When an otherwise dynamic society, en masse, refuses to believe an obvious fact, and goes on to refuse to believe a series of similarly obvious facts, it is doomed.
Shall I recite the roll? Greece, the decadent remnants of Rome, the Burgundians, Russia (several times), the later Khanate, Byzantium, the French monarchy... aw, who cares, no one reads history any more, nor learns from it.
Rome? Isn't that somewhere in Georgia?