Tension you could cut with a vorpal blade and they pull off these moments of levity…
"Um, technically" -Mike Milligan
"You're a little touched" -Hank Larsson
"Great Ceasar's ghost" -Karl Weathers

Hint: The Billy Thorpe song playing towards end of episode.

Take a look at Billy Thorpe's album cover for Children of the Sun.

He still believes however that suicide is an option we must consider.

Late to the party this episode but anyone notice the drawing Molly made looked like children under the Sun (which on closer examination may have been the family under a space ship)…and the song playing at the end of the episode:
Children of the Sun
People of the Earth can you hear me?
Came a voice from the sky on that…

True, but when is the last time we won a "war" on something?
(and remember the culmination of this episode, "It's war")

Fair enough as to not getting into the political debate. It sure doesn't look like violence has been the answer for any character so far and the only times the threat even worked was as defense.

The prior episode was "The Myth of Sisyphus", this one, "Fear and Trembling", perhaps there is a Nietzsche theme bubbling up as well (more subtly than True Detective S1).

Peg seems more like a sociopath than innocent.

Yet Carter didn't have the the U.S. fire a single bullet as president. Name another president that you can say that about.
The Reagan nostalgia is largely just that, the lens of nostalgia.
Or are we saying violence and the threat of violence is the answer?

The medical bureaucracy parallels the KC mob, and the military industrial complex. It's not about what's best for the individual but rather the business of war.
The scene opens with caged rats (lab mice), and their wheel…decades later we still haven't won the war on cancer, crime or the Chinese.

I know I'll probably get flamed for this, but how exactly is this episode and the story arcs in general presently much different than that of a prime time soap opera?
(Heck even the title 'Payback' hearkens to a serialized melodrama)

Quite the use of Mahler, (Das Lied von Der Erde), a miserable hangover indeed….

Right, (and as mentioned below), Spielberg was being nailed by the Situation; who is from one of the most popular godawful reality shows of all time. Golden age of television indeed.
Aside from FX/FXX, HBO, occasional sports, and rando-shows I can't really think of anything golden other than the showers given to the…

Barging in on Spielberg being 'taken' from behind; oh the horror.
(Made all the better by the subtext given the preceding conversation by the 2 who walked in on the scene)