Retiring the American Empire
As people near retirement age, they enter the twilight years. Sometimes, they rebel against retirement. They want to keep working. They're not interested in shuffling out of their office never to return. And if they're in fact the owner of the workplace, conflicts often ensue. Those who have power rarely want to give up that power.
The United States is relatively young as a country. It is even younger as the "leader of the free world." But for at least three decades, reports have circulated that the American empire has entered its twilight years, perhaps even its dotage.
The U.S. government itself cautioned us to scale back our expectations in the late 1970s when President Jimmy Carter called on Americans to cut back on consumerism and adjust to an age of diminishing expectations. Then, after the Reagan rebound, we were warned by Yale professor Paul Kennedy of imperial overstretch in the late 1980s. The Clinton years saved us from bankruptcy and the George W. Bush administration again reasserted American power in the world.
But now, the United States has again sunk into economic malaise and the wars of the last decade have left the country badly bruised. Historian Alfred McCoy believes the U.S. empire won't make it until 2025. Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung pulls the horizon a little closer to 2020. It's also possible that the empire already ended and somebody forgot to make the announcement. In 2011, Standard and Poor's removed the United States from its list of risk-free borrowers, putting us below Canada and Australia. That could very well have been the death knell.
Predicting the end of American empire is complicated by the fact that the United States is not a traditional empire. It does not try to maintain territorial control over distant lands (though many residents of Hawai'i and Guam might disagree). It doesn't practice a straightforward policy of pillaging overseas possessions for their material wealth. It practices a form of consensual give-and-take with its allies in Europe and Asia.
more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/retiring-the-american-emp_b_3704913.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)How precisely did the administration do that? By starting the stupidest war in the nation's history? By then bungling the aftermath of that war beyond all belief?
Democrats_win
(6,539 posts)The GOP will rally the nation as FDR, Reagan and to a lesser extent George-the-lesser did. This talk of America's demise was very much prevalent in 1970s America. Then, the GOP really took advantage of our malaise. The conservatives went on and on about how we were just like the Decline of the Roman Empire. We can't fall for this trick again!
What FDR and the two GOP monsters did, was getting the money flowing again to end the malaise of stagnation. They all drastically increased deficit spending. They all were different flavors of the same food: government stimulus.
However, George-the-lesser's failure was so drastic! At first his spending worked. However his work is ironically best described by the surge function--quick increase then exponential decline f(x) = x*exp(-bx). Just think he outspent them all and it all ended with catastrophe after catastrophe. Interestingly, our pillaging of Latin America was interuppted by Bush's attempt to pillage Iraq. While the Bush was at play, Latin America slipped away.