[JumpCrisscross]

> who outside the most delusional among us is not questioning the unfittedness of the entire Trump administration?

I once saw the fall of great civilisations as tragedies. They’re not. After a certain point, after a certain generation, they’re not just inevitable. They’re deserved.

The American model of government and society may empirically not work. Hell, universal suffrage and electoral democracy may not be the fittest way to organise humanity.

I hope not. I don’t believe so, yet. But the evidence is mounting. Since the Industrial Revolution, the tendrils of fascism have tried at democracy (an institution broader than just elections) borne from the agricultural revolution. Fascism isn’t the answer. But maybe popular will is, similarly, a bad—if predictable—governing instrument.

China is making the quiet argument America made in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. American history just doesn’t teach the consequences of O.G. Versailles.