gymnosophist

By dumb luck, good karma, whatever, when I arrived on this planet 78 years ago I landed in a place called America as its rise to preeminence was just beginning. It was great; so it seemed, so it was (then) naïvely enjoyed. Execrably, it’s now more than ever forebodingly becoming an antithesis, an anathema of any of the claimed legitimacy that made it great; threatening its imminent descent into civil war-cum-fascism. (The fascistic always exploit major crises as a way to seize power.) To this old history professor, such happenings are not surprising. The rise and fall cycle of cultures/civilizations is normal due to various predictable causes both natural and manmade. What makes America’s portending demise now uniquely profound is that it is not limited to just the U.S. For the first time in history, the decline and fall of civilization is now a grim probability globally— literally. . . . This global pandemic we’re presently suffering is but the herald of all the menacing political –