Thank you, Eric, and an excellent comment. I’m in total agreement. In regards to your “so many brilliant people” remark. As Joseph Ellis writes in his Founding Brothers, they comprised “the greatest generation of political talent in American history.” As I said in my review of that book, “there’s nowhere to go but down after that.” That book is, so far, the best I’ve read on the topic, tho it’s too brief. Here’s a link to it via my review if you’re interested and haven’t read the book yet. Unless you’ve already seen it, another good and reasoned book on the seeds of our demise, is by Patric J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed. He means “classical” liberalism of the Founding era as product of Enlightenment. As a big fan of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, Deneen’s conclusion really unsettled me. As a Reaganite without a party, thanks to Deneen and others, I now see the ills of both sides. Like you, I hope some means can be found to “spread the wealth,” as you say, lest we risk continued upheaval, just as Solon saw and fixed, and Hitler saw and (finally) broke. Human populations are an unstable bunch.