A Historical Perspective

Isaac Asimov may have seen patterns in history, or may have only seen illusions of patterns.

In his Foundation novel series, popular in its time and generation and a continued epic by the authors who have been able to procure permission from his estate to continue the series afterward, is where Isaac explored out his concepts in hypothetical scenarios of the far future.

History repeats itself, it's true, but it's always changing, in the ways that it repeats itself it becomes a mathematical formula too complex for current computers to predict. Human behavior being the main factor which dictates our future path, in particular psychology of mass or mob size groups, is the concept Isaac introduced with the series, with a hypothetical future in which computers had not only predicted the course of history, but also had noted the key actions that would trigger a greater probability of survival, done by necessity out of a separate leadership that was unknown.

Perhaps you could visualize God's plan in some strange way to be shaping the course of history, not too unlike Isaac's foundation group that brought a quicker revival from a predicted fall of society's structure and preserved a great amount of the sciences and knowledge that had been collected from the damages of the fall into anarchy. God has given our society a sense of unity which may not only prevent our falling into chaos with large scale events, but also lets us have hope to hold us to a sense of rules of right and wrong in any life choices we make. So even if you're an atheist, please consider the value that God and religion has given us in discerning that there are more important and useful ways to live than in independent focus on one's own self interest. The interests of the whole, while they still consider the interests of the individual, are beneficial to the individual beyond any power one would hold over one's circumstances without said unity.

So I thus disagree with the media's focus on trying to criticize leadership when it's imperfect, for it is at least focused on protection and on the betterment of our financial situation.