When the Voorsoorian Brain Virus got loose, the first place it hit was Washington. Ten days later, George Bush invaded Switzerland. This didn't cause too many problems, since most people bought into the poisoned chocolate box death spectre terror story, and the CIA's statistics on Swiss bomb shelters were pretty convincing. (Ominously, the whole country turned out to be riddled with them.)
        Later on, after Rumsfeld said the army could downsize by ninety percent as long as it bought enough robot dogs and significantly upsized its ski instructor contingent, questions started to be asked. But by then it was too late.
        "The norms of the time were what they were," said the Book of Recollection, the main source of historical memory for the handful of humans who greeted the dawn of the Third Millenium. "And, since the norms were what they were, all else followed."
        Unfortunately, the Book of Recollections didn't recollect much. Since it was norms that had doomed their ancestors, the survivors fled in the other direction (or so they thought). They worshipped insanity, and chose the maddest amongst them to be their leaders.
        However, they were pretty lucky. It was a full five thousand years before, under Triumphatus Nong, the vainglorious A-bomb president, they finally went down into the darkness, betrayed by their flight from the normative.