You Know Your Empire's Collapsing When...

[mexika]

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You Know Your Empire's Collapsing When...
by Kirkpatrick Sale

The following is from a speech delivered to the Second Vermont
Republic's celebration of Vermont Independence Day--when, in 1777, it
declared itself an independent republic--in Montpelier on January 15,
2008.

I want to start out with a little game, called "How Do You Know When
Your Empire Is Collapsing," invented in a little different form by a
political scientist on Long Island. Let me give you a few examples of
how it works.

Let's say for starters, you know your empire is collapsing when the
empire that is your fiercest rival buys up a total of 26 per cent of
three of your major Wall Street firms for $9 billion dollars, and
declares that it has another $200 billion dollars that it is looking to
invest.

[Since we're going to be doing some numbers here, I should pause to
give
a little reference for the concept "billion." A billion seconds ago
was...1959-which means some of you here haven't yet lived a billion
seconds. A billion minutes ago Jesus was walking along the Sea of
Galilee-more than 2 millennia ago. A billion hours ago, about 100,000
years before the present, the classic Neandertal peoples were wandering
Europe and the Middle East, and Homo sapiens started to move out of
Africa. We throw the term around a lot, but a billion is a big, big
number.]

Next, you might figure your empire is collapsing when its total debt
obligations amount to $50.5 trillion dollars. That is so big that it's
about the same as the total household income of everyone in the
country,
including the billionaires. In other words, we owe almost more than we
make.

Or, take one more-you know your empire is collapsing when you start a
war half the world away, on complete fabrications and in total
ignorance, slog on for five years with no success-2007, you may have
noticed, had more people in uniform killed than at any time since the
war began-with an army half of which are lawless mercenaries and the
rest are under-trained, ill-equipped, and unmotivated youth, and whose
presence is not only making your homeland less secure but is damaging
your reputation around the rest of the world.

Just like Ninevah, just like Tyre-in fact, it's classic-just like all
the empires that have preceded it, from Akkad to Hapsburg, from
Babylonian to Dutch, from Persian to Ottoman, from Roman to Soviet, the
American empire is collapsing, collapsing around us, and the
consequences will not be pleasant.

You know your empire is collapsing when the UN, comparing a number of
measures of child well-being in the industrial world, ranks you 20th
out
of 21, behind Poland, Portugal, and Hungary, ahead only of Britain.

Or when the World Health Organization ranks your healthcare system
overall as 37th in the world, below Cyprus, Columbia, Morocco, and
Costa Rica, just above...Slovenia.

Or when scholars, measuring worldwide standards of living, including
health, wealth, happiness, and stability, give Norway a rating of 37,
the highest, followed by Iceland at 35, Sweden at 30, and the
Netherlands at 27, and give the U.S.-19, in other words, by this
ranking
the best country in the world is twice as good as America.

I have studied empires pretty carefully over the last few years, and I
have figured out the basic nature of these systems and concluded that
all empires collapse, and usually within less than a century, because
of
their inherent nature. They not only make mistakes but usually the
same
set of mistakes simply because of the inevitable character of the
imperial structure, which ultimately fails because of its size,
complexity, territorial reach, social stratification, economic
disparities, heterogeneity, domination of people and nature, hierarchy,
and environmental ignorance.

There are, to my reading, four basic reasons that empires collapse, and
I'd like to set them out, particularly in reference to the modern
American empire.

1. First, environmental degradation. Empires end by destroying the
lands and waters they depend on for survival, largely because they
build
and farm and grow without a sense of limits. As Sumeria collapsed when
its irrigation systems drained and salinated its waters, as the Roman
collapsed when it turned the fruitful African littoral into the Sahara
Desert, so the American is engaged in the massive destruction and
pollution of its environment, worldwide. Science is in agreement that
all the important systems upon which human life depends are in decline
and have been for decades: the erosion of topsoils and beaches,
overfishing of every ocean fishery, deforestation, freshwater and
aquifer depletion, pollution of water, soul, air, and food,
overpopulation, overconsumption, depletion of oil and minerals,
introduction of new diseases and invigoration of old ones, extreme
weather, global warming, rising sea levels, species extinctions, human
overuse of the earth's photosynthetic capacity. A lengthy Defense
Department study two years ago predicted "abrupt climate change" was
likely to occur within a decade, will lead to "catastrophic" shortages
of water and energy, endemic "disruption and conflict," and a
"significant drop in the planet's ability to sustain its present
population." The Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson said it more simply:
our "ecological footprint is already too large for the planet to
sustain, and is getting larger."

That way to end of empire, for sure, maybe end of civilization.

2. Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive
resource exploitation, in their heartlands and then in colonies farther
an farther away from the center, because their populations become large
and their armies too extensive, and when the resources fail the economy
fails. In addition, imperial trade systems are so widespread that they
are not well controlled, with many booms and busts, and it is the
imperial elites who prosper at the expense of merchants and farmers.
As
Teotihuacan collapsed in the 7th century AD because it deforested its
hills for building and agriculture, as the Byzantine empire failed
when
it used up resources and found its economy eroded by inflation and its
unpaid armies in revolt, so the American empire has built a fragile
imperial economy that is unsustainable and is already on the verge of
crumbling, as the recent stock crashes attest.

Unsustainable? We have a trade deficit of $763 billion dollars. And
crumbling? The dollar has lost value everywhere-it is down by nearly
40
per cent since 2000-and the credit crisis is so vast that it is only by
the most extraordinary financial contortions that anyone keeps any
faith
in the dollar at all. It will not take long before the oil states will
no longer want to operate in that currency and the petro-euro will
supplant the petro-dollar, and won't take long for China to dump its
worthless dollars, as it is already starting to do, in the process of
buying up our banks.

[You know your empire is collapsing when those who have lost faith in
its currency bid the price of an ounce of gold to a record high in
January of $901, and you have to dump gold from your reserves to get it
down.]

Add peak oil. You know your empire is collapsing when it is willing to
pay $100 dollar a barrel for the oil it has unwisely built its whole
economy on, can't find a way to limit consumption (and slaps down those
who try), and has about as much clue on how to develop an alternative
as
the Norse in Greenland did when they knew their herds were destroying
the land but kept on using them until that society collapsed in the
15th
century.

3. The third major cause of imperial collapse is military overstretch.
Empires are by definition colonizers and trying to keep control over
hostage peoples by force inevitably leads to large and often
uncontrollable armies, massive drains on the economy, and ultimately
rebellion on the periphery. As the Roman empire collapsed when the
"barbarians" at its frontiers revolted and the Roman legions,
stretched
from Germany to Africa to Persia and grown unruly and corrupt, were
defeated, as the Persian empire fell in the 5th century BC because it
was unable to maintain the colonies it had established from India to
Africa and the peripheries rose in revolt, so the American empire is
overextended, weakened at the peripheries, forced to use ill-equipped
and undertrained troops to maintain it, and even the generals admit
that
it can't be sustained.

We have 547,000, more than half a million, active troops, based at,
this
is amazing and little understood, more than 725 admitted military
bases
in at least 40 countries around the world, plus a formal "military
presence" in no less than 153 countries, on every continent but
Antarctica, and nearly a dozen fully armed carrier and missile fleets
on all the seven seas.

We are now fighting in four admitted wars from Eritrea to the
Philippines and winning none of them. The cost is enormous and
draining
the treasury at $3 billion a week--total cost an estimated $609 billion
dollars so far, another $200 billion next year, and a projected $2.1
trillion even if some troops are withdrawn by 2013. And that does not
include the mercenary budget-for the Blackwaters and such-- paid by the
State Department, estimated at $100 billion a year, or the troops run
by
the CIA out of its unknown black budget. It is a cost that is putting
a
severe strain on the American treasury, whether we acknowledge it or
not, and its effect of undercutting all other domestic discretionary
spending-for example, on education, infrastructure, homeland security,
and food and drug inspections-has already had severe social
consequences
and will continue to have more.

[You know your empire is collapsing when you spend billions of dollars
that you don't have, to create a missile system that doesn't work, to
use against an enemy that you don't have either.]

And all of that to try to maintain an empire that is already shrinking.
Latin America, which used to have U.S. colonies from Cuba to Argentina,
has thrown off most American influence, installed governments hostile
to
America and welcoming to the Chinese, and mostly refused to bow down to
the "structural adjustments" that the World Bank used to be able to use
to manipulate their economies. [You know your empire is collapsing
when
the leader of one of the countries there that we used to have in our
pocket, and couldn't pull off a coup to oust, comes to the United
Nations and makes fun of your emperor and says he smells sulphur where
the emperor just was standing.] All of the Moslem world is hostile to
American interests and policies, including the Saudis leading the
jack-up of oil prices, so is much of South Asia, and American prestige
and influence has fallen considerably in Europe, central Asia, and
Japan. We are good friends with Slovenia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgystan,
that's about it.

For all of our 725 bases, we no longer control the world, and our
attempt to do so has been a disaster.

4. Finally, empires fall because of domestic dissent and upheaval.
Crashing economies, food shortages, political repression, military
drain, and increasing disparities between the rich and poor create
domestic discontents that, lasting long enough, lead to rebellion and
civil war. As the Mughal empire of India collapsed when excessive
taxes
to support the military led to armed resistance, as the Aztec empire
collapsed when its population showed no interest in defending the
central government that had been bleeding them of tribute when the
Spanish arrived, so the American empire faces a prospect of increasing
dissent and division, malaise and disaffection, even a growing
movement
toward outright secession, now with organizations in at least 30 of the
50 states. It is not yet revolt and rebellion, but the institutions of
this nation-Presidency, Vice Presidency, Pentagon, Congress, the
lot-are
held in greater disdain and disrepute today than any time since opinion
polls began to measure this-and rightly so.

[You know your empire is collapsing when, according to a poll taken in
the fall of 2006 by the Opinion Research Corporation and broadcast by
CNN on October 23, 71 percent of your citizens agree that "our system
of
government is broken and cannot be fixed," and another 7 percent agree
it is broken but "hoped" it could be fixed. Broken and CANNOT be
fixed.]

Well it's not rebellion, thanks to the increasing sweeping and illegal
repression of dissent by the Bush regime-leading up to, by the way, the
vicious McCarthyistic House Resolution 1955 passed-404 to 5-and sent to
the Senate, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism
Prevention Act, nothing less than the establishment of thought police
to
find and jail anybody that thinks unpleasant and subversive thoughts
about this nation.

Thanks also, I should note, to the success of the system's modern
version of bread and circuses, a unique combination of entertainment,
sports, television, internet sex and games, consumption, drugs, liquor,
and religion that has so far successful deadened most of the general
public into apathetic stupor.

But it is hard to believe that a nation that is, first, so thoroughly
corrupt as this-in all its fundamental institutions, its boughten
parties, military contractors, academies, corporations, banks,
brokerages, accountants, governments-and, second, so thoroughly
economically unequal -2005 figures show that the income of the 3
million
Americans at the top was equal to that of the 166 million at the
bottom-can survive without revolt.

The Bush administration has shown, in fact, that it is not capable of
governing a population of this size and complexity -Katrina above all,
energy deregulation (Enron etc.), subprime credit collapse, unregulated
housing boom, gasoline mileage, FDA inspections, mine-safety
inspections, no-bid contracts to favorites, misuse of wiretapping,
Abramoff-Delay bribery, consumer product safety, the list of failures
go
on--and there's no imaginable successor that could: the empire is too
vast and intricate, the homeland is too immense and diverse, the
systems
are too complicated and fragile. The citizens will someday rise in
protest, I predict.

Those four processes by which empires inevitably fall-environmental,
economic, military, and civil-are inescapably operative now, in this
latest empire. I would be willing to make a sizeable bet that a
combination of several or all of them will bring about its collapse
within the next 10 years. The lesson from Jared Diamond's recent book
Collapse is that almost no society is capable of escaping the kinds of
peril that an empire like this faces.

Unless you secede from it, and the sooner the better.

You know your empire is collapsing when that idea just makes plain good
sense.

[blove8.]

interesting article mexika, thanks for passing it along.

[markko]

Quote:The lesson from Jared Diamond's recent book
Collapse is that almost no society is capable of escaping the kinds of
peril that an empire like this faces.

Pretty good book. I really suggest reading!

[codboy]

Excellent article. actually I give this collapse about another 15 to 20 years.

[mexika]

Quote:Excellent article. actually I give this collapse about another 15 to 20 years.

hmmmm..... 2 to 5, maybe up 2012, 2013 the latest.

[waxzy]

Quote:The citizens will someday rise in
protest...

I will weep with joy when I see it.

[silkworm]

Mexika, I must congratulate you on such a nice post, this took the living daylights outa myself, but here is something more interesting:


In a book called “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” historian Edward Gibbon listed five reasons that caused the enormous "Roman Empire" to collapse:

1. The increase in divorce rate, undermining the institution of the family;

2. The imposition of higher taxes for bread and circuses;

3. The drive for pleasure, sports becoming more exciting and brutal and,

4. The people lost their faith.

5. The existence of an internal conspiracy, working to undermine the government from within, all the time that the government was proclaiming that Rome’s enemy as "external".

[mexika]

Quote:Mexika, I must congratulate you on such a nice post, this took the living daylights outa myself, but here is something more interesting:


In a book called “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” historian Edward Gibbon listed five reasons that caused the enormous "Roman Empire" to collapse:

1. The increase in divorce rate, undermining the institution of the family;

2. The imposition of higher taxes for bread and circuses;

3. The drive for pleasure, sports becoming more exciting and brutal and,

4. The people lost their faith.

5. The existence of an internal conspiracy, working to undermine the government from within, all the time that the government was proclaiming that Rome’s enemy as "external".

Do all qualify to the present times?

Never trust the state with history - they will elevate it and twist it and than turn against you. Truth is not with the state or that sack of crap war hero using cams to brainwash. Truth is truth and lies are lies, which one will you take? Live the lie of the cattle or be truly liberated...

[silkworm]

Bro Mexika, living in USA means I have seen all of the above, probably more than this - However Europe is more liberal and their promiscuity is more visible than US. Hell yeah, I will go for truly liberated that means no matter how painful they are, we need to accept 'em.

Don't you think its correct that our media is controlled by selected "vultures" and they always show you only one side of a pic.

Sorry done some minor changes of language.

[mexika]

Quote:Bro Mexika, living in USA means I have see all of the above, probably more than this - However Europe is more liberal and their promiscuity is more visible than US. Hell yeah, I will go for truly liberated means how painful they are, we need to accept 'em.

Don't you think its correct that our media controlled by selected "vultures" always show you only one side of a pix.

I like your flag, hehe. Yes and many people believe everything they see in the tube is the truth. They have learned to use the tube to a master professional level. Sad but true - And you are right, sometimes we have to turn on the tube just to see how the lies evolve.

Whats that in the middle of the Flag?

[silkworm]

The miserable pests and cockroaches commonly known as "general populace of the world" besides the western countries.

[Guest]

Quote:

Quote:The citizens will someday rise in
protest...

I will weep with joy when I see it.

Fuck that.... sound the bugle... lead the charge... pass the ammo... whatever... save the happy dance for later.

[TribalSun47]

Quote:1. The increase in divorce rate, undermining the institution of the family;

2. The imposition of higher taxes for bread and circuses;

3. The drive for pleasure, sports becoming more exciting and brutal and,

4. The people lost their faith.

5. The existence of an internal conspiracy, working to undermine the government from within, all the time that the government was proclaiming that Rome’s enemy as "external".

That sounds about right. Just missing (6.) the over-extension of the military, and (7.) the massive influx of immigration into the core nation, which in turn, creates (8.) the gradual emigration of the original people of the core nation... (9.) due to points 1-6, the decrease of births... and the recipe would be more complete.

[silkworm]

Ctrl & Tribal Sun: Darn right, will always say ye, revolution in US is a long long long way....hope for the best

[yeti]

The day the Supreme Court of the U.S. made their decision that Bush was the President, and the people of the U.S. failed to do anything about it, was the day I knew they were in big trouble. I was gobsmacked that they didn't surround the White House with torches and pitchforks, daring the scumbag to try and enter it.

9/11 was a very big deal of course, but I can forgive them for being in collective shock. I wasn't, but only because I'd been studying these bastards for quite a while.

The final nail in the coffin IMO was when the crooks stole another election in 2004, and the foolish American people showed that collectively they are truly a nation of sheep. The kleptocracy at that point went all out, looting as much as they possibly could, knowing there would be little if any repercussions.

The collapse will be very soon, I fear...