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Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling

By David Michael Green

02/12/07 “ICH” — - So. You’ve built yourself an empire, eh?

Well, bully for you!

What’s next, you ask? Well, now you’ve got to do what everybody does when
they have an empire, of course. You’ve got to worry about it falling apart,
mate!

But how to tell for sure? Let me see if I can be helpful. Here are some
rules of thumb to keep in mind, thirty-six sure-fire indicators that your
empire is falling apart:

You know your empire’s crumbling when the folks who are gearing up their
empire to replace yours start blowing up satellites in space. And then they
don’t bother to return your phone calls when you ring up to ask why.

You know your empire’s crumbling when those same folks are cutting deals
left, right and center across Asia, Latin America and Africa, while you,
your lousy terms, and your arrogant attitude are no longer welcome.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you’re spending your grandchildren’s
money like a drunken sailor, and letting your soon-to-be rivals finance your
little splurge (i.e., letting them own your country).

You know your empire’s crumbling when it’s considered an achievement to
pretend that you’ve halved the rate at which you’re adding to the massive
mountain of debt you’ve already accumulated.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you weaken your currency until it
looks as anemic as a Paris runway model, and you’re still setting record
trade deficits. (Hint: Because you’re not making anything anymore.)

You know your empire’s crumbling when “the little brown ones” (thank you
George H.W. Bush – certainly not me – for that lovely expression) in country
after country of “your backyard” blow you off and proudly elect
anti-imperialist leftist governments.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you can’t topple those governments and
replace them with nice puppet regimes – like in the good old days – even if
you wanted to. And you badly want to.

You know your empire’s crumbling when one of their leaders comes to the
United Nations and makes fun of your emperor, calling him the devil, and
joking about smelling sulphur where he just stood. And though a few folks
cringe, everybody laughs.

You know your empire’s crumbling when just about your entire military land
force is tied up in a worse-than-useless war launched on the basis of
complete fabrications, that every day is actually making you less – not more
– secure from external threat.

You know your empire’s crumbling when almost half the soldiers in that war
are high-paid mercenaries, and you don’t dare institute a draft.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you send soldiers into war with two
weeks training and a lack of armor, and then you keep them there for three,
four and five rotations.

You know your empire’s crumbling when a member of the Axis of Evil can test
missiles and explode nuclear warheads, and all you can do about it is mumble
some pathetic warnings about how they better not do that again or there will
be consequences.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you even think that there is an Axis
of Evil.

You know your empire’s crumbling when a rag-tag military hodge-podge of
irregulars has you pinned down in an endless fight you can’t win, but also
can’t lose.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you’re too dumb to even ban Humvees as
a first step toward ending your dependency on a foreign-owned crucial
resource.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you trade your prior moral leadership
on human rights issues for global disgust at your torture, ‘extraordinary
rendition’ (a.k.a. kidnapping for torture) and the dismantling of nine
centuries worth of civil liberties progress.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you blow off international law that
you once helped create, and undermine the institutions of international
governance that you once helped build.

You know your empire’s crumbling when opinion polls confirm that every month
you’re more and more despised throughout the world.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you can’t even pull off the hanging of
a tin-pot murderous former dictator without turning him into a hero.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you’re the richest country in the
world, but nearly 50 million of your people don’t have basic health care
coverage.

You know your empire’s crumbling when the World Health Organization ranks
your healthcare system 37th ‘best’ in the world, just above Slovenia, and
just below Costa Rica. (And far below Colombia, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and
Morocco.)

You know your empire’s crumbling when instead of making it easier for
citizens to obtain a higher education, you’re making it harder and more
expensive.

You know your empire’s crumbling when your government gives tax breaks to
industries as a reward for exporting your jobs elsewhere.

You know your empire’s crumbling when the so-called ‘opposition’ party can’t
even turn that obscenity into a viable campaign theme and use it to clobber
the worst emperor in your history.

You know your empire’s crumbling when your middle class has been stagnant
for three decades, while the wealth of the hyper-rich continues to climb
through the roof.

You know your empire’s crumbling when your reaction to that is to exacerbate
the problem by enacting tax policies that massively increase further still
the gap between the rich and the rest.

You know your empire’s crumbling when the predatory class has taken over
your government and is stripping the country of everything not bolted down
to the floor. And then it sells the floor itself, as well, to your rivals.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you’re spending tens of billions of
dollars you don’t own on new nuclear warheads and space weapons that don’t
work, to be used against an enemy you don’t have.

You know your empire’s crumbling when one of your cities drowns and your
government does next to nothing before, during and after.

You know your empire’s crumbling when a massive environmental nightmare is
looming around the corner, and your emperor not only ignores it, but claims
it isn’t real while taking steps to exacerbate it.

You know your empire’s crumbling when your emperor is warned by a CIA
briefer of an imminent terrorist attack of vast proportions, and responds by
remaining on vacation and dismissing the briefer with the words: “All right.
You’ve covered your ass, now.”

You know your empire’s crumbling when the same emperor drops everything to
fly across the country from his vacation home in order to sign a bill
intervening on the wrong side of a personal medical drama involving a single
family.

You know your empire’s crumbling when gays and immigrants are used as
diversionary issues to keep people from thinking about the pillaging of
their country and their wallets actually taking place. And it works.

You know your empire’s crumbling when people are getting more religious and
less scientific, not the other way around.

You know your empire’s crumbling when your political leaders start to be
chosen by dynastic rules of succession.

And you especially know your empire’s crumbling when the most idiotic child
of one of the least accomplished leaders in its history is not only crowned
as the next emperor, but is even revered for a time by most of the public as
a great one.

Rome? Britain? Spain?

At this rate we’ll be lucky to end up like Belgium.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra
University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his
articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do
not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his
website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

Current Mood: blah

Nine out of TEN criminals ate bread within 24 hours of commiting a crime?

BAN BREAD!

Current Mood:  devious

*cries*

Current Mood: haunted

i may or may not have mentioned before that i really like birds. i’d love to have a large parrot. one of the overly smart varieties that live 50-80 years. a mated pair would be better. not because i want to breed, but because they would be happier that way. i digress, however, because that is not what this post is really about.

its about the crows. sometime in november i heard this amazing ruckous outside. there was squaking, chattering, and other noises i just could not identify. i went to go see what was going on and looking out the window my yard was COVERED in crows. big, irridescent, noisy and flapping crows. there were about five of them crowded around the squirrell feeder and another six duking it out over the bird bath. my yard looked like one moving mass as they rummaged under the leaves in search for food. i was mesmerized by this murder of crows (i always thought it would be cool to have a pet raven).

i now have a total of three bird feeders. one finch feeder, one songbird feeder, and another one that holds critter mix and suet. i have lots of trees and a good deal of brush on the outskirts of my property, so my yard is a haven for birds. seeing all the crows in my yard was a wonderful thing for me. listening to the squirrells chatter and complain was just darn right amusing. unfortunately, my children were at their grandmother’s so i was unable to share the experience with them. by the time i had regained my wits enough to grab the video camera, they were gone.

still, its not something i will soon forget.

Current Mood:  sleepy