Fortunately, this mess is administered by a patchwork of ruthlessly territorial bureaucratic feifdoms whose endless feuding prevents our overall political system from functioning too efficiently.
So true. But they do have technology on their side. Not sure how optimistic I can be about the implications of that.
At this point, my hope is that actors within our control regime prove petty and vindictive enough to only use the freakiest tech against each other, and with minimal collateral damage.
Of course, some of the freakiest tech now being rolled out facilitates hijacking the instincts of large networks people so as to transform them into instruments of narrow, unsavory agendas without their knowledge ... so this hope may be unrealistic.