like all dying empires before, the quality of the people who find their ways to the “leadership” class deteriorates as well. By this time, our best and brightest have been “educated” (indoctrinated) by institutions that have fed from the military industrial trough and demonstrated their appreciation by integrating the marketing narrative into the academic culture and curicula. Status (invitations to the koolaid parties) becomes ever more dependent on agreeing with the “bipartisan” disregard for the US Constitution and the destructive imbalance between representation and democracy.