But I am pointing out this is not the first time. The amount of times such stuff happen in any kingdom is uncountable if you look at actual history and not myth. We forget them all or we are not aware of them in the first place.

For example the '69 Drunk Nixon ordered a nuclear strike but the chain of command disobeyed. Likewise there are other drunken night Nixon incidents Kissinger involved with some of them. The horror is we are now seeing it.

Likewise the same Woodward book that we are talking about has another conversation where Pence and Quayle talked and Pence consider not certifying the Parliamentarian vote on Jan 6th (which is the fuckin law, same law we were talking about with the Generals), and Dan FUCKIN Quayle told Pence no and that he has "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away."

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We are fucked, but also we always been fucked. There is no mythical certainty that this system will continue, only human agency.

As Shakespeare wrote in his own mourning play.

"Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Senator Cassius in this fiction was talking to Senator Brutus, in a chapter that is full of free will vs fate metaphors. It is not about those 3 lines but the entire scene prior to the 3 lines being uttered. Are all these freakish omens the gods telling you to do something or not do something? Or is the agency not in looking for signs and omens from a higher power but instead rests in men?

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"Nothing is certain", this is hopeful or existential terror saying those 3 words.