I can't help but perceive this as being a result of people thinking Trump is somehow kickstarting our Orwellian future/present, when he's probably the highest profile person to point out how government before him has been working on this plan of ultimate control for a very long time. The biggest examples being:

1) that he pointed out there were no weapons of mass destruction and--false flag or not--our government used that to manipulate our perceptions to perpetrate an atrocity.

2) the supposed Russian cyber attack; he's one of the few that spoke out against the lack of evidence and that the US Intelligence report was propaganda. That document was so obviously propaganda--I read the whole thing and there wasn't even one word such as "system log" regarding what was redacted. For my purposes, it doesn't matter that he spoke out against it solely because it served him to do so.

So not that Trump won't continue more of the same control tactics or do more, but as we all know as programmers when we break things, only to rebuild them better: things almost always gotta get worse before they get better. I'm under no delusion that Trump in it/himself will be good for us, but if it finally unveils the lies and false flag politics/acts that have been far more harmful to society, I'm all for it.

The problem has been we have politicians that knowingly manipulate us and have another "face" behind the scenes. There is clearly some Machiavellian things going on behind the scenes. In addition, I don't blame headlining politicians. Clearly US Intelligence has a stronghold over them--either directly or indirectly through manipulating their perception just as ours.

Our country has clearly been on a decide path of the following 2-fold strategy:

1) project strength no matter what
2) convince us it's for higher ideals to maintain the perception of being the "good guy"

That's all it boils down to. It's looking like the US Government has killed about 1 million people in the middle east since 9/11. The numbers I've heard for Vietnam were 3.5 million. We're talking people that are basically defending their land here. And against the biggest military force the world has ever seen. In other words, in comparison, these victims were all civilians. The "Dominos" never fell, and ISIS is a small fraction of muslim people in the middle east. It's also very clear that ISIS is a result of our actions. What they are up to is retribution, not an attack on american ideals. We are talking highly religious people who see everything through a religious lens, so of course the way they are going to communicate their mission is that of a religion one--but at the core of it is anger and hatred that we invaded them, destroyed their land, dominated them and tried to control them. How would we feel if an invading force from across the world made our home a warzone--we wouldn't be like "well, it's for higher ideals, we'll just let this slide." Yea right. America seems incapable of putting ourselves in the shoes of others.

As if human lives and suffering isn't enough (well, it obviously isn't if it is far away), we are now paying the debt from both Bush administrations for years to come. Numbers I read stated that 72% of our national debt is from the 2 Bush presidents. We are currently paying $250 billion per year for those wars. By 2020 the numbers suggest it will be $500 billion per year. The numbers also stated that's 6% in 2015 and 12% in 2020 of where the taxpayer money will be going to. Over however many years to pay that back, that's enough money to have revamped our education system, invested in R&D and lived up to the potential we once had. Techcrunch just last week said the government is only investing $86 billion in tech investments. Imagine if that was $500 billion year after year.

Now all that said, I agree that the perception republicans and Trump portray of america being in shambles is far from accurate. What I think is accurate is that we aren't living up to our potential and we don't have the economic acceleration we had before. People can feel that. That's a problem. What's also a problem is that the numbers for unemployment which are good and other positive figures seem to primarily reflect improvements for the lower class. It is a major problem if the middle class isn't benefiting similarly. These are the people most invested into the system, paying the most taxes into it, and things have gotten harder for them.

So in conclusion, conspiracies aside (of which many are likely true), we have sacrificed much to project strength. I don't believe in believing what I can't see for myself, but I clearly see that projecting strength is the core of our philosophy. I believe it's an incomplete (as well as aging) viewpoint. For one, it's where all civilizations go to die as they overextend themselves through military and far-reaching interests (history teaches us that--do we have to be the next Roman empire?). But secondly, perhaps its just enough to be able to defend yourself when push comes to shove. We have the buttons to press, which few others have--do we really need to be a military presence everywhere, especially now in this digitally connected world which devalues actual physical presence?

So it's my conclusion that we have created more harm than good; we have created enemies. We can hide behind ideals, and frame others as the bad guys--but, for example, how much militarism has Russia really shown since WW2? And compare that to how much we have shown. I deal with Russian developers all the time--they seem to be participating in a form of capitalism not too different than ours. It's almost as if we need a bad guy to make us look like the good guy. Is Russia a staple of our perception control? I think so. From what I've researched, Gorbachev wanted to do a major dis-armament deal and the Reagan administration turned them down. Why? For one, we don't want to disarm, but 2, Reagan had too much riding on his Star Wars plan, and 3, that would make Russia look like the good guy. Did you hear Obama's last address about a month ago--he said "Come on, Putin was the head of the KGB...", implying he was such an evil foe. So what, are they not entitled to have an intelligence group too? George HW Bush was the head of the CIA. How is being the head of the KGB somehow meant to imply he's evil. Consistency is why. Consistency of message. Clearly, the US Government needs to keep justifying their lie/thread that Russia is so evil. It's the same as in every day life: if you acknowledge a mistake, you actually acknowledge the chain of mistakes that lead up to it. America simply isn't ready to acknowledge our past mistakes. Other countries have called for us to apologize for Vietnam. Is apologizing for something so big easy to do, not to mention costly? So going down this path of righting our wrongs would bring up a bunch of dirty laundry. So we have to continue our lies. The powers that be--besides seeing the world completely differently--would never backtrack and exhibit what they perceive as weakness. I however think it could be a moment of strength for humanity.