We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
Grant writes about the The Fall of the Roman Empire, in his book by that title. He focuses on “the decay wrought by clinging to the alluring fantasy that past success guarantees future success, without any nasty sacrifices by the ruling elites.”
"Enmeshed in classical history, all [the Roman] can do is lapse into vague sermonizing, telling other Romans, as many a moralist had told them throughout the centuries, that they must undergo an ethical regeneration and return to the simplicities and self-sacrifices of their ancestors.
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions,
there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all."
“Roman elites in Gaul were still writing letters to one another complaining of the breakdown of everyday life right up until the system collapsed.”
Putin has been consistent from the before the Military Operation that he simply wants to be left alone by NATO, the EU and the US. His terms for peace have been reasonable and have not changed.
Alastair Crooke:
"There are reports that Macron and Starmer agreed in a conversation that Zelensky must conduct some provocative operation [this week]
"--a false flag operation or a provocative attack into Russia, into the depth of Russia or something else--sufficient to create an absolute pressure on Putin to respond, and thus to destroy the meeting altogether, to stop the meeting taking place.
"The Europeans are terrified of the [Alaska] meeting taking place [on Friday] and they want to stop it. I believe the Russians have probably picked up on it, suggesting that there is going to be an attempt to create some incident, some security catastrophe, that creates the impossibility of following up on this meeting. And the Euros are trying to insert Zelensky into Alaska, whether invited or ...
"For four hundred years, Americans lived in a world wherein your brother, your neighbor, your town and region were your responsibility. And where you yourself, could do anything under the commodious carapace of the King of Kings.
"More than anything, the CIA wanted Christianity destroyed; it bred self-determination and strength. Under MKUltra, and mostly at Stanford’s Research Center, using the flower children and rock scene of L.A. and San Francisco, they figured out how to ruin human potential.
"In fact, they called it the human potential movement, in a typical inversion of reality. What it did was celebrate and encourage your worst impulses, praise your degradation, tell you that weakness is your strength, supplant your heritage with the heritage of foreign faiths and experimental practices."
Elizabeth Nickson
"Donald Trump doesn’t understand what (Russian Defense Official) Medvedev tweeted. Medvedev was telling Trump to knock it off with the dangerous threats, saying that if you do this, America can end up looking like the walking dead because of the Dead Hand.
"The Dead Hand is a reference to the perimeter system, which is a defensive system put in place by the Soviet Union back in the 1980s. So that if they are ever struck preemptively by the United States—a first strike, by the way, the tactic to be used in a first strike is to bring the Ohio-class submarines close to Russia’s shores, fire off their Trident missiles on a flattened trajectory to avoid detection so you can strike the targets quicker, which is what Trump just actually appeared to order the U.S. Navy to do. So, the Dead Hand now becomes a factor, because if Trump is dumb enough to launch an attack against Russia, the Dead Hand (the defensive perimeter system) will ensure that all of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces ...
