WE SURVIVED - BUT NOT FOR LONG
I am an optimist, and I cling to the hope that we will get off the deadly course the world is on, that humankind will save itself and the planet with all its life intact from the depredations in has inflicted and continues still to inflict.  And you and I and our families have survived 2016, but the greatest threat to our personal existence hangs still above all our heads.  In 2014 Thom Hartmann, a writer and thinker I heartily endorse in all his observations, published a book called The Crash of 2016 - The Plot to Destroy America - and What We CanDo to Stop It.  Even though the crash to destroy us did not occur in that year, the situation has not changed and it remains immanent.  It can happen at any time.  We want to turn from that idea, cling to our status quo.  Please don't.  It is still true that:

"The United States is more vulnerable today than ever before-including during the Great Depression and the Civil War-because the pillars of democracy that once supported a booming middle class have been corrupted, and without them, America teeters on the verge of the next Great Crash."

It will start small as all great crashes do..  You will be told by your ATM that you are not able to withdraw the money you want.  You go to your bank and it is closed.  Your credit crd is denied when you go to the supermarket for food.  With unbelievable speed the whole economy shuts down.  Unless you live on your own land free and clear and have the capability of growing all the food your family needs you must take down your shotgun and enter a woods filled with hunters desperate to bring down anything that moves.

Those of you who know me realize I am not given to hyperbole or wild exaggerations, that I want to issue hope and a vision of a more beautiful world.  But I am constrained by my caring for you, by what I have read in Hartmann's book and in works from the other side of the political sphere by Bill Bonner of the Agora information service, to be honest with you and urge you to check out  these writers for yourself.  Think about what you learn from them, talk about it with your friends, your circle, and get back to me with what you think.  If you can talk yourself out of the disaster they predict, talk me out of it too.  In any case let us work together to make a more rational, human and hopeful world  and a Beloved Community.