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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.”
Attention antifa and transtifa and insurrectionists who hate ICE:
Nearly every state has specific statutes that criminalize willfully interrupting or disturbing a religious assembly or worship service. These laws protect the right of people to gather and practice their religion without intentional interference.
Let the Minneapolis arrests begin.
As revealed in a 1955 research and development program memo from the CIA’s Technical Services Staff/Chemical Division, the MK Ultra objectives went far beyond interrogation tools. They envisioned a arsenal of covert chemicals designed to manipulate behavior on a massive scale, administered without detection to render people compliant, confused, or crippled.
Here’s the smoking gun: the memo’s explicit list of desired substances and methods, quoted verbatim from the declassified records:
Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.
Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.
Materials which will render the ...
Janet Yellen shocked the banking world when she said that America's “needed belt tightening is significant—larger than in most programs supported by the International Monetary Fund."
Yes, even larger than the bankrupt nations now beholden to the IMF, which demands a kind of austerity Americans might not survive. Examples:
By 2010, Greek debt had spiraled to 130% of GDP and climbing. No one was willing to lend them money anymore... forcing the IMF to swoop in with a "rescue" package that came with brutal strings attached.
Pensions were slashed by 40%. Public sector wages were frozen, then cut. Over 150,000 government workers were laid off. State assets—airports, ports, utilities—were sold off at fire-sale prices to foreign investors.
Greece's economy contracted by 25%. Youth unemployment hit 60%. An entire generation was hollowed out.
Argentina has been through the IMF wringer multiple times; in fact in in 2018, Argentina received the largest bailout in IMF history: $57 billion....
