People who are not truly paying attention are under the impression this is all a mistaken over-reaction and we have had "some bad apples" that have more-or-less accidentally brought us into this situation.
Anyone who, in the past 40 years, has pointed out the concerted and deliberate efforts of the MIC to ring us here have been dismissed as "wild conspiracy theorists" -- now though, its just to difficult to keep people from the truth.
This is why the distractions have been larger and larger -- but they are coming to a head. The problem is that the MIC is so extraordinarily well funded and well positioned - that now they are looking for the excuse to use their totalitarian machine against all Humanity. They want the next war.
It plays into their next agenda: depopulation.
I don't think anyone is wanting the next war, IMO more likely what has happened is around about the wrap up of Gulf War 2, people in relevant industries started to realise that there won't be that many more fortuitously sized 'sandboxable' (if I may coin a term) hot wars that profit can consistently be extracted from. So what do you do instead? Get on the surveillance gravy train. It certainly seems like a pretty good gig doesn't it? Huge amounts of government spending up for grabs, very little informed oversight or ability for anyone to argue that too much is being spent. It's a government contractor's (or a government offical taking the revolving door's) dream.
I wouldn't credit them with enough foresight to be thinking about depopulation. It's all just about next quarter's profits.
As a physicist by training I think of these things as the stable attractors we see in complex systems, where out of chaos certain configurations act to pull everything towards them.
A totalitarian world of surveillance and conflict which feed off each other leading to us liquidating more and more of our economy to feed the beast, creating insecurity at home and a knee jerk support of those carrying this stuff out, in the name of attacking some faceless enemy is an attractor with many individuals acting in self interest generating motion in that direction.
Complacency prevents people breaking the cycle. A belief that it's a pendulum swinging back and forth rather than a drift towards a stable attractor from which it's hard to move back again.
The US is directing significant resources towards war with China and China is responding in kind. It kind of makes sense given the amount of money the US owes China and given the "threat" of China's economic ascendence.
http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparation...
If Taiwan integrates with China as a special economic zone then that would be a key Western ally lost, however Taiwanese reintegration has been a hot-button issue for a few decades (in both Chinese and Taiwanese politics) that has quietly remained dormant.
My earlier post was really concerned more with those actors within relevant industries whose motive is to maximise profit, not with those actors whose motive is to win a dick measuring competition between their country/empire and someone else’s. If the latter guys win out then yeah, all bets are off I'd say.
Perhaps I'm overestimating their adherence to logic and reason, but I don't think those actors motivated primarily by greed want such a big, uncontrollable war, the outcome of which is not foregone. They want little controllable ones like Gulf War 1 and 2 (or failing this, the surveillance state).
In the grand schemes of things it is pocket change.
Also government debt is rarely paid off - it is usually grown out of and revolved. What US lack is economic growth thanks the "serious" people that push for austerity.
Also rule of thumb - anyone that uses a country budget is like the family budget analogy is - liar, dumb or ignorant. That is very quick filter by which you could judge politicians.
More realistically: the next business opportunity, the next contract, the next sale, all of these things are very much on the agenda. Lots of short-term decisions leading to long term catastrophe.
Then again, in the long term, we are all dead.
Innit?
-- Orwell, 1984
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Politicians are PERFECT for this kind of game. Think about it, fewer than a thousand people (congress + high-ranking judges) decide on EVERYTHING. It's trivial to bribe / blackmail them when you have billions and access to their emails and billions of dollars. Think of which major politicians were killed in the last 50 years.