Hope (less)?

Depression has never been something I have had to face. For some reason—when I am feeling a bit blue—my mind refocuses itself on the positive. I have great sympathy for friends and family who do suffer from depression—it is a terrible thing. In these days, however, I am dealing with a new feeling: hopelessness. There are days when my level of feeling hopeless soars.

It is the continual punching in the gut by the gutless idiots and egomaniacal billionaires running the world. I suppose I could just give up and crawl into a virtual cave—waiting for the shadows to reveal a way forward. Yet each time I sense despair, there is a tiny signal that flares up inside me—a signal that says look deeper. This signal proclaims “giving up is not in your nature."

Whenever one feels hopelessness there is nearly always a search for blame. Is it me? Or is it being wrought by others? Is it a melding of the two?

“In this moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack and insidious fear is reaching through our schools our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts, the fear to speak IN AMERICA. Power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives. They can make criminals into heroes and heroes criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends.” — Scott Pelley (formerly of CBS 60 Minutes)

In the case of the first quarter of the 21st century, we are being assaulted by politicians, billionaires, capitalist, authoritarians, criminals and spineless media players who care only about a financial return—and have not one iota of concern about their fellow humans. They are using wealth creation as a virtual shield to hide their behaviors that are destroying Mother Earth and humanity. Never before have so few had so much and controlled so many. We are living in the gasping of the late capitalist corpus—which does not wish to be reminded that for it to even exist we need to follow their explicit instructions. They tempt us with their carefully crafted messages of happiness, easy living, speed, painless debt and youthful beauty. As Scott Pelley says: they are rewriting history to create a narrative and heroes that support their lawlessness.

In just a few years, Artificial Intelligence has erupted like Mount St Helens—spewing slop ashes everywhere. Billions are being bet on its necessity and importance. In order for this AI mountain to continue its eruption, it voraciously feeds on everything and even now itself—feeding being another word for plagiarism. It is using this plagiarism to create new plagiarisms. Like Sysiphus1 it is designed to forever push its own output back up the hill of fabrications. AI disguises the “new” outcomes as newly minted brilliance. The debt may crush it before it crushes the world’s environment and water supply.

Every channel of our life-TV has been programmed for decades to keep us tethered to the debt teat—suckling happily while our pockets are picked. Facebook now commands 20% of the global advertising expenditures. Within the social media sphere, we are the product. More buying equals more corporate power. Less buying equals more individual freedom of expression. Every social platform is controlled by algorithms that ensure we stay tethered and keep looking endlessly at the advertisements.

“Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human, and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them.” —Pope Leo IV

We have a set of politicians, themselves raised by capitalism’s muses, who think nothing of using the same tricks of this trade to hoodwink their comatose constituents into keeping them at the money trough by promising the same happiness in exchange for a vote or two. Recently a staffer of GOP candidate Mike Rogers (MI) used AI to beef up a campaign photograph of the candidate—adding muscles to the chest and arms and reducing the waist size. By itself it is a simple pectoral lie. What is disturbing and indicative of the poor current state of affairs is the unquestioning belief that the image represents reality—designed to confirm the ideal candidate for unquestioning voters. It highlights and reveals just how little it takes to manipulate unthinking voters—or reassure voters who want to believe in a false narrative because they cannot face the truth about someone. If they did, they would reveal their own doubts and insecurities.

Unashamedly, money flows to secure votes. Even the planned $1.8B restitution fund, now revoked, that our president wanted was designed to reimburse pardoned insurgents—loyal voters. Sadly, politicians are just as addicted to the mindlessness of our capitalist system as we are. It is one happy and penniless parade of pontificating charlatans getting fat on corporate donations and taking money in any way possible. The constituents are blinded to their dealings out of fear they will have to look inward a realize that they were duped. The prospect is scary—and politicians know that folks do not like to be scared. What they thought was self-preservation is actual self-anesthetizing and destruction. They feel no pain which ensures they will not ask critical questions that challenge the status quo. The irony is they are living in pain: debt, malnutrition, abuse, homelessness and emptiness.

No one is to blame for this except ourselves. We bought into the myth that democracy dies if we are not in debt.

Having said all of the above, I also fully appreciate that a huge conundrum exists. I have benefited from the system. My retirement investments rise and fall based on the success of the indexes. I will likely not even be able to avoid having Musk’s planned SpaceX IPO offering in my portfolio of indexed funds. If the financial system collapses, so too does my ability to stay retired.

Here are some very sobering statistics:

• A National Institute on Retirement Security study found only 4% of workers had reached recommended retirement savings targets.

• Over half of households have inadequate dedicated retirement savings.2

• One recent retirement study found the median worker had only about $955 in defined-contribution retirement savings when workers with zero savings were included.3

• The median near-retiree is roughly:

  • 80%–90% below the savings level many financial planners and retirees consider necessary for a comfortable retirement.

• Americans are “short” of what they need:

  • Surveys in 2025 found Americans believe they need roughly $1.3 million to $2.1 million for a comfortable retirement.

  • Yet the typical near-retirement household (ages 55–64) has only about $185,000 saved.

The stress of having debt—especially chronic, high-interest, or unmanageable debt —is strongly associated with measurable physical and mental health effects. The relationship is not just emotional; it shows up in cardiovascular, neurological, sleep, and immune-system outcomes. In other words, it is not easy to be happy when drowning in debt.

What is infuriating to me is the money that is being squandered on vanity projects like the east wing “ballroom,” the reflecting pool painting and the proposed “arch d’trump.” Besides these unnecessary projects, Trump’s War (Iran) is costing:

• The Pentagon told Congress the war had cost the U.S. about $25 billion by late April 2026, mostly for munitions, air and naval operations, missile defense, and equipment maintenance.4

• Earlier in the conflict, CSIS estimated the first 6 days alone cost roughly $11.3–12.7 billion.5

• Some analysts estimate the burn rate reached roughly $1–2 billion per day during peak operations.6

“People have stopped believing that the economy can be good, and have lost the willingness to admit that they are doing well. That pessimism might be harder to fix than an actual downturn, Americans are expressing some of the deepest, broadest, and stubbornest economic pessimism ever recorded. They’re doing so even though nearly every American who wants a job has one and the stock market is booming. Things aren’t perfect, and people have plenty of reasons to be disappointed. But I couldn’t come up with a coherent explanation for why people are this down about an economy this good, or why they are so mad right now. A few persistent trends are weighing on consumer assessments of the economy, and a few structural factors are keeping Americans from feeling as comfortable as their bank statements and the national accounts suggest they should,”7

Where will it end? I do not have clue. I once, naively as it turns out, thought the American electorate was thoughtful and would not vote for convicted felons and individuals with no moral center. That thought has been evaporated by clear evidence. Can I be hopeful? Or will I be saddled with hopelessness. If the mid-term elections show us that the voters have had enough, then I will perk up a bit. If not, I may have to continue to move inward and just paint to support our public libraries.We shall see in a few months.

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