Stephan:  This is a really good economic assessment of what has created the Trump phenomenon. It doesn't deal with the racism, or the fundamentalism, or the guns but I think if gets the economic profile just right. This report also gets the rising Authoritarianism Trend, which is going to be amped up in Europe as a result of the migrations and now the Brussels massacre, and anti-Muslim feeling translates into Rightist politics.  As I have said before the assimilation of minorities is going to be one of the meta-trends of the 21st century.  In the U.S. I think this will principally take the form of the transition to majority-minority, which we will reach in 2043, and no racial group will constitute 50%. Dealing with becoming majority-minority is serving the same function of creating Theocratic Rightism. Actual immigration I think will be less of an issue for several reasons. At the current rates more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than coming in. The legalization of marijuana is seriously degrading the Mexican cartels and altering the underground economy. And we are going down while others are coming up, and we are increasingly dangerous. As a country the U.S. has come to a cross-roads. What happens in November will change the course of our world. And it is all going to get down to how many people vote.

Stephan:  This is how crazy it has gotten about guns in some states. You can guess which. Did you say Mississippi? Why Yes. Just imagine the questions you will get the next time you are traveling out of the country.  Do normal people in the U.S. carry guns into their church services? Why yes, in some congregations in large conservative churches it might rise to a hundred or more men and women who are armed. What could possibly go wrong.

Stephan:  We are not a healthy society; as I travel I see more and more grossly overweight people. As this report says, "Only about 38 percent of Americans surveyed had a healthy diet, just 10 percent had a normal body fat level, and fewer than half (47 percent) were sufficiently active."

Stephan:  Here is some more good news about Monsanto, a company that in my view should be bankrupted by citizen action.  It's not complicated: Don't buy anything Monsanto makes.

Stephan:  In the new slavery of the United States prisons, particularly privatized prisons, are a central component of this growing industry. We have five per cent of the world's population and in our gulag we have 25 per cent of the world's prisoners, many now indentured workers. In other countries like Sweden and now the Netherlands something rather different is happening. Here is the Dutch story.