"There are Mudcatters amongst us - almost invariably non-Americans - who choose to believe that US government is bought and paid for by amorphous and dark entities who pull America's strings at will to suit their own aims.

I frequently am irritated by this know-it-all, pity-you-poor-schmucks view but it has been impossible to dent their cherished beliefs."

If you include me amongst those Mudcatters, Ebbie, I think you are misinterpreting my beliefs.

Number 1: I DON'T think it's happening just in the USA, but virtually everywhere...including my own country, Canada...and I DON'T think it all emanated originally from the USA, but from competitive business and governmental forces that are operating everywhere.

Number 2: I don't think these entities doing it are "dark and mysterious", I think they're plainly obvious, and their motivations are not mysterious either. They seek profit, extension of their ownership of things and resources, enlargement of material rewards and power. This was just as true during the Roman Empire or any other past empire as it is now, and those forces were equally obvious then as they are now.

Number 3: I don't think it's a conspiracy, I think it's an unenlightened way of life. Our lives basically revolve around money, since all worldly power and material control in modern society flows directly from the use of money. With enough money you are empowered to build things, control the actions of the many people you employ, raise and equip armies, fight wars, etc. This again was the basic fact in the Roman Empire. It wasn't run by a conspiracy, it was run by a greedy and aggressive way of life, based upon ruthless competition, empowered by material wealth, and devoted to conquest of land and exploitation of markets and physical resources.

The same is true today, but our world has grown much "smaller". We have correspondingly fewer resources per capita now than was once the case. And our money systems have been grossly inflated due to the accumulation of vast and frankly unpayable amounts of debt. We have mortgaged our societies into bankruptcy, amid shrinking real resources.

Accordingly, we stand at the edge of a precipice and an unprecedented global disaster which our way of life has created. A conspiracy didn't create it and is not driving it. What is driving it is a greedy, overly competitive, unrealistic way of life. It's a social philosophy that cannot sustain itself. It isn't happening just in the USA nor did the USA start it. It started long before the USA even existed. The USA plays a very bid role in it at present, specially in a military sense, and THAT is the only reason so much negative attention falls on the USA.