We're all individuals. "The Greater Good? or The Lesser Evil?" can only be evaluated in whatever context you hold as the teleological point of life.
Given what I think is your materialistic weltanschauung, I can't fathom what you mean by

How did life ever get off the periodic table? "Process" implies both an initial state, a current state, and some vector of travel (perhaps varying). How do you model those?

In the same sense that a BSOD used to "save" Windows.

In fairness (and by way of apology), the whole right/left distinction is increasingly a bugaboo. Read Codevilla, and know that it's the ruling class vs. us here peasants.
Coming back to the public/private sector point, I'm talking about the encroachment/enslavement of the public sector via entitlements.
As TFA is saying, the emphasis on public sector incurring of debt to pay for shiny items has pushed whole cities (Detroit) past the point of reasonable recovery, triggering fire sales for temporary revenue boosts to keep a dead system alive.
See also Walter Russell Mead.

Except that the Federal Reserve prints money, which is then used to buy votes and ensare the rest of the republic. The Medicare expansion under ObamaCare is a case in point.

Read Gustave Lebon's "The Crowd"

I'd edit you slightly to say that "educated leftists like the people who made The Butler [know that there is power to be derived from perpetuating] the lie that Martin was hunted and murdered".
If you hold that the only thing that matters is controlling groups of people, much of the media and legislative behavior snap into focus.

. . .blame fasting.
If Michael Hastings hadn't been fasting so much down that street, he wouldn't have gone up in an obese fireball, now would he?
Prosecution rests.

Do you mean the privatization along the lines of GM, or the privatization of health care?
Because nothing says 'private' to me like Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.
All of the fear-mongering Lefty weenies bemoaning the ills of capitalism (as though we even recall what that is, this far along the socialist lolly-pop trail) can just go suck a swamp dry.

Well, according to St. Albert of Gore:

That's my vote for the stupidest thing ever said by a public figure, though I'll grant that Bush's

does afford some competition.

Not "PALOMINO"?

We're diverging, sir. Back you original question:

The dystopian future of which "so many conservative pundits swore up and down" is the generalization of Detroit: more an more resources consumed by the process, so that the product dies.
Yesterday I blew a day of vacay and videoed MIRC hearings. This is Medicaid expansion. In defense of the presenters, they seemed sincere in their desire to do their jobs.
However, I just don't believe the fundamental http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_bill_of_rights any of it; not in theory (at the federal level), and not in practice, economically. There was a discussion at this MIRC hearing of "federal dollars" (as though the country has multiple currencies) and how that if the States don't blow taxpayer dollars, money, they don't get "federal matching funds". Talk about perverse incentives!
And for what? The federal incentives are all short- to mid-term. What happens when the well runs dry?
I just don't believe it. It's all foolishness. What I do believe is that the Detroit-ification of the country will continue apace without substantial reform. I don't believe the Democrats capable of delivering it, and I'm far from certain the Republicans even remember their roots in any useful way; it's all been eaten by this Progressive Utopian vision.
That ends in Detroit.

Fair point. It's certainly the case that the President's control over specific events is indirect on a good day.
Nevertheless, I'll double down on my argument that the ideas which President Obama espouses are highly congruent with the ones that made Detroit the success it is today.
In defense of Obama, the Republican counter-arguments are. . .wait. . .where did they go?
What a godforsaken mess.