The Heisei Period was a consequence of one notable aspect of Japan's financial history: The betrayal of a nation by its leaders and the betrayal of its leaders by supposed friends. The American government, post ww2, engaged in a systematic reconstruction in Japan, with CIA and Yakuza creating the Liberal Democratic Party (The longest reigning political party in Japan to this day), dissolving the industrial-capital Zaibatsu's (large family owned factory monopolies) to give rise to conglomerate finance capital Keiretsus (networked multi-spanning mega-coporations with associated banks) like Toshiba  as well as the broader injection of American ideals into the Japanese heartland. But this healthy competition was soon to be short-lived, once it was found out that Toshiba, the number one tech company in late 80's Japan, was soon poised to be number 1 in semiconductor manufacturing.

The envious American government used its intelligence services to get dirt on Toshiba (the fact that it was trading specialized machines with the USSR violating trade agreements with America for a quick buck at the height of the Cold War) and then used that fact to castrate the Japanese Tech sector with 100% tariffs, the Plaza Accord Yen devaluation and the US-Japanese semiconductor agreement which was essentially blackmail at gunpoint to conduct a specialized technology transfer to the United States.

Doing so forced the Banks associated with the Toshiba Keiretsu to push for further economic liberalization at the encouragement of the LDP, hence driving the real estate inflation bubble that created the Lost Decades and basically killed Japan's hopes and dreams of a cosmic collective future. This  led to the spread of similar narratives across many anime and manga of the period, especially that of shadow puppeteers in the dark manipulating everything from behind the scenes, these puppeteers having strong ties to political agents of Christian background.

In very ironic fashion, circumstances have come to repeat themselves again, much according to the events of Lain as a show. Let me explain how Lain is a foreshadowing of the current American political scenario. Most of this lifts from youtuber Blonde Politics video on the same.

Peter Thiel is a libertarian conservative Billionaire in Silicon valley who is most famously known for cofounding Paypal with Elon Musk and starting Palantir Technologies which is the most well known industry name in the American intelligence community and whose name comes from an all-seeing Elven crystal ball in the fantasy novel Lord of the Rings. His early neoconservative paper The Stanford Review was funded by Irving Kristol, the "godfather of neoconservatism" . At Stanford he met Rene Girard and was highly influenced by the devout catholic and respected anthropoligst's Mimetic theory of Desire, a prime reason behind him becoming the first investor in Facebook and thus being directly responsible for its subsequent success. Thiel is a major player behind the shadows of Modern America in ways we shall soon come to see.

The next character in our story is computer engineer and blogger "Mencius Moldbug" AKA Curtis Yarvin, another neoconservative, who is most famous for pushing a theory called the "Dark enlightenment". Influenced by books on democracy's failure and the impact of the Obama bailout during the 2008 financial crisis, he pioneered the original term "Redpill" as well as his most prominent idea, the Dark Enlightenment, further given fleshing out by former CCRU member and "father of Accelerationism" Nick Land.

The idea behind the Dark Enlightenment is basically a neoconservative reaction to democracy in favour of hyper-efficient "CEO style" monarchic feudalism, where the entire country is governed like a company with a board of directors. Yarvin had a huge influence on Thiel and was the reason why in 2009 Thiel exclaimed that Libertarianism was no longer compatible with democracy.

Now comes the twist. Peter Thiel's protege was none other that the 2025 administration's Vice president, J.D Vance, whose political rise he has directly funded and upon whom Yarvin AKA Moldbug has also held similar influence. Trump too had multiple meeting with Thiel in his previous 2016 administration, basically implying that Thiel is behind the scenes in making America a second Palantir.

Thus, the current 2025 American administration is a repetition of the events in Japan in 1990: A Technocracy backed deeply corrupted State is promising a grand narrative of Utopian New World Order to its people via powerful propaganda, all the while the board members in the shadows prepare to gut the country alive via a cultist religio-economic mass sacrifice.

It's unfortunate that only now do I understand what the answer to the intro's mocking laugh in Serial experiments Lain is: In the End, Karmic destiny has lended Chiaki J Konaka and the Lain production crew the last laugh, as we enter the repetition of history once again, becoming "Present Day, Present Time".