we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” Carl Sagan “The Demon-Haunted World” 1995…. sounds familiar?

and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true,

2/ Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov explicitly identified large-scale Russian military reforms as preparations for a future conflict with NATO as Russian Security Council Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev threatened European countries that support Ukraine