"The key conclusion Orwell took away from his time in...

[NNadir]

13. I sort of wonder whether the historical record will exist. Great and powerful nations fall, of course, but few fall...

...for reasons quite so stupid.

The victors, even criminal victors, write history.

For example, the United States, after all, was actively engaged in genocide against native peoples up to, and even after, the Grant administration, Grant being the first American President to seriously consider native peoples human beings, although his friends Sherman and Sheridan certainly did not feel that way.

The history books call this action "Manifest Destiny." It was quite something else.

Usually, the collapse of a great power as we are observing, follows a long period of decay, but under President Biden, the United States was as strong as it had ever been in many ways, including morally as well as economically.

I fully credit however, your description of the undercurrent of racism, toxic religiosity, contempt for justice that was a persistent undercurrent, a cancer.

But the slime mold in the White House? Really?

Romulus Augustus, the last Western Roman Emperor, was 13 when he was deposed by the Goths. That orange thing in the White House could never hope to aspire to the maturity of a 13 year old.