Your Empire is Crumbling

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Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling
by David Michael Green

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.

_______________
Editor's Note: 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_.