As you point out, the most batshit crazy aspect is our financial system. Money originates as an accounting device, but we have come to see it as a commodity in itself. The medium has become the message.

Econ 101 says it's both medium of exchange and store of value. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. They serve different functions.

Storing the asset requires creating the debt to back it. The elephant in the room is the financial system could not function, without those trillions in government debt. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth. The wars are just a way to make it go away, so more can be borrowed. That's why they are so strategically inept and no one is taken out and shot. Basically the military industrial complex is the trophy wife of the banks.

The final step will be that as governments start falling behind on their interest payments, these piles of bonds will be traded for whatever remains of the public commons and we all can go back to being serfs again.