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Thread: The US Empire Is Crumbling

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    Ransom's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    The US is an empire. And every empire in history has undergone a period of expansion, stasis, decline and then implosion.

    We are currently in the period of decline.

    It's an empire we inherited from European powers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, one could argue that Europe itself is a protectorate of the US empire.

    The internal divisions and political strife, the insurmountable debt, the increasing centralization of power in government, the unchecked corruption and secrecy, the endless warfare, are all symptoms of the decline of empire.

    Americans often feel like there are enemies and adversaries everywhere, which is why they mount no serious objections to profligate spending on the military. Yet what they perceive to be enemies and adversaries are really just countries trying to assert their independence from the US empire. Countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea are no real threat to America. They have no intention of attacking our country or violating our trade and travel rights around the world.

    Of course, virtually everyone who reads this will disagree with it in some way. But that's another symptom of imperial decline: Mass denial. The idea of the "exceptional" and "indispensable" nation (could anything be more overtly imperial?) is simply too ingrained in the minds of Americans to accept the fact that their prestige and greatness is waning. The British and the Romans were possessed of similar delusions near the ends of their great empires.

    This isn't to say the US empire is going to implode anytime soon. More than likely, it will continue to limp along for at least a few more decades before the signs of its inevitable implosion really start to manifest themselves. However, what seems exceedingly clear (to me, at least) is that the empire has entered the unmistakable period of decline.
    I would like you to read a book titled Undaunted Courage. I often submit this book as an excellent look into centuries ago America, the struggles of life, the disease, poverty, lack of education.....and then the credible journey of imperialism that open the American West.

    It has been known for quite some time our history isn't your strong suit, Ethereal. Today, we are hardly in decline, we face less threat and strife than at any time in our history. Because you don't know that, you make ridiculous thread starts like this. You'll be insulting and calling me names next inyour infamous deflection techniques, however, the content you wrote there isn't correct. And becoming educated on our history would prove that.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    I think that only addresses the symptoms. The system itself is what is flawed. You would remove one set of parasites only to have another replace them.
    That's true, it would probably only save it for a generation or two.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
    It has been known for quite some time our history isn't your strong suit, Ethereal. Today, we are hardly in decline, we face less threat and strife than at any time in our history. Because you don't know that, you make ridiculous thread starts like this. You'll be insulting and calling me names next in your infamous deflection techniques, however, the content you wrote there isn't correct. And becoming educated on our history would prove that.
    The primary threat we face is from our own government. We have a government that is unconstitutionally centralizing power and authority over every facet of our lives. While I love the bread and circuses and much as the next guy it is clear we are no longer a Constitutional Republic. We have already failed.

    What comes next?
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jimmyz View Post
    What is your definition of "oppressed and dominated"?

    The USA hasn't had real "enemies" since 1945.
    Getting ready for a May trip to Chancellorsville, reading Sear's book on that Civil War Battle. And the state of this Union in 1863. Chilling.

    Move decades ahead and we've over 100,000 dead from world wars. Diseases like polio, the measles, and cholera take lives by the millions. I'm always taken by facts learned from that book I submitted to Ethereal. In the day of Lewis and Clark...it wasn't known how malaria was spread. The mosquito by the trillions...wracked the expedition members, everyone of them crossing the continent...with severe fevers and illnesses, all of them wrecked from that disease...that they didn't even know was hosted from the mosquito. Today's health, today's wealth....we take for granted. Ethereal is a take it all for granted student.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterVeritis View Post
    The primary threat we face is from our own government. We have a government that is unconstitutionally centralizing power and authority over every facet of our lives. While I love the bread and circuses and much as the next guy it is clear we are no longer a Constitutional Republic. We have already failed.

    What comes next?
    I cannot argue against government oppression. That might be a more focused conversation. To claim the entire empire is in decline.....I'm not sure that's accurate given our history of such a messy democracy. We've had a Vietnam war. We've survived Barack Obama. We've got a fairly strong chin.

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    Quote Originally Posted by texan View Post
    I am going to give a big disagree here.

    Big difference from the Roman Empire. We are not trying to take land and expand etc. Fortunately for us we are to big to fail. We also have the ability to correct or go through forced corrections. Progression makes people uncomfortable. It comes way to quick sometimes. We also hit peaks and valleys. This is not the first rodeo that predicted we are failing. Just look back in history to the depression and other times. They said the same thing when Yimmy Carter ran things.

    We may go through a correction, but we are not going to "fail." There is no money to be made by the predictors if there isn't some kind of problem to report. Things are great doesn't sell papers unfortunately. We are not the Roman Empire.
    Being "too big" is exactly why the US empire will fail eventually. It's why all empires fail.

    And while it's true that the US does not overtly "take land" from other countries, it asserts military control over their land just the same. There's really no effective difference between "taking land" and controlling all the most important elements of how the land is managed. In other words, it's just a more sophisticated form of imperialism than was practiced by the Romans or even the British. Yet it is imperialism just the same, and the symptoms of it are fairly easy to identify. Probably the most striking parallel between Americans and ancient Romans is their increasing fixation on prurient interests, AKA, "bread and circuses". Romans had their coliseums and subsidized grain just as Americans have their stadiums and their subsidized corn. This is needed to keep the imperial machinery running smoothly.
    Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. And that it is doing God service when it is violating all His laws.
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    Quote Originally Posted by jimmyz View Post
    What is your definition of "oppressed and dominated"?
    Killing, terrorizing, occupying, invading, overthrowing, sanctioning. You know, things the US government has been doing almost nonstop since the late 1800's.

    The USA hasn't had real "enemies" since 1945.
    Doesn't that tend to support my argument, though? That most of the "enemies" of the US are not real but imagined?
    Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. And that it is doing God service when it is violating all His laws.
    --John Adams

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
    I would like you to read a book titled Undaunted Courage. I often submit this book as an excellent look into centuries ago America, the struggles of life, the disease, poverty, lack of education.....and then the credible journey of imperialism that open the American West.

    It has been known for quite some time our history isn't your strong suit, Ethereal. Today, we are hardly in decline, we face less threat and strife than at any time in our history. Because you don't know that, you make ridiculous thread starts like this. You'll be insulting and calling me names next inyour infamous deflection techniques, however, the content you wrote there isn't correct. And becoming educated on our history would prove that.
    Yea, except you already contradicted yourself the last time we had this discussion.

    You admit that westward expansion and colonization predated the existence of the US by almost 300 years, yet you try to attribute this westward expansion to the imperialist policies of the US government.

    Tell me, how can the US government be responsible for something that was happening for almost 300 years prior to its existence, Mister History Genius?
    Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. And that it is doing God service when it is violating all His laws.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
    I cannot argue against government oppression.
    Oh, sure you can. As long as the government oppression serves your overtly imperialist agenda, then you will become its enthusiastic supporter. The high taxes to pay for your wars and your imperialism; the mass surveillance state needed to maintain control over the population; the onerous restrictions on travel between countries; you're a big fan of them all. You're a real "progressive", just like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

    That might be a more focused conversation. To claim the entire empire is in decline.....I'm not sure that's accurate given our history of such a messy democracy. We've had a Vietnam war. We've survived Barack Obama. We've got a fairly strong chin.
    American society is strong and resilient. It will outlast the US empire for centuries, just as Italian society outlasted the Roman empire.

    In any case, the US empire, like virtually all past empires, is not something that fades overnight. It takes generations of decay to rot out the machinery of empire. Yet it is decaying, and it shows absolutely no sign of reversing course.
    Last edited by Ethereal; 03-22-2018 at 02:55 PM.
    Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak. And that it is doing God service when it is violating all His laws.
    --John Adams

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    Countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea are no real threat to America. They have no intention of attacking our country or violating our trade and travel rights around the world.
    Kim Jung-un (North Korea's madman-in-chief) has been busily developing nuclear weapons, for the precise purpose--he said so himself--of attacking the American heartland.

    And Russia--according to a report I heard, just the other day--has now developed the ability to hack into our electrical grid, and also cut off our water supply.

    Would you consider these to be equivalent to "no intention of attacking our country"?

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