[quote=@The Harbinger of Ferocity]
I have to disagree that the Obama administration years were "not really exciting by comparison", mostly because the decisions of that administration deeply eroded stability, reliability and security.
[/quote]

What are we talking about specifically? Most of the things that happened in the Obama administration were following a pattern that has been going on for some time. That he failed to put out the fire is completely true, but the fire has been burning for a while now. 

To clarify what I meant earlier, whereas the negatives of global capitalism are notable enough, there has been one major positive outcome for the world since the system was put in place after the second world war, in that it has kept the west from erupting into another nationalistic freak-show type war. There are other problems with nationalism as a central philosophy, but the biggest is that its focus on honor and superiority tends to get wars started. Now, if this were the early twentieth century still we could make the argument (as many did) that wars are necessary and they cleanse the spirit of the nation or whatever, because those wars [i]just[/i] claimed millions of lives in concentrated areas. But with technology where it is now, another World War would be apocalyptic. Capitalism, if it does nothing else, replaces the honor and superiority motives of nationalism with corruption and profit-making, which might love itself a small war, but wants no business with a generalized World War. As for radical Islam, it's certainly been the stick that whacked the hornets nest, but thus far it hasn't show itself to have apocalyptic capabilities. The worse they have going for them is the potential that somebody gets a hold of nukes and unleashes unprecedented terroristic destruction. But, though that is absolutely horrifying, it's not quite end of the world stuff. If we do end up backtracking completely into old-school turn of the century Nationalism, I'm afraid radical Islam, as horrible as it is, would only be the intro-chapter to the real great big shit show that would follow. 

The tension you mentioned is interesting, but it isn't new. We've had plenty worse is the past. The protests going on right now wouldn't make it in the top five most divisive in American history (The list is probably something like [i]Bleeding Kansas, Shay's Rebellion, The early Labor Movement, The Civil Rights movement, and the Vietnam protests.[/i]). Not to say I don't see danger possibly happening in the future. Things go from interesting to really interesting when we get our next financial crisis. I admit, I am nervous that our system might not be able to survive another financial disaster so soon after the last one. But again, as a member of the cohort that was so royally fucked back in 2008, I have something of a phobia for financial meltdowns.