Collapse Of A State, A Nation, An Empire -- April 12, 2025

Locator: 48465COLLAPSE.

A reader sent me a link to an article that really, really caught my attention. The link: "Taming the Ravenous Dragon," Fletch Daniels, American Thinker, April 11, 2025.

I particularly enjoyed the article because it was, for me, so incredibly timely. Among the four -- now five books -- that I'm reading about Canaan, the invention of Hebrew, and the collapse of civilization in the 12th century -- I developed my own list of "factors" that ... well, here's the note I posted earlier at another blog: 

Some thoughts based on recent readings and current events.

Collapse of a state, a nation, an empire:

• highly bureaucratic; highly regulated;
• European Unionization of the kingdom
  
• disruption of trading patterns
• failure to address imbalance of trade
• loss of border integrity
• breakdown of social order; social disorder
• petty crime; illicit drug use
• failure of immigrants to assimilate one's new country
  
• multilingual
• dress
• religion
  
• severe maldistribution of wealth;
• egomaniacal leaders; grandiose delusional leaders;
• mega-projects with little social benefit or likelihood of success
• manned voyages to Mars; manned voyages beyond the earth's moon
• bullet trains
• loss of a vibrant two-party political system
• the Californication of the US west coast
  
• bad strategic decisions; losing strategic advantages for no gain
  
• selling the Panama Canal to to Panama for one dollar
• "returning the canal to Panama" -- Panama never owned the canal 
• broke a cardinal rule in real estate
• courts stop Trump at every opportunity
• neither courts nor US Congress stopped Carter from selling Panama Canal for a dollar
  
• misguided military spending
• $5-million missiles to take out $5,000 drones 
• going woke: 
• developing algae-based jet fuel costing $126 / gallon 

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The Book Page

The Annotated Great Gatsby, on the 100th anniversary, James L. W. West III, editor, c. 2025. Released April 10, 2025. James L. W. West III is an "acclaimed" scholar of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

At one time I went through a F. Scott Fitzerald / The Great Gatsby phase. That was some years ago. I read everything on the subject given the time I had for reading. 

I have many entries regarding the same over on my literature blog. This post was the most important, the best post I did on The Great Gatsby. 

I ordered the annotated Great Gatsy two days ago and it arrived today. It's smaller  than I expected, based on other annotated books along the same line, but I'm not disappointed. However, compared to the annotated version of Wuthering Heights this book seems like the author was simply "checking off the box" to get this annotated version published.

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The Video Page
The Short Order Cook

Link here.