. These are the lost people. Non-violence is the winning team, although it takes longer for it to win. Once the non-violent team refuses to be coerced into violence, the cat-playing-with-cornered-mouse instinct will burn out. It’s only fun to kill something that fights back, begs, whimpers, tries to escape. The violent have only ever had themselves to kill.