If society is its own organism, then I think we have a fight between our collective amygdala and prefrontal cortex. For whatever reason, the amygdala is cleaning calling the shots right now. It's not a Republican or Democrat thing; just because GOP is demonstrably stupider (collectively), doesn't mean that we all aren't too emotional.

In the past when I've had times that I knew my reptilian brain was calling the shots too forcefully, I've had to make a concerted effort to double down on rational thought. It's not an easy thing to do, but it can be done with extreme discipline; requires something like a mantra and a constant reminder that your head knows better than your gut what consequences are. I wonder if there's a societal equivalent. My suspicion is that there must be, but I don't know what that is.

We've dug ourselves into a very untenable situation, but it's still not the only possible result. There's an energy well out of which we need to climb, but eventually we'll get the jolt we need. One would have thought that the jolt was the financial crisis, but it's been almost a decade and things are still degrading. Perhaps the next crisis? I've done very well financially since the last recession, but I still feel like the country is worse off than before. Is that true? Is it just the media? I don't know. I'm well read enough that I think I have a decent grasp on what has been happening recently in the economy (in a descriptive sense, not a causal one), and my sense is that I'm an exception, that people really feel left out, left behind, and hopeless.

There's too much money and too much talent in this country for people to be suffering. I hope we have the balls next time there's a crisis to have a reset. It feels like America's only product right now is money. Patient investing is a thing of the past, and with it so is innovation. That's our real trouble. Not China. Not Robots. Greed. Same story as 1920s. Tell me, really, what the difference is between modern day corporate stock buybacks and railroads issuing bonds to pay dividends to investors? Same disease. It isn't the robots who decide that share price management is worth firing 10,000 people.

It's maybe a long leap from tax policy to some deranged dudes shooting lawmakers, but I think there's a causation there. To restore sanity to our politics we need to restore dignity to our people. Everyone just wants to feed their family.