Yeah, that's the essential problem. Merchants owe allegiance to no country...and to no community. It is essentially merchants who are (behind the scenes) running the political systems, and that is why contemporary politics make no sense, from a human or a moral point of view.

I'm in favour of small-scale, local capitalism. Always have been. It's huge, multi-national companies and money-brokers I am opposed to. They care not whose lives they devastate, and they are loyal to no nation or moral credo.

I do believe that the US government is controlled by such people, not for the benefit of Americans, but for the benefit of the controllers. We do not get to vote for them, just for the figureheads they put on the ballot. Sometimes those figureheads are part of the "in-group" (the controllers), and sometimes they're not. In the end, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to national policy, which is driven by the dollar.

- LH