Anonymous, sir...

Your screed ended with this lament: "WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE."

Tough to disagree with this assessment, but at my age, it's an old lament.

With respect to your screed, two issues come to my mind as responses. I shall now prattle on:

1. I believe you make a serious error when you assign condemnation to "the rich," the 1%, as an evil class of humanity. 1% of 6 billion is 600,000,000. That's essentially twice the population of the United States. I have observed all classes of people over the length of my life. And I assure you that a majority of this 1% don't work at getting richer. You're certainly correct that they have no idea what the middle and lower classes go through in their lives, but what did you expect? I submit to you that the 1% are in essence a leisure class. They are taught to protect their wealth and they hire money managers to assist them in this endeavor. I submit that the greed that scares me is that of the 2% to 10% of the top who are trying to get into the 1%. They are the ones who scheme and plot and cut corners and lie, cheat and steal. I don't have a solution to the problems they cause, other than the edumacation and maturing of the masses, as Homer Simpson would say.

2. While not a conspiracy wacko, I will not be surprised if it is discovered that certain movers & shakers in Islam, when confronted with a choice of action involving that which is good for Western Democracies and that which is bad for Western Democracies, push for the action that harms Western Democracies. And who could blame them? (Take revenge, sure, but blame them? No way!) After all, they learned from what they suffered at the hands of the Western Democracies from prior to WW1 all the way through to the formation of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflicts that followed.

Finally, for the purposes of this response, it's not the rich, that vaunted 1%, who are putting the fight against mythical Global Warming ahead of our own national interests. I submit that if new drilling were permitted in known Western oil fields, in under two years we'd see gasoline at under $2.00/gal. But do you see anyone protesting the drilling bans? Okay, maybe I am a conspiracy wacko...