Facts Illuminated By Recent Events
Facts illuminated by recent events: People are only rational actors up to a point. Even when acting rationally, it may be just rational self-interest that motivates someone. Short-sightedness and greed. Brainwashing, sadly, does work. It doesn't require any instruments of torture either. A slow drip of falsehoods, spiked with righteous anger and salted with paranoia, will convince millions given enough time. Systems of law are not magical. Just as money only has value because everyone agrees it does, laws only have force because social norms dictate that they be followed. If enough people decide to ignore those laws, or that they mean something different than the words which compose them, there is no higher system to which the rest of us can appeal. Empires have fallen before and it will happen again. Nothing renders the United States of America immune to collapse. Its great wealth and military might won't matter if it rots from within. They might even make things worse, fallin...