The elites, collectively, cannot bring themselves to moderate their greed even in the interests of prolonging their highly successful game, and all others have not been able to bring themselves to stop the elites or even to significantly oppose them. So we roll onward towards the cliff that lies ahead. The question that remains is the extent to which those elites and those who serve them understand this and are just caught up "riding the tiger", are complete, unquestioning believers in the propaganda that has been promulgated on their behalf or simply don't care about the consequences and are convinced that the consequences will be for others.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."