You have put your finger right on it. This is the true history of the past half-century, from the mergers-and-acquisitions frenzy of the Reagan ’80s to the repeal of Glass-Steagall in the Clinton ’90s, accelerated and supercharged by the execrable Citizens United decision of the Bush ’00s, to the Great Recession of the Bush-Obama years.

This is the root of all our current ills: the mounting economic desperation and concomitant social and cultural stresses. Historically, such conditions breed mass uprisings and revolutions. Hence the need for suppression by a techno-klepto-fascist takeover, as we are now witnessing.

I have been saying elsewhere that the geopolitical crisis of our time is the global struggle between Putin-style oligarchic kleptocracy and Western liberal democracy. The oligarchic model has been spreading, especially in the Eastern Hemisphere, with such offshoots as Orban’s Hungary, Erdogan’s Turkey, and MBS’s Saudi Arabia. With Trump’s presidency, it has reached its tentacles into the very heart of American democracy and is now poisoning it from within. Heaven help us all.