Get a dog and pamper it.

What’s wild is that “being Roman” persisted a lot longer than the tax system and patronage networks that had collapsed. It wasn’t until a large portion of the people who thought of themselves as “Roman” were invaded by the Eastern Roman Empire that the Roman identity was broken up, to be replaced by the regional identities that people rallied around to defend themselves.

I feel like if the ERE’s leaders had taken a different approach, they could have stitched the Western Empire back together, but they broke it.

In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.

If you were born in the last three weeks it may seem that way, but Joe Biden did the US’ reputation abroad no favors, nor did Trump 1. Obama is less bad than those on either side of him, but his admin at best still represents stagnation, as he failed to address Bush’s crimes and added to them in places like Libya. And before him was the guy who really got the ball rolling downhill after the high point that was the Clinton administration, Bush Jr.