Dylan, I am sorry to see your normal optimism vanish under a gelid wave of reality but sadly this more realistic view of our situation concurs with my own analysis. Unlike you, however, I don't think there is any possibility of fixing our present situation. There are too many inter-connected elements that mutually reinforce each other. We will have to endure death and destruction on a scale hitherto unprecedented, and hope that one day a few intelligent people will stand amid the rubble and say "never again." This hypothetical group of people may consider all we know about human nature and try to create a self-evolving approach to the governance of human lives that mitigates our short-sightedness and self-centeredness, just as automotive engineers have over the last forty years engineered into the cars we buy systems that do their best to compensate for our total inability to learn to operate these vehicles with any degree of competence. It is, I admit a slender hope - but it is the only realistic one I can perceive. For now, however, we're accelerating our slide into a new Age of Tyrants and it's going to be very ugly indeed, not least because hundreds of millions of ordinary people will eagerly inflict on each other terrible crimes, all in the name of "patriotism."