The primary uniting event for the US was WW2. It was 80 years ago. 80 years before that, was the Civil War and much of the population were fairly recent immigrants, generally in their own communities.

There just wasn't much actually tying the country together, other than economic hope.

While we like to imagine ourselves as individuals, people are herd animals, but explaining that is like explaining water to a fish.

So the effect was to make the military the one public works project the entire country could buy into. Backed by a banking system that needed the public debt it incurred, as well as international corporations, especially oil companies, for which the military served as a private army. As one famous general, Smedley Butler, put it, "War is a racket." Meaning it was the corporations driving much of the international attacks, conflicts.

So the Kennedy's were really just standing in front of a speeding train.

It gets referred to as the Deep State, or the Blob, but to the extent it's the only route to success, to run with the herd, it's more of a force of nature, than just human perfidy.

That's why it is futile to attack it directly. Like those poor shmucks on Jan 6th, any threats only attract the mob. So it's either a matter of simply waiting for it to destroy itself, as the forward momentum slows, the debt piles up and the various internal factions start fighting among themselves.

Or just find ways to chip way at the basic assumptions. Not that this has any immediate effect, but it gives people some sense of alternatives.

Walking away from it.

When to focus and when to chill.