Nations, like people, can experience collective traumas amounting to a psychological unravelling. Benjamin Kerstein, writing in Quillette, thinks a significant part of the American public on both the left and the right have given up on their country. There are numerous signs, writes Kerstein, that the American Republic is coming to an end.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


