The Lesser of Two Evils and the 13 Families Said to Run It All

How old is the lesser-of-two-evils argument?

It is older than the ballot. In Book 12 of the Odyssey the sorceress Circe warns Odysseus that no ship has ever passed the monster Scylla without losing some men. In Samuel Butler's translation she tells him to drive the ship past as fast as he can, "for you had better lose six men than your whole crew" (Homer, The Odyssey, Butler translation, Project Gutenberg). That is the argument in its first written form. The loss is certain. The only open question is which one.

In the first century BC Cicero put the maxim in writing and then argued with it. In Walter Miller's translation of On Duties, Book 3, he writes that "among evils one ought not only to choose the least, but also to extract even from these any element of good that they may contain." Later in the same book he asks whether a person should "choose moral wrong rather than misfortune," and answers with a question: "is there any evil greater than moral wrong?" (Cicero, De Officiis, Miller translation, Project Gutenberg). So the Roman who wrote the maxim down also wrote down where it stops working.

Around 1418 to 1427 Thomas a Kempis gave it a Latin sentence in The Imitation of Christ, Book 3, chapter 12: "De duobus malis semper minus tamen est eligendum." Benham's 1874 English reads, "Of two evils we should always choose the less." The context is suffering now against punishment after death, not an election (quoted with other translations at WIST).

In the deadlocked election of 1800, Alexander Hamilton wrote to a Massachusetts congressman: "In a choice of Evils let them take the least -- Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr." That is how journalist Carey Wedler quotes the letter in her history of the argument (Pleasure to Burn, Nov 5, 2024). In 1824 Henry Clay chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and said, "I consider that whatever choice we may make will be only a choice of evils." In 1904 an objection was printed that sums up the whole problem: "Just so long as you keep on 'choosing the lesser of two evils,' you will have nothing but two evils to choose between." Wedler's article is the source for those quotes with their newspapers.

The lesser evil does not always stay the lesser. On March 16, 1932 the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Frederic Sackett, cabled Washington about the German presidential election. Germany's Social Democrats had turned out strongly for the aging President Hindenburg, and Sackett wrote what moved them: "Neither veneration for the person of President von Hindenburg nor affection for the government of Dr. Brüning inspired them" (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1932, volume II, document 195). Their aim, in his account, was to defeat Hitler. Hindenburg stayed president, and on January 30, 1933 he appointed Hitler chancellor (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum). Many forces led to that day. The only claim here is the one the two documents make together: a lesser evil was chosen on purpose, and the office it protected handed over the greater one.

The same trade ran again in France in 2002. In the runoff Jacques Chirac won 82.15% of the vote against Jean-Marie Le Pen's 17.85%, and the Congressional Research Service titled its report "France: Election by Default, 2002," noting that "many voters, perhaps a majority, were voting against Le Pen" (CRS report RS21216, June 27, 2002). Nobody disputes that the choice was real. The question is what a vote against something builds.

In The Nation of October 20, 1956, W.E.B. Du Bois explained why he would not vote: "In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no 'two evils' exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say" (The Nation, "I Won't Vote"). On election day 2024 Wedler wrote that millions of Americans would choose between candidates who inspire "dread," "anxiety" and "frustration," and that many feel they have no choice but a "lesser evil."

That is the oldest record: a rule that is sometimes right, always arrives with the menu already written, and is argued with by the people who first wrote it down. The rest of this post is about who writes the menu. It starts with the government, then follows the same hands into your medicine cabinet, your screen and the ownership of the companies you buy from.

What did both colors build?

Start with what the two colors built together. None of this says which party is to blame. It says what the documents show happened while the argument kept winning. The Hub maps these institutions on its control system page, one of the systems of you and the world around you.

What has it done to the national debt?

Treasury keeps the record back to 1790. The total national debt fell in 80 fiscal years of American history. The last time was fiscal year 1957, when it went from $272.8 billion to $270.5 billion. In every fiscal year since, 1958 through 2026, it has risen: 69 in a row (U.S. Treasury, Historical Debt Outstanding). It did fall in 80 earlier years, so "it has never gone down" is false and "the total national debt has gone up 69 years running" is true.

Read one fact beside that. The part of the debt held by the public did fall, four years running, in fiscal years 1998 through 2001: $3.772 trillion at the end of 1997, then $3.721 trillion, $3.632 trillion, $3.410 trillion and $3.320 trillion (White House OMB, Historical Tables, Table 7.1). Treasury's daily record agrees on the first step: debt held by the public was $3.790 trillion on September 30, 1997 and $3.734 trillion on September 30, 1998. The total kept rising in those years because the government's own accounts, such as the Social Security trust funds, held more of it: $1.60 trillion in fiscal year 1997 and $2.45 trillion in 2001 (the same OMB table). So the careful claim is about the total, which counts both the public's share and what the government owes its own accounts.

Here is the debt at the end of each midterm-election fiscal year (September 30), from the same table:

• Midterm year 2006: $8.51 trillion
• Midterm year 2010: $13.56 trillion
• Midterm year 2014: $17.82 trillion
• Midterm year 2018: $21.52 trillion
• Midterm year 2022: $30.93 trillion
• Midterm year 2026: $40.17 trillion

On June 9, 2020 the debt passed $26 trillion ($26,003,751,512,344.91). On November 3, 2026, the latest day Treasury had posted when this was written, it was $40,547,403,570,984.82 (U.S. Treasury, Debt to the Penny). That is $14.54 trillion added in about six and a half years. The daily number moves up and down a little (on October 29 it was $40.59 trillion), which is why the year-end figures above are the fair comparison. None of this says which party is to blame. It says the number went one way under both.

What did the taxes do?

Taxes did not only go up, and they did not only come down. The rate went both ways. The first federal income tax, in the 1913 law, was a 1% "normal" tax on net income, with extra tax of 1% to 6% on higher incomes, so 7% at the top over $500,000. The first $3,000 of income was exempt, and $4,000 for a married couple (38 Stat. 166 and 168). The top rate reached 94% in 1944 and 1945 on income over $200,000, with an effective cap of 90% of net income. For tax year 2026 the top rate is 37%, on single incomes over $640,600 (IRS, Historical Table 23; IRS release IR-2025-103). The rate came down by more than half from its peak.

In fiscal year 2026, by Treasury's own record, the government took in $5,403,326,758,960.81 and spent $7,395,799,983,313.23, a deficit of $1,992,473,224,352.42 (Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 3). The debt rose $2,534,271,606,404.70, from $37,637,553,494,935.61 to $40,171,825,101,340.31 (Debt to the Penny). So they took in $5.4 trillion and the debt still rose $2.53 trillion. Two cautions. The debt rose $541.8 billion more than the deficit, because debt moves for reasons outside the budget deficit, which this post does not itemize. And only $5.357 trillion of the $5.403 trillion is taxes and customs; the rest is Federal Reserve earnings, fees and other receipts. Across fiscal years 1970 through 2025 the government ran a deficit in 52 of 56 years; the only surpluses were 1998 through 2001.

What freedoms were taken, and who voted for it?

No single document proves "more of our freedoms have been taken away." The best-documented example, and one both colors voted for, is the bulk phone-records program.

The USA PATRIOT Act's section 215 let the FBI seek an order for "any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)" (Public Law 107-56). The House passed the act on October 24, 2001, 357 to 66; the Republicans voted 211 to 3 and the Democrats 145 to 62 (House roll call 398). The Senate passed it on October 25, 2001, 98 to 1, with one senator not voting; the one no vote was a Democrat (Senate roll call vote 313). Section 215 had a built-in expiration date, and "Congress has renewed § 215 seven times, most recently in 2011."

The phone-records program under it was secret until June 5, 2013, when The Guardian published a leaked court order. On May 7, 2015, the Second Circuit ruled: "we hold that the text of § 215 cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and that it does not authorize the telephone metadata program" (ACLU v. Clapper, slip opinion, page 82).

Read the rest of the record beside that: the court did not rule the program unconstitutional ("we need not and do not reach these weighty constitutional issues"). It ruled on what the statute authorized. And the same year, on June 2, 2015, Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, whose section 103 says "No order issued under this subsection may authorize the collection of tangible things without the use of a specific selection term" (Public Law 114-23). So part of that freedom was taken, and part was given back. This post does not say anyone broke the law.

Who is allowed to spend on the election?

Citizens United v. FEC was decided on January 21, 2010, 5 to 4 on the holding that matters here. Justice Kennedy wrote: "Austin is overruled, and thus provides no basis for allowing the Government to limit corporate independent expenditures. Hence, §441b's restrictions on such expenditures are invalid and cannot be applied to Hillary" (Citizens United v. FEC, syllabus; the opinion). In plain words, the Court struck down limits on independent corporate spending on election ads; contributions given directly to candidates stay limited.

Who is allowed to spend on an election is a legal question with a documented answer. A 2020 law-review foreword on the Supreme Court's voting rights, voter identification and campaign finance decisions concluded they undermined democratic governance by restricting voting access and enabling the dominance of political money.[1]Source A 2014 study of 1,779 policy issues found that economic elites and business-oriented interest groups had substantial independent influence on US policy, while average citizens and mass-based groups had little or none.[2]DOI An economics paper asked why democracy has not slowed rising inequality and listed five reasons, among them wealthy groups' influence through campaign contributions and lobbying.[3]DOI A 2026 working paper found that firms lobby the committees where the legislators they have funded serve, and that their contributions to those legislators tend to persist over time.[4]DOI And a legal history of lobbying law from the mid-1800s to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 concluded that federal rules regulate lobbying's transparency and techniques, not how much lobbying occurs.[5]DOI

What does it cost a member of Congress to report a stock trade late?

In 2012 Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. Section 4 says: "Members of Congress and employees of Congress are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws." Section 6 requires every trade to be reported "not later than 30 days after receiving notification ... but in no case later than 45 days after such transaction" (Public Law 112-105, approved April 4, 2012).

The House Ethics Committee's own guide says: "All late PTR submissions are subject to a minimum fee of $200. However, multiple late PTR filings could result in additional fees." It also gives a grace period: a report that is late but filed "within the 30-day grace period" carries no late fee (House Ethics, financial disclosure instruction guide). So the penalty for reporting a trade late starts at a $200 minimum, after a 30-day grace period.

A report by the trading-data company Unusual Whales found, for 2025, "1,200+ late-disclosed transactions across 50+ unique filings, involving 40 different politicians." The longest gap it lists is a senator who, on August 13, 2025, disclosed trades dating back to January 3, 2023, "a gap of 953 days" between the trade and the disclosure, where the law's outer limit is 45 days after the transaction. The same report ran 311 backtested portfolios and found that 100 of them, 32.2%, beat the S&P 500, so the story is not that members are better traders. Its flagged-trade tool "does not allege insider trading or illegality," and neither does this post (Unusual Whales, Congress Trading Report 2025).

The Campaign Legal Center's April 4, 2022 report says: "no member of Congress has ever been prosecuted for insider trading under the STOCK Act, despite credible allegations of its occurrence" (CLC, "Taking Stock of the STOCK Act on Its 10th Anniversary"). Its January 2026 fact sheet says the STOCK Act "already prohibits the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading by members of Congress. However, because of the high standard for insider trading under the STOCK Act and investigatory hurdles, no lawmaker has actually been prosecuted for this crime" (CLC fact sheet). Both statements are about prosecutions under the STOCK Act, not about every prosecution of every member for any reason. The law says members are not exempt. A $200 minimum late fee and zero prosecutions of members under it is what that looks like in practice.

Who is choosing between the evils?

The people choosing between evils and the people being chosen are not in the same income bracket. OpenSecrets estimates net worth from the personal financial disclosures members file. On the 2018 filings, the latest it publishes, the median Senate member was worth more than $1,696,020 and the median House member $489,514. The salary of a typical member is $174,000 (OpenSecrets, Personal Finances). The median American family's net worth in 2022 was $192,900, and $14,000 for families in the bottom fifth of income (Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances, Table 2).

Nine people nobody elected, for life

Federal judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour" (U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 1). That is life tenure, and it is legal: it is in the Constitution, and nothing but impeachment ends it. In November 2023 the nine justices signed the Court's first written code of conduct. SCOTUSblog reported that it "largely tracks an existing code for other federal judges" and met criticism for "its failure to provide for any enforcement mechanism" (SCOTUSblog, Nov 13, 2023). The Court's campaign-finance decisions are themselves studied as a driver of what money can do in politics.[1]Source

July 1, 2024: six to three, immune

In Trump v. United States the Court held, 6 to 3, that a president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for core acts and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, and none for unofficial acts. The Court's syllabus states the holding: "Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts." Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion, joined in full by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and by Barrett except for one part; Sotomayor dissented, joined by Kagan and Jackson (slip opinion, No. 23-939). Members of Congress carry their own clause: "for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place" (Article I, Section 6). Unelected judges with seats for life granted the elected executive immunity, and the legislature that could change any of it set a $200 minimum fee for reporting a trade late.

Read these as a set: a Court that removed limits on independent corporate spending, studies of what the money does, a law that makes members report their own trades and sets a $200 minimum when they are late, and judges who answer to no voter. Both colors have held Congress and the White House in the years above. This is the record of what they did with that.

Who pays for what you are told about your health?

This is where the playbook reaches your body. In 2025 the pharmaceutical and health products industry spent about $457 million on federal lobbying, more than any other industry. The archived page of August 27, 2026 lists $456.8 million and says the industry "currently reports about 1.44x the spending of the next-ranked industry," electronics (OpenSecrets, Federal Lobbying Top Industries 2025, archived copy). OpenSecrets revises these totals as lobbying reports are amended, so "about $457 million" is the careful figure. From 1999 to 2018 the industry spent $4.7 billion on federal lobbying and $1.3 billion on federal and state campaign contributions.[6]PubMed

Lobbying spending is paid to lobbyists, not to members of Congress. The both-parties money is campaign contributions. In the 2023-2024 cycle the industry's contributions to sitting House members went about $11 million to Democrats and $9.8 million to Republicans, and to sitting senators about $3.8 million to Democrats and $2.7 million to Republicans. Among single companies, Pfizer's contributions went $1,333,631 to Democrats and $815,554 to Republicans; Abbott Laboratories gave $631,289 to Democrats and $573,977 to Republicans, and another $4,010,752 to conservative groups. OpenSecrets also reports that the industry's contributions jumped in every presidential cycle since 2012, reaching $89,091,362 in 2020, a 170% increase from a decade earlier (OpenSecrets, industry profile H04, archived copy of July 16, 2026). Corporate political activity, from donations to lobbying to the revolving door, is documented as shaping health policy, law and regulation.[7]DOI

The money does not stop at Congress. The library holds the studies on where else it goes, from many countries. In a study of 328 leaders of ten influential US professional medical associations, 72 percent had financial ties to industry between 2017 and 2019, with a median of about $31,800 per leader.[8]DOI Across 75 studies, industry-sponsored drug and device trials more often reported favorable results and favorable conclusions than trials with other funding, with no difference in harms reporting.[9]PubMed Among Japanese cancer-trial authors, 92 percent received industry payments, but only 10.4 percent accurately disclosed them.[10]DOI Among 8,190 Japanese board-certified otolaryngologists, 44.8 percent received pharmaceutical payments in 2016 to 2019, with the top 1 percent receiving 42.3 percent of the funds, particularly guideline authors.[11]DOI Industry-funded dental research was 3.2 times more likely to report favorable outcomes than independently funded studies.[12]DOI A review of the standard fix found that conflict-of-interest disclosure policies remain inconsistently implemented and ineffective at reducing bias.[13]PubMed

Read the other side beside it. The pattern is not in every field. One analysis of industry-funded hand-surgery trials found they were published in higher-impact journals with more industry-affiliated authors, yet showed no increased risk of favorable results compared with trials that had other funding.[14]PubMed Funding is a reason to read closely and to compare, and it is not a verdict on any single study.

It reaches beyond drugs. Between 2011 and 2015 Coca-Cola and PepsiCo sponsored 95 national health organizations while lobbying on 29 public-health bills about soda or nutrition, and opposed the bill 97 percent of the time.[15]DOI In 1980, after food-industry lobbying, Congress stripped the Federal Trade Commission of its authority to write rules on advertising to children.[16]Source Widespread conflicts of interest across government, regulatory bodies and academia are described as compromising the UK response to ultra-processed foods.[17]PubMed The food and beverage industry's partnership agenda shapes how nutrition policy problems and solutions are framed.[18]DOI A 2006 BMJ news report cites a survey in which almost 18 percent of 997 FDA scientists said they had been asked to alter technical information.[19]DOI Congressional votes that raised Medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals in members' own districts were followed by more campaign contributions to those members.[20]DOI

When the pattern is studied as a whole, the studies describe a structure, not a few bad actors. Healthcare corruption often involves individual and institutional corruption together, which is why the remedies have to be systemic.[21]PubMed Power configurations, policy and structural factors drive population health and inequity through pathways that have nothing to do with the medicine you receive.[22]DOI Corporate political activity, from donations to lobbying to the revolving door, is documented as shaping health policy, law and regulation.[7]DOI A review of pharmacy benefit managers found that high market concentration enables vertical integration and steering of volume to affiliated channels.[23]Source A review of the global insulin market found that biotechnology did not deliver the affordability and access its makers claimed, and instead produced a three-company oligopoly.[24]PubMed The pathway is measurable in the clinic: prior authorization, a payer's permission slip, is associated with disease exacerbation, preventable hospitalization, longer stays and reduced disease-free survival across specialties.[25]PubMed

Who trained the people who read your labs?

Then there is the training. U.S. medical students received an average of 19.6 hours of nutrition instruction over their entire medical career, and only 27 percent met the recommended 25-hour minimum.[26]DOI That is not the clinician's fault. It is the curriculum, and the curriculum sits inside the same system.

Does spike protein stay in the body?

Take one question people ask: does the spike protein from COVID-19 infection or vaccination stay in the body, and for how long? Start with the law around it. The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act says a "covered person shall be immune from suit and liability under Federal and State law with respect to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure," once the Secretary has issued a declaration. The one exception is a federal suit for death or serious physical injury "proximately caused by willful misconduct," filed only in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (42 U.S.C. 247d-6d). Its compensation program reports, as of October 1, 2026, 14,879 claims filed since fiscal year 2010 and 96 compensated; of 14,250 COVID-19 claims, 11,198 allege injuries from COVID-19 vaccines. HRSA's own caution beside those counts: a claim records an alleged injury, and "temporal association ... is not sufficient, by itself, to prove that an injury is the direct result of a covered countermeasure" (HRSA, CICP data). The statute names no product and says nothing about safety.

Now the library. Two case histories documented circulating spike protein with elevated anti-spike antibodies 3.5 years after vaccination, alongside multisystem symptoms and immune dysregulation.[27]DOI A review of candidate biomarkers for post-acute COVID-19 vaccination syndrome lists persistent spike protein and vaccine mRNA sequences among them, and notes that medicine still lacks a definitive diagnostic test.[28]PubMed A review proposes that long COVID and vaccine side effects share overlapping inflammatory pathways driven by persistent spike protein.[29]PubMed Those are case histories and reviews. Two cases are not a rate, a pathway proposed in a review is not a proven cause, and none of them says how many people carry spike protein or ties a measured level to an outcome in a controlled way.

The same library holds the other findings, and they stay in. Across 13 Western European countries over 30 pandemic months, rapid vaccine rollout to the elderly in early 2021 was associated with lower excess mortality (rho = -0.76).[30]DOI A meta-analysis of 27 studies covering 126 patients with vaccine-related myocarditis found symptoms had resolved in all of them by follow-up, although late gadolinium enhancement on cardiac MRI persisted in 76 percent at a median of 3 to 6.3 months.[31]DOI A narrative review of 57 studies found that mistrust of healthcare during health crises was linked to greater belief in conspiracy theories, vaccine hesitancy and non-compliance.[32]DOI

A gap is not a verdict. The documents above show a statute that grants immunity from suit with one narrow exception, a compensation program that has compensated 96 of 14,879 claims beside an agency saying a claim proves nothing by itself, and a library whose rows on persistence are case histories and reviews. The Hub's spike protein page puts the research in one place, and its post on what the studies show about spike protein detox reads the persistence papers and the detox research school by school, with the null results beside the positive ones. Nothing here says a vaccine caused anyone's illness or tells anyone to stop a medicine.

What about iodine?

The same silence is older and quieter with iodine, where the question is a lab value. In a UK birth cohort, severe iodine deficiency in the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with lower vocabulary and full-scale IQ scores in the children at age 15.[33]PubMed In a randomized trial of mildly iodine-deficient pregnant women, daily iodine slightly lowered maternal thyroxine and did not improve child developmental scores at 5.7 years.[34]PubMed Those two sit side by side because they ask different questions: severe deficiency in the first trimester is one thing, and supplementing mild deficiency is another. A 2026 review describes iodine as essential for thyroid hormone synthesis and neurodevelopment, with both too little and too much linked to harm.[35]PubMed And a review of perchlorate found that it competitively inhibits the sodium-iodide symporter, the transporter that carries iodide into the thyroid.[36]PubMed The Hub's iodine page lays out the studies, including the halides that compete with iodine and the minerals that travel with it. Whether you are short is a measurement, not an opinion, and it takes a lab, not a vote.

Who owns the story, and what does it do to you?

You have seen the graphic that says five or six companies control all the media. It circulates without a method, and this post does not repeat it. The documents say something narrower. Oxfam's January 2026 report, Resisting the Rule of the Rich, counts that 7 of the 10 largest media and press companies in the world have billionaire owners, and that over half of the world's largest media companies do (Oxfam International, executive summary and methodology note, January 2026). Those are counts of who owns the companies. They are not a record of what any owner tells any newsroom.

Ownership still shows up in outcomes. A 2024 working paper that studied political donations after George Floyd's killing in 2020 found that counties more exposed to Sinclair-owned TV coverage were less likely to support Republican candidates.[37]DOI The point is not the direction. The point is that a station's owner showed up in the data.

The health news you read has its own record. Pfizer's video news release about its inhaled insulin Exubera aired as unlabelled news on at least two US stations, with the drugmaker's role undisclosed.[38]DOI News coverage of an adolescent depression trial described it as publicly funded, though its lead author and five co-authors had received funding from the drug's maker.[39]DOI In a study of science news stories, research funding was reported in only 38 percent and researcher conflicts of interest in only 11 percent, despite public disclosures.[40]PubMed

Then there is what the news is built to do to you. Across randomized trials covering about 105,000 headline variations and 5.7 million clicks, each additional negative word in a headline raised the click-through rate by about 2.3 percent, while positive words lowered it.[41]PubMed Negative words get clicked, which is an incentive, not a conspiracy. Whether the result harms you is a question of dose. In a two-wave replication, people with severely problematic news consumption showed greater mental ill-being, but that group was smaller (7.5 percent) than in the original study and the physical differences did not hold over time.[42]PubMed In a randomized experiment, deactivating Facebook for four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election increased subjective well-being and reduced political polarization, and it also lowered factual news knowledge.[43]DOI Local crime rates reduced the mental wellbeing of residents who were not victims, and media coverage amplified the effect.[44]Source

A body can tell you what the news is doing to it, if you give it words. The Hub's What Am I Feeling? is a short, private reflection tool that starts from Good, Bad, Mad, Sad, Stressed, Numb or Confused and helps you find plainer language for it. Across three studies of more than 2,000 US voters in the 2022 and 2024 elections, higher interoceptive sensibility, meaning how well people sense their own body, was linked to lower emotional and physical costs of political polarization and greater resilience.[45]DOI Meet Yourself is the slower tool: a look at the patterns underneath, across your three worlds, your six inner functions and the nine directions you can grow. Despair belongs on the same list. Higher levels of personal and community despair are associated with reduced voter turnout at both the individual and the county level.[46]PubMed

Which 13 families are said to run it all?

The phrase "13 families that run it all" mixes a documented historical ownership study with later lists that make much larger claims. The official list in the record reviewed here comes from the Securities and Exchange Commission: Ford, du Pont, Rockefeller, Mellon, McCormick, Hartford, Harkness, Duke, Pew, Pitcairn, Clark, Reynolds and Kress. In October 1940 the SEC staff reported on who owned the 200 largest non-financial corporations in the United States. Its summary says three family groups, the du Ponts, the Mellons and the Rockefellers, held shares valued at nearly $1.4 billion that directly or indirectly gave control over fifteen of those 200 corporations, and that all thirteen family groups held shares worth $2.7 billion, which is over 8 percent of the stock of the 200 corporations (SEC, The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Non-Financial Corporations, October 1940). TIME reported it that month with the per-family figures: Fords $624,975,000, du Ponts $573,690,000, Rockefellers $396,583,000, Mellons $390,943,000 (TIME, "Government: Thirteen Families," October 28, 1940). The same SEC report found that fewer than 75,000 persons were enough to account for half of all dividends received by individuals. That is documented concentration in an official record. It is also 8 percent, not everything, and it is historical ownership data rather than a current census of who runs the world.

The number thirteen has a second source, and it is a different list in a different kind of document. A list of thirteen "bloodlines" comes from a 1995 book by Fritz Springmeier, and a copy of that book was among the files recovered from the Abbottabad compound in 2011 that the CIA released in November 2017 (CIA, Abbottabad compound material). That proves where the file was found. It does not validate its list or show that thirteen families act together as one command structure.

In 2011 three researchers mapped who owns whom among 43,060 transnational corporations in the 2007 Orbis database. They found that nearly four tenths of the control over the economic value of those corporations was held, through a web of cross-ownership, by a core group of 147 of them; that only 737 top holders accumulated 80 percent of the control; and that three quarters of that core are financial intermediaries (Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston, PLoS ONE, October 2011). The authors are careful about what that means. Concentrated control "does not determine if and how they are interconnected," and the ties "could facilitate the formation of blocs, which would hamper market competition." It is a 2007 snapshot of ownership. It is not a record of anyone's orders.

Index funds changed who the owners are. A 2017 paper in Business and Politics found that BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street together are the largest shareholder in 88 percent of S&P 500 firms, and that they generally vote with management, except at director elections (Fichtner, Heemskerk and Garcia-Bernardo, 2017). A 2019 working paper estimated that the three collectively cast an average of about 25 percent of the votes at S&P 500 companies and could cast as much as 40 percent within two decades (Bebchuk and Hirst, The Specter of the Giant Three, NBER). Both papers describe a structure. Neither says it is being used as one.

At the top of the ladder, Oxfam's 2026 count is that the 12 richest billionaires hold more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, and that billionaires are at least 4,000 times more likely than ordinary people to hold political office. It also reports that in 2024 one in every six dollars spent by all US candidates, parties and committees came from just 100 billionaire families (Oxfam, January 2026). Americans for Tax Fairness, the advocacy coalition behind that count, put the sum at $2.6 billion and the split at 70 percent to Republican candidates and conservative causes, 23 percent to Democratic candidates and progressive causes, and 7 percent to committees with no clear identity (Americans for Tax Fairness, April 2, 2025). So the largest checks are not split evenly. "Both colors take the same money" fits the pharmaceutical contributions above and does not fit the biggest billionaire families.

Families are a documented unit of this wealth. Forbes' 2026 list of America's richest families counts 54 families worth at least $10 billion each, with the Waltons and the Rockefellers named in its headline (Forbes, June 29, 2026). Family wealth is also a health variable: it buffers stress, enables health opportunities, builds cultural capital and supports future expectations, four mechanisms linking inequality to adolescent health.[47]PubMed The other side of the argument is in the library too. A 2022 article argues against preventing extreme wealth through higher taxes, on the grounds that billionaires are often better placed than officials to help the poor and that corporate leaders are typically more accountable to citizens.[48]PubMed And a 2014 paper argues that US decline since the 1970s stems partly from the fragmentation of the corporate elite, whose earlier cohesion supported a stronger and more equal economy.[49]DOI Those two do not agree, and neither is out-voted here.

World banking is the part of this picture that is hardest to see and easiest to feel. Life satisfaction across more than 600,000 Europeans was negatively correlated with unemployment and inflation rates, which means macroeconomic conditions directly affected emotional well-being.[50]Source A 2015 paper argues that global wealth concentration and pharmaceutical and finance-sector lobbying on budget and tax issues favor elite interests over public benefit.[51]DOI The decisions made at that level land in a nervous system.

Who funds both sides?

"Funding both sides" is the slogan. The documented version is smaller, and it is still plain. Today it looks like the checks in the health section: Pfizer, Abbott and the pharmaceutical industry giving to both parties, and physicians giving too. Self-described otolaryngologists gave about $569,000 to political action committees from 2003 to 2021, split nearly evenly between Republican and Democratic campaigns.[52]PubMed The biggest billionaire checks, as the section above shows, were not even.

In war, the best primary document is old. In 1936 a Senate committee led by Gerald Nye reported on the arms business. Among its findings: the American firm Electric Boat supplied submarines to Peru while the British firm Vickers-Armstrong supplied material to Chile, and after the two countries settled their Tacna-Arica dispute peacefully, Electric Boat's vice president wrote to a Vickers-Armstrong officer: "It is too bad that the pernicious activities of our State Department have put the brake on armament orders from Peru by forcing resumption of formal diplomatic relations with Chile." Elsewhere the committee found "no record of any munitions company aiding any proposals for limitation of armaments," and "a record of their active opposition by some to almost all such proposals ... and of rich profiting whenever such proposals failed" (Nye Committee report, 1936, findings). That is two firms arming opposite sides of a dispute, and one of them complaining that restored diplomatic relations had cost it orders. It is not one firm funding both.

The cost is measured in bodies. A 2026 review argues that the arms industry acts as a commercial determinant of health in the Middle East, causing direct deaths from weapons and indirect harm by diverting government spending from health and social services.[53]PubMed What this post does not say is that any bank financed both sides of any modern war. The claim circulates, and no primary or academic source read for this post supports it, so it stays out.

What is on the menu that is yours?

The lesser-of-two-evils trap works because the menu is closed. Someone else wrote the list, you pick from it, and the picking feels like power. What is not on the menu is the part that is yours: your own labs, read against your own diet, against 735,000+ studies from every country that publishes them, in the studies library and the lab library. No donors and no party. The Hub's evidence policy says how every study gets in, and the statins post shows the same method on one drug.

The Lab Atlas is coming soon, and it goes one step further. It will read the international research on the mechanics of blood measurement, and on the nutrients and lifestyle choices that move each marker, across more than 500,000 studies indexed by mechanism and relationship. You can join the waitlist now. Browse the systems of you, the matrix of Cell, Mind and Meaning and the world around them that this whole post sits inside, and you can see which part of the menu you have been handed and which part you can measure.

What this post is not

It is not a reason to vote for one color, the other, a third, or none. The people arguing for the playbook have never agreed on which evil was lesser, in 1800 or now. It is not an accusation that any named person or company broke the law: every vote above is from the official record, every trade count is from the members' own public filings, and every legal quote is from the statute or the opinion itself. It is not a claim that any vaccine is safe or unsafe, effective or harmful. It does not say a handful of families own the world: the best-documented count of thirteen is the 1940 SEC study, at over 8 percent of the stock of 200 corporations, and no document read for this post shows any family, or any group of owners, acting together as one. What the documents above describe is ownership concentrated in a few hundred top holders and a handful of index-fund managers, plus political giving by a billionaire class. It does not say any bank financed both sides of a modern war. It is education, not medical advice.