Unemployment and literal hunger (as experienced in the Great Depression under Hoover) or economic dysfunction (as experienced in the 1970s under Carter) are the threshold crises that enable consensus around transformational presidents; current conditions have not reached that threshold.

The Israeli military depends on knowing about threats before they arrive because troop strength is limited, making intelligence the cornerstone of defense; thus the 2023 Hamas invasion mirrors the 1973 Egyptian-Syrian attack—both massive intelligence failures—and the real military question is why Israeli intelligence failed twice in this pattern.

The US was not interested in occupying Moscow during WWII, but Russians could not know this and had to assume worst-case intentions; this defensive assumption shapes Russian strategy even today.

The attacker has asymmetric advantage over the defender: the attacker chooses where to engage, forcing the defender to be lucky every time while the attacker only needs to be lucky once.

Politicians and generals rarely have genuine choices—they are pushed by circumstances into wars and into terrain that forces specific tactics; both Roosevelt and Reagan appeared to have freedom but were actually constrained by the situations they inherited.

The United States was founded by immigrants who were not welcomed but essential, through westward expansion engaging Indians, with a constitutional structure deliberately designed to prevent government action through separated powers and federalism.

Nixon's abandonment of the gold standard and wage/price freeze in 1971 created the economic shocks of the 1970s, yet the decade recovered, demonstrating that even radical monetary and fiscal shocks can be survived.

Throughout US history, citizens have 'both pulled together and ripped apart' at transition points; these cycles are normal and expected, not signs of systemic failure.

Franklin D. Roosevelt solved the Great Depression era rage by managing ethnic scapegoating and soothing the country through programs that created consensus even though underlying divisions were severe.

Consensus around policy (and ability to implement transformational change) only emerges once crisis is severe enough that 'people have the freedom to be all over the place' is no longer possible—i.e., when avoiding the crisis becomes impossible.

Taiwan is being integrated into the American defense perimeter through positioning in the center of US naval and air defense systems, not because it is geographically special but because it sits between Japanese forces (north) and new Philippine bases (south).

China has sent ministers to interior regions to manage unrest, then withdrawn them as policy shifts, reflecting uncertainty and instability in how to manage the coastal-interior divide.

The US has the capacity to rebuild and benefit from conquered territories (as it did with post-WWII Japan), providing economic returns on military investment that other powers cannot achieve, due to combination of naval control and economic capacity.

Nation-states are far more than their economies; military, social, and political forces interact in complex ways, making purely economistic analysis of war inadequate.