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The will has gone. I believe that we are living in similar political developments like they were in the 1930s. The worlds democracies are asleep on the switch, letting failed world bodies such as the UN(in the 1930s it was the League of Nations) to punish these rogue nations. We need to take actions (alone if necessary) to bring these "mini fascists"in line. If not, something catastrophic is going to happen much more worse than 9/11.

This is the Age of the Ostrich.

We are soft, fat, and happy -- sated on modern counterparts to "bread and circuses." We are so addicted to "comfort" that we will do anything and everything to avoid even the risk of rocking the boat.

We've traded our birthright for a bowl of pottage. Or to be more precise, for a bowl of sewage. Take a look at the "culture" that our countrymen are glad to protect and preserve even at the loss of our freedom -- endless tabloid "journalism", crap "entertainment", noise "music", and ceaseless sensory stimulation, the more base and primal, the more socially acceptable it's become. Every type of intoxication imaginable, a King' ransom in food, readily available from multiple stores in every town, village, and city in the land. The poorest "peasant" among us lives a better life than the wealthiest and most powerful royalty of but a few mere generations back.

And, too, the meaningless (and endless) parade of sexual "experience" (I hesitate to even use the word "encounters", thanks to the ubiquity of Internet and television pornography).

Rome, at its fall, was no more of a top-heavy, defenseless target than we seem committed to become.

Meanwhile, in certain other lands -- certain critical lands -- children are educated (rather than babysat and programmed to "feel good about themselves"). They are learning hard sciences, engineering, and, of course, intensive Englsh language studies.

We are about to have our lunch eaten, bigtime. It may seem like we're getting it eaten now, but we ain't seen nuthin' yet. And yet, even those adversaries may very well pale by comparison to the roughly one billion adherents to a "faith" firmly rooted in the Dark Ages, committed to our destruction -- committed to deliver it in the most brutal, bloddy way imaginable.

Meanwhile, infesting the entire body politic is the underlying "foundation" of the cultural "faith" -- the unshakable belief that, "It can't happen here!"

Some years back -- back when it was still being produced -- there was a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which the Dad was sarcastically explaining to the kid that back in The Olden Days, they didn't have color -- no color TV, no color movies, no color anything. The world was in Black and White.

That seems to be the way most folks operate. "The past" consists of old, scratchy audio recordings, grainy, jumpy, rough-looking B&W film footage... back then, wars were hard-fought, times were tough... gee, they didn't even have television, let alone color!

The veneer of civilization is microscopically thin, and incredibly fragile. Something as relatively trivial as taking away just the electricity for a week would bring "civilzation" to chaos. I almost said, "to a standstill," but then I thought about it. A standstill would be a mercy, compared to what would actually happen.

Yet, should a real conflict come to our shores, we'll be losing far more than mere electricity. Millions of people will be in a state of utter breakdown. They will simply be incapable of coming to terms with what hit them. Their foundations will have been torn out from under them. One moment, they'll have been absorbed in the neo-gospel -- television "entertainment" -- bathed in the "reality", confident that so long as there was professional production quality, unparalled technical prowess -- everything from lighting to editing to broadcast delivery (not to mention the artfully cultured non-regional "standard inflection" vocal presentation of the "broadcast professionals") -- NOTHING could go wrong.

We're civilized, dammit! We have the best and most comprehensive VIRTUAL "existence" in history! We can see how a monster like Hitler could come to power in a scratchy, grainy, Black-and-White world like the '30s. But it's impossible for anything even remotely possible for something even a fraction of that abomination to exist in our world. We have a world with high-resolution digital television, fergoshsake! It's impossible for that level of ugliness to visit our civilization!

McLuhan was right -- the medium IS "the message" -- and the spinmeisters have lerned that lesson well.

And long-forgotten is the fact that Germany, in its prime, was "the most culturally advanced nation in Europe" -- and by extention, the world. Germany was "civilization" -- advanced civilization.

How do you say, "It can't happen here!" in German? Doubtless countless urbane, cosmopolitan, bon vivant types uttered it until their heads fell off.

I can't believe what we're bringing on ourselves, on our children, on our posterity...

Well, yes, I can believe it, but I wish I couldn't.

Santayana was profoundly accurate.