Before the fall …

… Western Civilization's Growing Intellectual Dead Zones. 

Only after the rot becomes too evident to deny will there be widespread recognition of the problem. But by then it is usually too late. Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of collapsing civilizations is they rarely see the crash coming. Things keep “getting better” until the smash, which reveals itself briefly in what has been termed the “Ceauscescu moment”, the instant when artificial stupidity is replaced by blinding clarity.