from somewhere on the net.
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Subject: You know your empire is crumbling...
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. kidnaping 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.
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