More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion

Yeah, the Margolis piece was a sobering way to spend first thing Monday morning. I’m at a loss for why so many of my compatriots fall to see the writing on the wall. I understand that their education may have been less than stellar, particularly in history and developing critical thinking ability. I understand that three generations have now grown up with the idea of existential threat (though none of the threats these generations have faced have been truly existential and have been more about MIC fear mongering than anything else). I understand that they’ve been taught that the military can do no wrong and it also seems that they’ve decided that we don’t actually pay for the military, that it isn’t part of “big government”.

None of that matters because it doesn’t change reality. The empire we’ve never admitted to is crumbling around us, and there is no amount of American exceptionalism that will save it from the fate of every other empire in history.

Strange how those who profess to love America the most are so willing to destroy her. Strange.

Paul Kennedy’s “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers – Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000” (Random House – BoMC) speaks exactly to this point, the two great tests that challenge the longevity of every major power, the balancing of actual defense requirements with the means to maintain the defense; or if it can maintain the technologic and economic base of its power in the face of shifting economic production patterns. Imperial Habsburgian Spain failed as well as Imperial British failure both the result of economic shifts of production. The Spanish faced the beginnings of industrial production challenges from north-western europe, writing the final chapter to feudal era economics; the British faced the financial hegemony of the industrialized “colonies” of the New World, finalizing the chapter of imperial mercantilism. The passing of Imperial “American” will mark the end of the effective political state and the beginnings of absolutist corporate economic rule of subjugated political states through economic manipulation.

FTB, I remember when Kennedy’s book came out all those years ago, the sneers coming from the right, at his conclusions. Kennedy should be hailed as a prophet, but sadly, he is largely ignored.

More Margolis, same article:

America needs a fair, honest war tax.

The U.S. clearly has reached the point of imperial overreach. Military spending and debt-servicing are cannibalizing the U.S. economy, the real basis of its world power. Besides the late U.S.S.R., the U.S. also increasingly resembles the dying British Empire in 1945, crushed by immense debts incurred to wage the Second World War, unable to continue financing or defending the imperium, yet still imbued with imperial pretensions.

It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of America’s runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall Street’s money lenders to put America into thrall.

Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe — what neocons call “full spectrum dominance.”

If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.

Instead, what were getting is a commission on how to handle the deficit by slashing entitlements. Others have wondered why Obama is so timid about this, why, as Margolis put it, It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of America’s runaway military juggernaut.

I think at some level Obama’s people recognize this is a major way to keep the economy running, to keep stock prices up, and to forestall a crash of a weak economy. And of course it has political payoffs too.

I find it interesting that Kevin Phillip’s American Theocracy is selling in the remaindered bin at Amazon for $6.89. He about sums it up: religious whackjobs running the show, peak oil and a financialized economy as an end state of an imperial process. The fact that Barack Obama felt obligated to attend the National Prayer Breakfast along with a who’s who of the US government shows the religious whackjobs are still running the show. Peak oil is just hiding under a recession economy, but I bet it occupies a lot of thought in Beijing. And Phillips explains the financialized economy as a process of declining empires with the Spanish, Dutch and Brit empires as examples. War always seems to accompany the last gasp of empire. And he discusses that there are choices to be made after the empire ending war.
An important book. The title is a little deceptive leading one to think it is just a book about extreme religion. But my biggest takeaway was about the financialized economy and historical examples of why it will take the US down.

“America needs a fair, honest war tax.”

Don’t you wish that the founders had put this in the constitution – an added tax for all expenditures due to war. But then, they would have had to put the war powers in the constitution in a way that is not subject to dereliction of duty by Congress…

If nobody can stop undeclared war by taking a case to the courts, what is the point of discussing a war tax? Put all “defense” and “security” expenditures in a separate tax? Into a separate deficit serviced by a dedicated tax?

This is a society in which the highest level of government kidnapped, assassinated, tortured, detained with impunity – with the most recent “Peak Torture” under Bush – and where the government continues to do so in a “refined” manner while Barack “Bygones” Obama is attempting to codify the depravity of 43’s pioneering days into the new normal. If you cannot have “honest” executions, an “honest” tax does not strike me as likely.

Hostis humanis generis. Once common sense and decency are lost, no constitution, no law can withstand a hysteric mob manipulated by inbred wealth.

I like Krugman’s last line today. “America is not lost yet. But the Senate is working on it.”

By the way, I liked Margolis’ reference to the Ottoman Empire. For the past few months, I have taken to referring to the White House as the Sublime Porte.

Addendum;
This (our) empire has already fallen; but it’s not recognizable because the power structure is still in place and control; where it will remain regardless of what happens to “us”. It’s 1984 on steroids.

ºC, if I can be informal, you will find no disagreement from this quarter about your assessment of the Republic AND the economy upon which it once was based. You will also note, there is rather sparse pickings in the way of alternative concepts to use to rebuild; the “combination” to the present Republic is deciphered and known and that “safe” can be robbed at will, the political Republic, as it is, is incapable of further function.

As with a compass there are “cardinal” points also needed to be cognizant of in constructing an alternative edifice to replace the present bankrupt and collapsing construct. Those cardinal points are education in: History, Economics, Political Sociology and Psychiatry, and Law to name a few of the major directions needed to plot a course to a safe harbour in regaining a functioning governance whatever the form that might take. Discounting the record of human experience is an egregious hubristic error, but few will bother to read the record, to hear in bygone voices their own words. Reinventing the Republic is required, reinventing the wheel is not a utilitarian option.

Corporations are not the enemy, Corporate command of the means of economic production IS.

Without a peasant rebellion; no guns, just symbolic pitch forks, I don’t see how there could be a model to go forward. There is no going back; so forward it must be and our form of democracy sucks anyway; I’d like to see something along the lines of what the English have. At least they can kick the bankrupt bastards out at about any time they’ve had enough.

Oh, shame on me; re: I think they want it back; there is the real nightmare, IMO. Ugh, my bad.

I’m referring to the American people wanting the dream back; sorry.

i remember a conversation i had with a white guy from S. Africa and a British guy who i knew from the bar in which i worked, years ago. they basically agreed that the US is in terminal decline, and this was in the early 90s, when times were “good.” i think the rest of the world has known that we’re a dying empire, and it’s mostly our media isolation which keeps this out of the public discussion. but i find that people here in MI are very, very aware of the decline. how can we not be? our main industries have been allowed to die, the Asian Carp summit was a big fuck you to the one remaining industry that isn’t dying, and the U6 here continues to climb, already having been at Depression levels for years. our politicians don’t care and are addicted to meaningless games amongst themselves, and the smart young people leave as soon as they can get out.

i was just talking to a friend about this early today, and i said that i can laugh about it, at this point. anyone who has followed politics like most of us here do understands that the tipping point (pick your favorite; 2000, 2004, etc) has past, and whatever chances we had to avoid total crash are long gone. so i’m very Zen about it, in that way that the monks are told to be, as they sit on corpses on the charnel house grounds and come to accept that one day they will be so. it makes life easier to live, knowing one is going to die. similarly, i am able to endure the national decline without depression, as all empires must also end.