Three steps to where we're at

1. Potentialism, the belief that the actual has little to no weight when compared to the potential.
   
   Almost 100 years before its rise in Europe, potentialism became the dominant world view in the United States in the first half of the 19th century.
   
   Given the expansive nature of the United States at the time it is at least partially a natural development, though it is closely linked with disregard for foundational work, which runs against the instinct to enshrine the basis of a new beginning.
   
   The idea of the continuous re-establishing of the framework of society attracted many a man's utopism, like Wagner's in his last 13 years. But by the enthusiasm it created, it stretched the oversight over the expansion, driving the United States on a path of brinkmanship, which made them ever more dependent on central institutions with the power to handle the awakened chaos.
   
   Potentialism was an essential precondition of the American Civil War, nullifying the ideological defense of slavery, which is to establish rights on the grounds of establishedness, and the American Civil War was an essential precondition of the further steps.


2. Co-ercism, the belief that people are, for better or worse, not convinced, but co-erced.
   
   Established in the American Civil War, co-ercism is the essential precondition of American imperialism, providing both the drive in form of the fear to be at co-ercion's receiving end and the justification for it.


3. Bankism, the handing over of economical development policy to (private) banks.
   
   More of an accident then the previous steps American imperialism served as the spring-board of bankism, by giving the United States a motive to sign their own industry over to foreign banks, whose help was vital in establishing the Dollar as world reserve currency.

Nota bene.

First came the tool, then its natural wielder.

Being ruled by bankers is like being ruled by cock-fight trainers, it's no form of government that lasts. But no matter what precedes it, the final chapter of our time will be central overreach, for while a man pores over one question, a computer can solve a thousand. Bankism preceding it opens the doors though, making the influence of artificial intelligence be felt already in its earliest stages, a warning as much as a lure.