Leo Trotsky grew up in the prairie lands of southern Russia in the last decades of the 19th century.  I wonder what he would think of his boyhood home these days, with alcoholism plaguing every little town and village in the Russian countryside.  The dictatorship of the proletariat never came to be as he had hoped.  Stalin and his financial backers made sure of that.  As dour as Russia seems, the situation isn't much better in the quaint little country of Denmark, where the majority of citizens have been raised to rely on the state for pretty much everything. Doesn't that make one want to start a protest page on Facebook?  Well, be careful, because it might get pulled if the authorities don't like it. Over here in the U.S., the decline continues as the Federal Reserve continues to print cheap money, as though it will help anything.  I guess you could grow Mary Jane, but then you'd be killing the planet along with the people.  But we're dying already from poor food, inoculations and mistreatment when we're old and infirm, so what do we really have to lose?  None of this will change until more people understand and accept what's happening.