—”Our government has been taken over by domestic enemies of the United states.”
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron
[A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. ]
The big issue for most polities is internal strife, whether succession wars or straightforward struggles for power between incumbents and powerful factions, leading to widespread devastation. The destruction of human and material resources available to the state lowers its ability to fight off new internal and external challengers to the status quo.