The United States is a very insular society. Most people know very little about the outside world and don't care that much. They're concerned with their own affairs.

Real wages for male workers in the United States are about what they were in the '60s.

When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).

Nobody can successfully defy the master of the hemisphere [America], in fact of the world, hence the savagery.

It's a mistake to suppose that capacities must evolve gradually. There are many known examples of sharp changes - slight genetic modification that yields substantial phenotypic effects, and much else.

In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it. Not only can't you tell the truth, you can't think the truth. It's just so deeply embedded, deeply instilled, that without any meaningful coercion it comes out the same way it does in a totalitarian state.

Greece, alone, is in a very vulnerable position. If the Greeks had had support from progressive left and popular forces elsewhere in Europe they might have been able to resist the demands of the Troika, but they had almost no support. Not even from Portugal, Spain, or other left forces. They were left alone.