It's the stroboscopic effect that occurs when we sample reality at an inappropriate frequency, making the unreal appear absolutely real.  Similarly, an illusion of self motion can make us feel like we are moving when we are not, and not moving when we are.

Most economists sort and sample data to produce explanations and sometimes projections. Unless they adhere to the Austrian school, many of these economists suffer academic stroboscopism.  For example, 40 years of Japanese stagflation is well-studied in the United States. Yet, Harvard economists assessed in 2010 that, among other things, Japan's experience is not much of a warning, but rather a guide for Keynesians and MMT'ers.  Their assessment in 2010 included this statement:

The Fed's balance sheet went from $900 billion to $2.4 trillion: it nearly tripled. …[T]he Fed staff's memos on an exit strategy have already been written," [the author] says, and now everything hinges on "gauging the timing on when it is appropriate to begin withdrawing the fiscal stimulus.

Yet, over 15 years later, what they predicted would go down, or at least remain level, went astronomically up, and the Fed's Balance Sheet looks like this:

Are we moving in the right direction?  A better question is are "we the people" moving at all?

A recent opinion piece by a Canadian in the Jerusalem Post suggests we being moved, herded, and corralled into a better meatgrinder, to better support unnecessary wars now and in the future. It is a call for the "US taxpayer to fund 'debt forgiveness for military service' to enlarge the US's standing army."

Co-dependence between Israel and the US has become a modern academic specialty.  Grok says "no other single-country focus in the U.S. matches the Israel ecosystem on all layers at once—lobby + PACs + campus + houses of worship + dedicated university field + multiple think tanks + decades of bipartisan congressional lock."