Game Over: Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling
February 4th, 2007This is great! I only included a few of them, click through and pass it around.
Via: Common Dreams:
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.
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
Great points all, but “crumbling” makes such a nonexplosive impression. The question is, will the US Empire “…go gentle into that good night”, or “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”?
obligatory:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
not posted with the permission of the author, as the lone and level sands stretch far away…..
happr trails folks.
It looks a lot like Rome. Rome took about 200 years to become an empire, then about 200 years for the empire to fall. That gives us about 100 more years of decline to wallow in. Yippee. Don’t forget, as bad as we are, everywhere else is as bad or worse. Even sophisticated Europeans secretly lust after whatever it is that Americans represent, if only it wasn’t so…American. The fact that Americans have used individualism, independence, freedom, and a righteous disdain for tradition to become robotic, garbage can consumerists doesn’t mean individualism, independence, freedom, and disdain of tradition aren’t worth pursuing. Just remember to engage your brain before you do, something your typical Murrkin does not seem to have been able to manage.
Number #37:
Your VP has an assistant named ‘Scooter’ who writes a book like this:
The Apprentice: A Novel by Lewis Libby
http://www.amazon.com/Apprentice-Novel-Lewis-Libby/dp/0312284535/sr=8-1/qid=1170739031/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2850988-5964864?ie=UTF8&s=books