The more I observe the disaster of the worst narcissist imaginable malfunctioning as President of the United States, the more I can imagine a protracted scenario of Earth’s destruction.

Before our very eyes, we see one self-absorbed group of American leaders allow just one megalomaniac, Donald J. Trump, transport the people of a vulnerable planet to the precipice of potential self-destruction.

A narcissistic Trump plagues us with a daily plenary of self-serving actions and lies that spread harm and havoc among us. All leadership, whether political or business, continue to encourage this narcissist, knowing he will serve their agendas, ignoring the very real danger that his reckless actions could blow up the planet. The most ruthless and ignoble of his supporters represent an unholy alt right alliance of white nationalists, the principals being Fox News and Breitbart.

Add to that, the angry element created by two generations of crony capitalists who hijacked our democracy, summarily fostering a small army of victims, many of whom they left unemployed, homeless and shattered by their corporate policies.

Could these be conditions of a “Great Filter,” as economist Robin Hanson put it, a mechanism leading to a self-destruction that extinguishes life at some point in humanity’s development, whether it be nuclear annihilation or a slower death of climate change?

Perhaps skepticism reigned among us when Mr. Hanson proposed his theory several decades ago, but considering the current state of leadership in the dominant country, the US, the world’s fossil-fuel-driven technology, and the short-term mentality of the human species, maybe we have somehow fashioned our own filter, which is set to extinguish the only life we know of in the universe.

But other factors threaten to shorten the time scale of this self-extinction.

There is the sophomoric banter of two leaders who control Earth-endangering nuclear weapons, Trump and Kim Jong-un. There is the potential collaboration of Trump with the other notable world power leader. Of this evil triumvirate, two – Trump and Kim Jong-un — are mentally unstable. The other, Putin, is a scheming, intelligent, and ruthless dictator, in control of thousands of potentially world-ending nuclear weapons.

Kim is a relatively young, short, chubby, paranoid autocrat, a head, barren at the temples and framed with an island of badly coiffed black hair. Then there is Donald Trump, leader of the free world, who is relatively old, wide-girthed, an ultimate narcissist, demonstrably loving only himself. Oh, yes, he has badly managed platinum hair as well, self-lacquered to a stiffness his lip often forms. Putin is just cold and calculating.

All three are driven by a force of self-indulgence, obsessing in the need for power and control. The world must tremble and take notice in their presence, perhaps Trump and Kim being the most insecure and needy.

More and more, our planet’s countries operate in a global enterprise with global stakes. Dangerous national games now have global consequences. The agendas of crony capitalists tend to sustain these reckless games. Thus, short-term gain overrules long-term survival, leading us in the direction of self-extinction.

Yes, we have achieved great innovations and created beautiful things along the way but the controlling theme of what constitutes our global enterprise seems to have accompanied that ascent into a somewhat shared prosperity. That theme seems to be exploitation. The majority of us seem to be of good sorts but a sizable minority is exploitive, composed of grasping creatures that drag the majority with them into their exploits of comfort and riches.

We have reached a pinnacle of achievement marked by a fossil technology that perhaps half of 7 billion people enjoy, a condition continuing to alter the once stable climate of a whole planet. But over the years, we have developed powerful weapons that can destroy a whole planet.

We have had mostly responsible leadership – marked with some recklessness — that has recognized dangerous paths of development and the need to maintain a viable place to live. We now lack responsible leadership, a leadership supported by a ruling class that cares only about maintaining the pretense of a free market economy with the underlying goal of filtering most of the riches into the pockets of crony capitalists.

They continue to support any leadership that values exploitation over stewardship to maintain an economic order that continues to pile up excess wealth for a select few, whatever the cost.

Because the powers-that-be have no objections to machinations of three purveyors of power and exploitation – Trump, Putin and Kim – all make their own contribution to the path of extinction.

Those in control of government and business tend to ignore or sweep aside daily events that mark that path. Social media haltingly reveals the evidence of year-old cyber attacks by Vladimir Putin. Amid rising stock markets and the exigencies of profit-taking, both government and business tolerate daily gaffes and outrages committed by Donald Trump. They flip aside the rants of our narcissist and North Korea’s insular autocrat, the latter commanding the testing of planet-threatening weapons.

The filter for us involves the effect of self-interest and the exploitation that accompanies it, pushing that agenda forward, trumping all the long-term concerns of survival.

Do we actually have time to evolve in order to meet the threats we now face, perhaps a few hundred thousand years of evolution of an ancient “fight-or-flight” reaction to danger?

It seem to me that the “here-and-now” benefits for a few have become far more important than the long-term concerns for our future, especially since we currently have mad men rattling nuclear-tipped sabers, not to speak of the prospect of a few decades more of ignoring climate change, something that is bringing alarming alterations to a planet with a more delicate balance of forces than we bargained for.