We’re not led, we’re kept

From Making Light.

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Our Crumbling America
--Jonathan Schwarz

"..A country that can't keep its bridges from collapsing is not going to be running the world very much longer. That's the interesting thing about the standard historical trajectory of imperial elites...at a certain point they either (1) forget the power they can wield outside their country ultimately derives from a healthy society beneath them, or (2) understand that but decide they'd rather be comparatively more powerful within a poorer society and less powerful outside.

America’s elites are, at heart, the same way. They’d prefer to be emirs and kings running a shambling catastrophe of a country than moderately rich men in Sweden.."

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