It’s over then. As empires go, this one didn’t last long. The ending came not in one defining moment, perhaps it hasn’t even dawned on many, but it’s finished; done-in not by Al Qaeda or totalitarianism or other external threats, but by its own stupidity and avarice. While it had scouts on the lookout for any sign of global trouble, it was destroyed by those who most vehemently proclaimed themselves as patriotic, those with the biggest flags in which to drape themselves, those with the largest bank accounts, mostly offshore, by those who invoke god to provide cover for their hatred.

Who’d a thunk it? The Romans lasted hundreds of years with a much smaller population and a huge frontier to defend on foot. The British, as befitting their island fortress, took to the seas to pinken world maps for three hundred plus years. Spain’s wane was announced with the sinking of the Armada, but it hung on in various parts of the globe until the 20th century. To some Basques and Catalonians, it haunts them still. The reasons for the decline and fall of empires are varied and complex, but mostly they just die of old age, or fatuity or gout.

The United States, in keeping with its rock star status, died young. In just over a century it shot like a meteor through the night sky, astonishing and blinding all who dared look. Then just as rapidly it was gone, crashed into a farmer’s field or the depths of an ocean – a glimpse of a dust trail in eonic time.    

There appeared to be some hope when a new president, so much a departure from the bumblers and blackhearts who preceded him, took office. But the lofty campaign rhetoric from just months earlier was drowned out by incessant, provincial voices of selfishness, and hardly hidden racism. “I want my country back” screamed some frothing lunatic of a woman at a town hall meeting. “And what country would that be madam? The all white one, the one with the greatest concentration of wealth in history, the one that expects all to be done but nothing paid, the one that leaves fifty million of its citizens without health care and those with insurance often denied coverage because health, like everything in “your” country is about profit?  

Lincoln could have done the world a favor by letting the sulking, slave-holding south, and its sympathizers, go their own way. Instead of fighting a bloody war, whose wounds have not healed in more than 150 years, he could have let them have their own bigoted, god-fearing nation, brimming with uneducated racists, an island of hate and ignorance, a home for town hall lady and the millions like her. Instead at great cost, including his own life, he fought to maintain a deeply sundered nation, to put in the same room people who had no interest in being there, who could barely tolerate each other, and who only really came together to fight Germans.

The historic empires previously referenced, were pushed to the extremes by forces that eventually overwhelmed them. Though the Roman Senate debated imperiously for centuries, even before the rule of Constantine, its influence was illusory. The real power had long shifted to the frontiers, to the emperors and generals who protected the borders, and increasingly, brawled among themselves. Over time, the Roman Empire, rotted away, its demise hastened by opportunistic tribes, some who had long suffered under Roman rule, and by invading marauders, who exploited the weakness of a fading bully.  

The Spanish did themselves no favors by forcing out many of their most skilled craftsmen, Jews and Muslims, and by letting loose the terror of the Inquisition. Spain was not the larger, homogenous Iberian neighbor we see on the map today. Rather, it was seriously rift with regional conflict. The Spain that strove to protect its overseas possessions, was largely the center of the country, around what is now Madrid and the old capital, Toledo. Years of bother in Europe, and its losing battle to pirates and seafaring nations, particularly the British, notably the defeat of the Armada, exposed the fragility of Spain. Simon Bolivar and friends, evicted the Spanish from South America, at the same time depriving them of the gold and natural resources so desperately needed.

The British Empire in turn, was devastated by being a major player in two world wars in twenty odd years. What remained after the Great War, was forever lost after World War II, and to the desire of countries which made up the empire, to determine their own fates.

There is no mighty prepotency poised to vanquish the United States, as the U.S. superseded the British, or the British, the Spanish. While China has vaults of   American debt, and ever-increasing global economic influence, much of its huge population remains poor and maltreated. Its denial of human rights at home, and support of corrupt regimes elsewhere, betrays the rot at its core. It may well be the odds on favorite to replace the U.S. as global heavyweight, but it is a house built on termite timber, and just as likely to collapse under its own density, as it is to heft that tonnage around unchallenged.

Beyond Caspian oil and Vladimir Putin’s bare chest lies a Potemkin country, its democracy fragile, its leader dictatorial, and a center that, as always, cannot hold. It is a threat to its neighbors, but not the world. Russia is most dangerous as a counter-puncher, the ultimate rope-a-doper, but unsteady and clumsy on the attack.

The expansion of Islamic theocracy, while still very much in need of forceful containment, is being increasingly questioned from within; the extremists themselves, are the enemy to millions of Muslims who want to live in peace, to offer a more educated, rational and progressive world to their children. When the downtrodden turn on the oppressors, when they refuse to be human shields, or provide anonymity, when the measured beards have nowhere to hide, their misogyny and hate-mongering on full display, they are done. Their death rattle is already sounding.

The United States is not being vanquished or even eroded by any foreign force greater than itself. It has never really been defeated in battle, engaging in some wars without winning, only because it fought wars without declaring them so, or by not unleashing the full scale of its military might. Had they wanted to scrap dirty, well, really dirty, or been as eager to kill civilians as earlier empires, or current aspirants, it would have obliterated its opponents. The demise of the States has not come at the hands of outside powers; it has not been knocked out by the number one contender.

Instead, as evidenced by the hysterical and deceitful debate over universal heath care, the country is just too dumb and too gluttonous to continue as the world’s dominant player. It’s not that all Americans are daft and predatory, more aren’t. It’s just that too many are. If it were say, twenty percent of the population, well, all countries have at least that many assholes. The problem with the U.S. is that almost half of its citizenry is either excessively wealthy, or exceedingly stupid. The wealthy make up a small and shrinking part of that group, but their capacity to shape the message and buy the messengers, ensures that the dimwits will continue to vote against their interests, while maintaining their trust in duplicitous demagogues and loud-mouthed liars.

If there was a chance that the dullards and the insatiable could be debated, if they were influenced at all by legitimate science and rational thought, the possibility of change might be extant. But this is a group blinded by faith, duped by vested interest. Their lack of interest, or understanding makes them easy, often willing, targets for feudal lords and religious zealots, those who have found loopholes in the law or declared fiction to be truth. Faith is an opponent that need not prove itself. It is enough that it exists, Reason requires doubt, demands that all be considered, authenticated and reviewed. At that, theories and proofs can collapse on one exception. Faith requires no such rigor, in fact, denounces it. You can’t argue with faith because it is, by its nature, closed.

The United States never was, and never can be, the country that it should have been. At its best, it has done things better than any collective in history. At its worst, it has been an embarrassment among civilized nations. To paraphrase Baudelaire, “America is like the prince of the clouds, haunting the tempest and laughing at the archer; Exiled on earth amongst the shouting people, his giant’s wings hinder him from walking.”

The voices of America were once Jefferson and Franklin, Hawthorne and Emerson, Whitman and Dickenson, Twain and Henry James. Now the expression of reason and humor is shouted down by windbags and con artists like Limbaugh and Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity, Falwell and Robertson, Gingrich and Kristol. An entire nation has been kidnapped by blowhards and charlatans, propagandists and haranguers. Such a state cannot survive its own idiocy. Heinrich Heine once said of an individual, “Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.” The inmates are running the U.S. asylum and they tend constantly to the former.

America is proud of its symbols; the flag, the anthems, its monuments and with some justification. It was a decisive contributor to the right side in two major combats in the 20th century, three, if its excesses in fighting the Cold War could be forgiven. All countries have warts, and most have many more than America. The U.S. however, is as much myth as reality. It is not, nor ever has been, one nation under god. It has proven easily divisible and has dispensed liberty and justice unequally. It bellowed defiantly about its capacity to defeat the wicked things that its way come. But while it was staring abroad, folly and greed, the most dangerous of enemies, had already made themselves at home.

America came into the 20th century as a soaring, if rapacious eagle. It will leave in the 21st as Willy Loman. It’s tragic really. At its height, there was much left to offer.

Copyright © 2009 Paul Heno