Welcome

 ____________________________________________

Hello, all good people...

    ___________________________________________

Salutations, I am Craig Willms creator of the Protohuman blog. The blog itself, as a weblog is now defunct. I have not posted since 2014, and I don't intend to resurrect it now. 

However, I own this space so to speak, and I have things I'd like to post in the form of essays, articles and personal notes simply as a record that I had these thoughts and sought to write them down before I lose myself. I'm under no illusion that anyone will read them - or care one wit. 

Still, there is a chance that someone will look me up after my death and find my online life. We live in the first era where we can preserve our thoughts indefinitely due to the way back machine, aka the Internet. Prior to the Internet you'd have to be published to have your writings preserved outside of your personal notebooks. Therefore, the essays and personal anecdotes that follow are something I want associated with me. 

The articles/essays are in no particular order, relevant perhaps, but may have been superseded by events that followed. I maintain the right to be wrong about any of it...

que sera sera!

        Hold on!! Wait!    

Take a minute to look at my art and listen to my music. 

     - please see the links in the Recommended Sites section on the right ===========>  

                     

Free to Choose Free Will

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears, and kindness that can kill

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will

                                                                                Rush ~ Permanent Waves

by Craig Willms

It's a concept that engenders strong feelings. Some people get incensed by it, other people become smug. The religious see it as essential, atheists disregard it as a fairy tale. Society codifies it in the law, while science often dismisses it as a an illusion. Embedded in the mystery of consciousness and the meaning of life our free will is a subject for the ages. 

There are those such as myself who can't see an argument against it, and others who see all happenings as pre-determined. While neither side really knows nor can know the truth of the matter, it doesn't stop the endless debate. 

I have had the argument over free will any number of times, never coming to consensus, obviously. Arguments on Internet forums convince no one to change their view, but argue we must, if only to fortify our own positions. I've racked my brain to contrive an angle, construe a got 'ya moment to end this argument once and for all. Of course it's not going to happen, determinism is a self-sealed argument, it cannot be breached. 

In an earlier post called "Free Will is Not Just an Illusion" I made my arguments, all of which can be countered with determinist platitudes. Still, nothing convinces me we are some kind of machine doing only what the pre-written program allows. 

I fully concede that we don't actually choose what we like or what disgusts us. It's just there... We don't get to choose what comes naturally, or things we are undeniably bad at. These facts about us are true, but is that free will? I don't think so. These are, as with the color of our skin or the type of hair on our head, are immutable characteristics, not choices. Free will is something we choose, consciously and sometimes without much thought. I absolutely acknowledge that free will is constrained. Free will exists in our power to decide within the constraints of the moment. There are numerous things in our lives that we have no choice over. We obviously had no choice in being born, or who our parents are, or where we enter this world. I don't think anyone is arguing that. It seems to me with live in a dualistic world - some things are determined by a past occurrence setting all the factors and there are other moments where switches exist for us to choose. Both can be true. We don't need to be so rigid about it. 

I go through my life and try to think of moments when I decided something, exercising my free will that is so profound that it can't be laid at the feet of a deterministic world. Have I ever succeeded? Unknown. I keep coming back to a decision I made 32 years ago to quit drinking. Did I make the decision or not? Did someone else make it for me? Did I have no choice in it at all? Good questions, but they are the wrong questions. It wasn't one decision on one day, it's a decision I make every single day. Obviously I make this choice of my own will - everyday. 

We make choices like this all the time. We choose to eat well or not, exercise or lay low, treat people with kindness or any number of variations, righteous or not - every single day. We can choose to disregard the consequences of our choices and allow the chips to fall where they may. It's out of our hands, it's meant to be. Regardless, we all know they are choices that can go either way based on our personal will. Is that not what free will is?

My decision to stop drinking was informed by my upbringing. Does that mean I had no choice, that my hand was forced? I don't think so. My six siblings had the same foundation in their upbringing and each chose differently. None followed our fathers path, which was to allow alcohol to ruin his relationships. None followed my path either. For 32 years I chose everyday to not drink alcohol, tomorrow I could choose differently, what's stopping me. Determinism? The universe? God? My Mom?

So, is my choice to forgo alcohol use determined by how others might react? Might that be the why??? Might they reject me and that's what forces the decision on me. Not likely. In fact, my friends would be thrilled, I'd be a lot more fun. Even my wife wouldn't threaten to leave me, she might like a 'funner' me. There were no threats to me with regards my drinking at the time. No one was being put out. My choice was based on a potential future that tracked with my fathers. I did not want that. I'd like someone to boil that scenario down to determinism.

Is free will an illusion of control? Are we slaves to cause and effect? Who's to say. We make deliberate choices every day. Are these decisions forced on us? Yes, some of them are. But... Right now, I'm choosing to go upstairs and make some cinnamon sugar toast and a cup coffee. Yes, I'm choosing - it's my free will. Why would you want to argue with me about that? 

One foot in front of the...

 

by Craig Willms 

3/10/2025

In an earlier post called "The Hole In My Head" I was issuing a warning to family and friends that I felt the oncoming headwind of dementia. There is no actual evidence or diagnosis official or otherwise, but one knows oneself, and I'm losing it. It really doesn't matter to me if you see it or not, I do. Bear with me.

What am I talking about exactly? I've mostly forgotten why I even started writing this down, but one thing that stuck with me during this morning's adventures was how flabbergasted I got doing a few simple things. Regardless that part of the challenge was actually technology related, and yes, may have been confusing to your average 60-something senior. IT was something I did for a living just a few short years ago, it should have been like riding a bike. What was it? I was resetting a password!!! Three rounds of frustration and at least two tech support phone calls, finally, my wife looked over my shoulder as I did the exact same thing for the third or fourth time - and this time it worked. I was the kid with the kindergarten teacher urging me on. You're such a good boy, you try so hard.

Later that morning I was driving down to my hometown, going to a friends place to payback some money I'd borrowed. I'd been at his house once before but didn't remember exactly where it was. No, that's not the issue, no one can be faulted for not knowing someplace that they've only been to once. It was that I was having trouble navigating my hometown, a town that has been etched into my permanent memory. Regardless of cosmetic changes my internal compass should have gotten me through that town with my eyes tied behind my back. I had taken the fabled 'back roads' to kill time waiting for him to text me the street address. There were traffic circles that never existed before, and some new streets and buildings but the land was the land, it covered all the same ground. I had trod these acres a thousand times before. Somehow, I was LOST? Then just as the text dinged, I recognized a landmark and was back going in the right direction. 

From there I tried use my now infamous internal compass to navigate the way to my friend's house and became so turned around I had to pull over so I could input the address into Google Maps. Despite the fact that Google Maps was having a stroke this morning it should have been easy to just listen to the voice on the radio speakers pointing the way. Still, once more I had to stop and 're-calculate". Finally in a fit of disbelief I pulled over again and looked at the address I'd put into Google Maps - My God!!! Where is this place??? Then I looked up at the house I had stopped in front of and... There it was - my friend's house. Sheer luck, I think...

These were not hard things to do, not rocket surgery, as they say. I am not incompetent, I never have been. I can do a lot of things pretty well, not that I'm an ace at anything in particular, but I can walk, talk, chew gum and subnet mask your IPv4 Class C network all at once. Or at least I could. Not so sure anymore. I've only been away from my career for 3 years and it's all gone. Ah, they say we remember what's important. Well, let's hope so.

This was not the first time when driving that I didn't know where I was, it worries me a bit. I've always snapped back fairly quickly, so I've never been panicked. This morning, I couldn't make sense of someplace familiar with a voice guiding me turn by turn to my destination. It was like one of those frustrating dreams where try as you might you never actually make it where you're going. 

The Beauty of Shared Love

 

by Craig Willms

Tired of being negative? I know I am. To be honest I don't have that much to be negative about. I'm in a good place personally, and when my wife retires 'we' will be in a really good place. While not rich financially we are rich in so many ways. We are out of debt and have enough to eat and a warm, well maintained house to live in. Compared to so many billions now alive and the billions that have come before us we are rich beyond measure. So yeah, what's to be so negative about?

Well, there is always some injustice or outrage or people acting badly to be mad about. Just read a few postings on this website and you'll find plenty that I'm sick of or outraged about. It's just basic human nature to gripe and complain about that which we cannot control. Most of it doesn't directly affect me, or is so disconnected from my day to day life that my anger and negativity is not proportional. The most we can do besides whining and complaining is visit the ballot box on election day or be mindful where we spend our money. Protesting and other social actions mostly just makes people mad or makes people consider you a nut burger - regardless of the topic. The big, organized protests are just that, highly organized and largely inauthentic. When the money dries up for the 'action' the protests die out. 

To change the world a single person without power has to rely on small, seemingly inconsequential actions. It builds over time by what we leave in our wakes. Being charitable and helpful to those in our circles will have an impact as the drop of care ripples out from us. It's possible to foster goodness and righteousness one person at a time, one act at a time.

The one thing that hits close to home and has invaluable benefit is the idea of shared love. Most of us born into intact families experience shared love. Mom and Dad may not even love each other anymore but in most cases they both love the kids. Even those times when we parents temporarily don't love the kids we do. When adult children come with problems or are hurting, we gather troops and step up in a way that demonstrates this love we share.

For my wife and I our kids are grown and gone from our day to day lives. When the last family pet dies that childhood era is over. We faced this situation a few years ago. Once the shock and pain wear off of losing that pet you face a new world. For many women the caring gene doesn't just shut off. The men in general neither need nor desire the level of care and attention a dependent pet receives. Now, to be sure a shared love can be for hobbies, a sports team, books, wine or any number of interests, but a living pet is at a whole different level. We really missed that cat. For us I wouldn't say we necessarily started growing apart, but that close-up shared love aspect of our lives was over as we had decided that we were not going to have any more pets. She wants to travel, unencumbered by obligations in the home. I concurred. 

We had many pets over the years - in fact there was almost never a time that there weren't pets in the home, often multiple pets at the same time. The absence of pets wasn't something that was bringing us down, it was just different. I couldn't even say that there was a sense that something intrinsic was missing. 

Then as fate would have it a small dog entered the picture. At first it was going to be temporary, right...

Years later we have found an abiding joy in this dog. Our shared love and the reciprocal love the dog exudes has enriched our lives. It's hard to put into words. It isn't something we pined for, at least not knowingly. When the situation that led to the dog coming into our lives had settled the thought of giving her back was shocking. Shocking? Yes, were were so used to our lives now, our routines, our obligations and our adoration of this animal that the idea of her being gone was devastating. We were clinging to something we didn't even know we were missing - the beauty of shared love.

USAID - Not just folly, criminal

by Craig Willms

I was one of those people who knew nothing about USAID or any number of other government agencies that spend billions of dollars within their dubious mission statements. The whole government aid and NGO paradigm is a murky, swampy concept that goes right over our heads - by design. We have all supported the concept of charitable organizations addressing social and economic problems, it only seems right. Whereas most of us older people think of faith-based outfits, in reality we know full well that government stepped in decades ago and took over this space. Most of us have no idea how far it has strayed from the concept.

Whenever the government gets involved with anything it eventually becomes rife with unseen corruption and smiling people in fancy suits and luxury cars coming out personally richer in every respect. The aid dollars destined for the situation at hand never seem to have the impact that was hoped. Alas, if it was ever about 'the situation', it became all about grift. Face the facts, all large institutions become corrupt in some way. In this case USAID and some other organizations they have always been the principal funding mechanism for clandestine activity for the intelligence community, or straight up grift for the credentialed government class. 

After WWII the conquest and capture of foreign lands by means of armies of destruction was over. Covert manipulation of elections and the spreading of propaganda, which we call disinformation these days became the preferred method of taking control. If America was going to dominate the world then a way to infiltrate foreign locales was required. Welcome USAID. The promise of US dollars was the foot in the door, a legitimacy for "intelligence" agents to operate in these countries. Fast forward 60 years and billions of dollars later the ugly truth is about to come out. Whether this method to conduct U.S. "policy" around the world is legitimate or not it's obvious it is out of control. In the end it props up the global war machine - and this is what's important to the American state.

There have been efforts over the years to reign in these programs. In the end the politicians and officials who highlighted these boondoggles were treated as a punchline and then dismissed. No one ever took the second step by taking action or at least doing a serious follow up. They didn't because they were strongly encouraged to drop it lest they or their families are paid an unwelcome visit...

Enter Trump 2.0 and D.O.G.E. and the threat of complete exposure. For decades this money faucet flowed freely, set on auto-pilot. Look away, nothing to see here. The dirty little secret that everyone in DC always knew and looked away from is that 99% of all these funds were in service to the ultra-left. I'd be remiss not to point out that big money interests almost always directly or indirectly benefit. Turning these apple carts over and exposing the graft is only part of it, Trump intends to end it. It'll be great fun to watch the rats scurry away from the light.

The details are just emerging from D.O.G.E.'s initial pass, and it's overwhelming. Tens of billions of dollars sent out from Washington to entities all over the world funding a list of projects that read like Saturday Night Live skits. You literally could not make this stuff up.

It's early, the dust has yet to settle, but the one that caught my attention is so bizarre and so creepy that I just had to bring it up. Thompson Reuters, a media company was awarded $9,173,000,000+ to create something called Large-Scale Social Deception. LSD! Thompson, once a text book creator for our schools had merged with Reuters a business news publisher. Honestly, when I said you can't make this stuff up I had the word ironic floating through my mind. Social deception occurs when individuals or governments manipulate social interactions for their own gain while hiding their true intentions. Is social deception something we want our government to be involved with? Yet, here we are with a combination of an educator and news disseminator creating the template for Washington!

Honestly I know nothing other than the title, the dollar amount and the awardee, yet it's enough to know it's bad, very bad. Now, had we learned this prior to 2020 it might have breezed by unnoticed. What happened in 2020? Covid-19. Talk about largescale social deception. This is an OMG moment. Obviously there is more to learn on this one, but those who mock "conspiracy theories" have got some soul searching to do.

Where are all the kids? Really, where are the kids?

by Craig Willms

I remember that day a few years ago, I remember it well... What a day it was! Spring was in the air and the desire to get out in the sun was strong. There was a touch of magic as we began our daily walk. It was nice to feel the cool breeze carrying a hint of solar radiation. The birds were singing in surround sound, and I swear I heard a motorcycle somewhere in the distance. It was glorious. Then my wife asked, "where are the kids?"

It's one of those things that didn't register until it was brought to light. The absence of children's happy voices outside was profound. It was the very first spring-like weather we'd seen after a long snowy winter that year, every kid should have been delirious with glee. We walked through a neighborhood of single-family homes for 35 minutes before we came across kids playing outside in the melting snow. Where are the kids indeed?

In the 1960's and 70's when I was a kid you could count on one hand the number of houses on your block that did not have children. We were everywhere. It was normal. It's all we knew. We were raised by a generation that didn't talk about the past in depth and kept personal things to themselves. So, if it was any different before the baby boom generation how would we know? We became conditioned to believe it would always be this way. 

I don't have to go far to see a snapshot of what happened to the kids. If I look at my own family on the maternal side, there's a clear decline in the number of babies per generation. Grandma Rose had 10 kids, Mom had 7, my wife had two. My Mom's kids gave her 18 grandchildren collectively. Eighteen sounds like a large number of grandkids for Mom but consider that Grandma had 45. Between my siblings and I we've ranged from 1 child to 4 children. None of us will even come close to 18 grandkids. This scenario repeated itself in some form all across the country, the world. My wife and I currently have 3 grandchildren.

Most people don't realize how dire the situation is. The population collapse is happening in slow motion all around us. The numbers are the numbers, it's already happened, we have yet to feel the repercussions of it. It's the 'already, not yet' paradox. Most people are still steeped in over-population rhetoric, after all the human population is still going up. It's like a truck being pushed uphill and we are still rolling forward the last few inches on momentum alone. Soon the truck will start rolling backwards picking up speed as the years go by. Since we baby boomers have worked our 45 years, raised our children and now have retired the evidence of a dearth of babies isn't yet obvious. There are still a lot of people everywhere. Fact is, when the old outnumber the young it's not going to be a sustainable situation. We only have ourselves to blame, I guess. I'm not sure if it's possible to pin what has happened on just one culprit. 

Yet, there is a profound difference in attitudes toward children among the current generation. In the distant past a woman would have six children to have 2 survive. Now in the modern world child mortality has decreased so as to be an insignificant statistic. With each woman having just 2 babies replacement rate would have been achieved. But it wasn't. Why not? When the statistics are crunched it turns out that the number of babies per mother has not changed much since the end of the baby boom in 1963, but the number of mothers has fallen through the floor. So, to restate, it's not that mothers are having fewer children, it's just that the number of women who become mothers is shrinking. And what that means is that there will be that many fewer potential mothers to propagate the future. I'm afraid to say it's a terminal decline.

Selfishly I could say "so what?" I'll be dead soon. But that's not how I feel. The mathematical certainty of this knowledge just came to light for me in the last year or so. I've known intuitively that something was wrong for a long, long time. So many people I'd come across in professional life were choosing to be childless. There were just a few people you knew with large families of 5 or more children. They convey stories of how they had taken criticism from friends and family when they would announce their 4th or 5th pregnancy. It made me sad. Having grown up in a large family I knew the adventure they were on. It is an adventure fewer and fewer people will ever share.

The movement from a historically dispersed and largely rural population to an urban centric population is probably the largest contributor to this situation. The urban environment doesn't reward a large family. There are higher costs that repress child rearing in an urban setting. As housing costs swell in the city buying a larger home for a larger family becomes prohibitive. The larger house requires a larger income and that leads to both adults working outside the home - leading to fewer children in a viscous cycle. In the modern paradigm the cost of living rises exponentially with each child, this was not the case in the past. 

That people face challenges raising children in this new urban centric standard is not minor, but it is largely a mechanical situation. The psychological barrier could prove to be greater. People don't want children, or they are being told they don't want children. From the shaming parents get when they have more than two or three kids to the armageddon that is predicted if "we" do not stop adding mouths to feed. The average couple, if there is such a thing anymore, is being brainwashed against becoming parents at all. Their selfishness is being encouraged and prodded by a coordinated cultural push to disfavor family. Live your best life now, take that (expensive) vacation, buy that boat or the sports car right now, why wait... The messages people receive from the culture and their childless friends goad them to forgo family in favor of fun. Then there is the insidious decades old anti-Christian rhetoric that further erodes the drive to have traditional families.

In the near future when the adult population reaches the age when they need special care in their final years there will be no one to provide it. The elderly and the dying will be warehoused and neglected, and most probably they will be unceremoniously euthanized. Roll that around in your head for a while... Is that what you want? There will be no one to care about you the way we cared for our parents in their final years. Maybe then you'll think, gee I wish I had had kids... Too late.

There is not much that can be done about it now. Any action to turn the tide would need to have happened 20 or 30 years ago. Even if every woman of childbearing age had three or four children this generation, it wouldn't reverse what's coming. There's a chance it could stabilize at some point, however there's no evidence that anti-human attitudes will ever change if the current anti-baby culture doesn't moderate. There are enough people who realize that something is dreadfully wrong with the culture, but they are clueless about what can be done. So, they do nothing or go along to get along. The culture we find ourselves in was methodically manipulated to socially chastise and enslave the very same people the corporate hierarchical system lashes to the debt treadmill. One system tries to create an illusion of freedom and a semblance of self-determination, and the other makes no pretenses, you will assimilate, hate on babies and religion or you will be destroyed. Neither system is an ideal to strive for or innately righteous, but don't kid yourself one is far better than the other. 

Boiling Frogs

 by Craig Willms

12/28/2024

The old idiom of slowly boiling the frog in a pot is used metaphorically to describe a situation where someone gradually becomes accustomed to something negative without realizing it until it’s too late. It is oft used because it aptly illustrates something very real. The American communists of which there are still plenty is the best example I can think of. When the communists, both here and abroad, set about transforming the American system they knew a frontal attack would be met with overwhelming rejection and guaranteed violence. A slow motion plot to change the base opinions across all the institutions of power and influence was set in motion. They needed regular Americans to reject free markets and freedom on their own. In the 1960's they produced a list of steps they would use to reach their goal [see here]. It goes without saying that in the year 2024 most of them have been achieved.  Are we a communist country? No. Not yet anyway.

The die-hard collectivists are content to allow the softer socialism to do their bidding. Yet, socialism doesn't necessarily have a better reputation with a large swath of Americans than communism does. Pure socialism has failed miserably everywhere it's been tried. The so-called socialist countries of Europe that are always cited as examples are almost never purely socialist. They have a capitalistic economic base layered with a social safety net that answers to the term socialism. Most of the Scandinavian countries roundly deny the socialist label. 

The very rich and powerful members of the elite class in the West know that communism - state control and ownership of everything - would be a disaster for everyone. Yet control is what they desire, just not the for the state. They also know that capitalism is the basis for almost all actual progress and technological advancement in the world. 

Capitalism as we know it with all its shortcomings is still responsible for the most wide-ranging freedom and wealth in the modern world. For the elites and the power mad this is a problem, distributed wealth and freedom interferes with their control. They have set into motion a plan that will put an end to that without bowing to the "state". It is like a plot out of a James Bond 007 movie. Unfortunately for you and me and the rest of the world it's closer to reality than global communism ever was. 

The political system they envision, brewing for decades, fermenting all the while, will eventually replace the two main political systems that are in use around the world. These systems you and I would recognize as the push pull behind all the conflicts and power plays around the globe. Shareholder capitalism in America, the Anglosphere and Europe and state capitalism that's used in places like China, Russia and the Arab world. This new system has come to be known as stakeholder capitalism, where rich powerful elite billionaires would control our lives from their ivory towers. Think the WEF and their 2016 proclamation 'you will own nothing and be happy'.

Why now? The dominoes are all lining up: globalism, data collection, surveillance, digital currency, high-tech interconnectedness, AI and above all extreme dissatisfaction with current authorities and their demonstrable incompetence. Think the Biden Administration.

Stakeholder capitalism is an authoritarian political system that shifts ultimate authority not to the state like communism, but to a group of stakeholders. These stakeholders are very same people that meet at the WEF annual meetings, and I presume the secret meetings 'ala the Bilderbergers etc etc - what we're talking about is one world government. It puts Donald Trump's call for America First in a whole new light. 

Is it any wonder there has been such a resistance to Trump since he entered the political arena. Who really knows if he's part of it or a true patriot - God help us if he's one of them. The assassination attempt on Trump where a bullet grazed his ear was a clue that he's not one of them. From the Secret Service shitting the bed six ways from Sunday to the instant death of the would-be assassin puts the lie to a Trump staged event. Of course we will never know the whole truth...

You might wonder how these elites will accomplish this global coup de tat. They are doing it right now before our eyes - it's been going on for years. Mega multi-national corporations are buying up all their competition and streamlining operations across the board. They consolidate entire industries and concerns under their umbrella. Huge hedge funds and investment conglomerates are buying up property and houses that will put on the rental market. Companies like Amazon are automating operations and building a distribution centers everywhere, working their delivery staff with maniacal efficiency and low pay, turning over their workforce every 3-4 years. All so they can undercut their independent competition and kill them for good. 

These same corporations are investing billions in artificial intelligence with eyes on replacing huge swaths of the workforce for pennies on the dollar. They have technology that surpasses anything the most powerful governments have. Think Elon Musk and his Spacex and StarLink systems that are clearly heads and tails beyond what NASA and the American government can do. Musk is just one of the billionaires and he is one of the most transparent. We have no idea how deep this dichotomy goes. They come at us from all directions, technology, manufacturing, distribution and retail not to mention the all-out global assault on owner operated farms and ranches for ultimate control of our food. 

Why cry for America when we can see the German example unfold in front of us. Germany is/was the heart of the European economic zone, Germany is dying. First, they removed their borders via the EU dictates and let in millions that have no desire to be Germans. Then they cut off their energy so that they cannot be a manufacturing giant anymore. Many Germans will blame the U.S. specifically, but they did it to themselves with NATO's and the EU's help. To be clear it was the cabal of billionaires and elites behind the scenes, the same ones targeting the rest of Europe and America. 

It doesn't stop with West. Russia and the Middle East are also in the cross hairs. Easy enough to blame it on the Jews but it's so much larger than that, the Jews have enough to secure their own place in the world let alone run a global cabal. No one here is blameless, except the average citizen caught up in this fray. 

The wild card is China. From my reading China has never had aspirations of global domination. I think they have enough trouble controlling their own. Their outreach to Africa, Central and South America and other places around the globe are possibly a hedge against Western aspirations. China is so deeply integrated with the U.S. economically that hurting us hurts them, but they can and will stir up trouble - they are good at it, above all they are patient. They will wait for us to destroy ourselves.

What can be done? I don't know - I'm just reading the room here. Awareness is one thing. Knowing who or what is on your side is trickier. From my vantage the Democrats and "Wall Street" here in America and Labour and the Monarchy in the UK are not on our side. Global government is something they seem to desire. Beyond that I don't have enough insight into this cabal - I'm a nobody. I hope Trump is what he appears to be, but who can tell, he seems to love himself and his persona above all - then comes America. I would say try not to feed the beast. Personally I start with Amazon. They are always my last resort, if I can't get what I need from someone else then Amazon. You have to decide for yourself. I try not to economically support Google, Walmart, Target, Budweiser and the other giants, but sometimes we have no choice. Do your best and be aware of who you give your money to. 

p.s.     I know the irony of picking on Google while this website is hosted by them... Have a chuckle! I have no desire to move it. I don't see any money changing hands with Google that I know of. But I did succeed at not using Amazon once during this Christmas season!