Okay, now we are cooking. THIS is the kind of insight I would like to see more of. Awesome. So here is my thought on your perspective: 1) You may indeed be right and we may have lost long ago. I am not claiming that I have huge amounts of valuable analysis and metrics to offer, I have done enough analysis to categorize all offensive and defensive options and noticed that we are NOT doing any of them. You may well be right. 2) However, I am not sure if you have ever worked in hardcore sales, like door to door sales or used car sales. Every sales person eventually learns that we have a winning circuitry in our brain and loser circuitry in our brain. And every sales person knows that you can engage one or the other. If you engage the loser brain circuitry you will only see negative imagery, negative options and everything is losing all the time. If you engage the winning circuitry you will only see positive things and and infinite options. My contention is that there are evolutionary reasons that both exist and you cannot have a civilization of optimists, this is a nonsense idea. I believe that the negative circuitry exists as an evolutionary safety button to preserve energy because optimists spend all their energy chasing stars and mostly failing. The pessimists don't have to do anything except wait for optimists to find the solution at which point they act. I am able to engage my win circuitry. I'm nowhere near the Trump level performer and I occasionally let it lapse and the loser circuitry kicks in. But for the most part, I only see opportunity and chance. I am only hoping some of it rubs off on others for now.