The enemy is us

“Henry VIII dissolved monasteries and executed wives because the machinery of monarchy allowed it, and challenging him risked the entire structure. The Romanovs died because saving them threatened coalitions that mattered more than five lives in a basement. Kennedy’s death formalized distance because proximity had become a procedural risk. And Sarajevo exploded not because of two bullets, but because every system that might have absorbed the crisis had already chosen self-preservation over adaptability.

“The assassination in Sarajevo is often described as the moment Europe’s old world collapsed. In truth, it was the moment that world revealed it had already hollowed itself out. The institutions were still standing. The palaces were still full. The procedures were still followed. But the capacity for human judgment, for weighing a life against a system, for choosing courage over continuity, had quietly bled out over decades.

“The shots were loud. The failure that gave them meaning had been building in silence.

“That is the through line. Not treaties. Not accidents. Not the inevitable march of history. But the recurring choice, made again and again across centuries, to let the machinery roll forward rather than stop it. To protect the system rather than the people. To mistake procedure for responsibility.”

Here we go again. Deportations in direct violation of court orders. Kidnaping a foreign leader. Manipulating the stock market with tariffs. Pardoning traitors and drug dealers. Rewriting Constitutional law to create a unitary executive. Allowing Trump criminality in the name of protecting the system.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The system is rotten