Our country has gone insane. There are parts which still work but for the most part the country is crazy.
The odd think is how countries last after they have gone insane. Rome in the time of Nero Claudious and Calligula and many more was totall 100% crazy.
What kept the government going was the civil service. Those lower paid guys who just went about their business keeping the empire going.
Eventually even the civil service will surrender and all hell breaks loose. That is where you don’t want to be either at that time of place.
We will be there soon. We alrady have a modern nero as president.
The name given be US. New Normal, New World Order, Insanity? Hardly Wait, hunker down here with friends. There is not one shot our side has fired which hit its mark (taking a cue from your tag). Someone is calling up the ranks, none of us yet has begun to fight. Yes what you say is true .... We will be there soon. We already have a modern nero as president. Has each of US wondered what happens when you, others, and I are no longer the few? Will be a glorious day. Be not downtrodden and think we will lose. A new day will arrive and the sword will be sheathed. Our numbers are overwhelming in might and in song. The battle does loom ... We will be there soon.
The insane parts are primarily heavily populated urban areas.
I recall an experiment done with rats many years ago, and the effects of 'too many rats in the cage' seem to be similar in humans, too.
We haven't seen Caligula yet, but the dissevering of the office of the presidency from any real accountability to the grownups by Clinton and Obama, both of whom have beaten the opposition while boldly committing impeachable offenses, guarantees that our Caligula will appear shortly, and that bloodshed among the government-literate, the aforesaid "grownups", must necessarily accompany his untrammelling and manifestation.
What kept the government going was the civil service. Those lower paid guys who just went about their business keeping the empire going.
The civil service was created by Octavian Augustus out of the middle orders of Roman society, partly because he'd depleted the nobility by political mass-murder (Tiberius and Caligula killed more of them afterward, every time the government farted) and partly because Octavian wanted to ensure that what remained of them stayed on the sidelines of real government, and kept to their senatorial cattle-pen, from which he'd select a few fatted prize specimens every now and then to serve as a junior consular colleague or proconsul to the (by definition unimportant) senatorial provinces.
The real power centers -- pretorian prefect, prefect of Egypt (the grain supply), the fleet prefect (the grain supply, again), governors of key provinces -- Octavian filled with men of the equestrian class, his own political creatures, who were paid a stipend out of the imperial privy purse (Caesar's own pocket) and given narrow powers and privileges.
These prefects, procurators, and presidents (praeses was the most junior type of governor, and that was what Pontius Pilate was, as befitted a backward place like Judaea) became the civil service, salary-fed and tightly administered from the imperial palace, usually by slaves, interestingly, who became persons of huge prestige and power by the time of Claudius (AD 45).
This has been the idea behind the civil-service model ever since: political control, quality control, and consistent performance by publicly-compensated, socially-junior, subordinate men.