Will decline of US empire resemble that of Britain or Rome?

[enid602]

The British just know how to do things right. So civil and orderly. When Hitler posed a threat, they threw their entire patrimony at him; no hesitation or doubts. They didn't whine afterward. In 1945, they knew their longstanding empire was coming to an end, so the queen made trips around the world, graciously offering independence and putting the best face on the end of centuries of colonialism. They founded the Commonwealth to help shore up their declining influence. They had the vision to join the Common Market, to became a meaningful part of something bigger. Successive Labour governments ensured that this decline would place minimal suffering on the poor. They seamlessly transformed themselves from an industrial and military powerhouse to a nation of shopkeepers. They developed a 'special relationship' with the US, seeing that that would enable them to be heard on the world stage. In short, they aged gracefully. No power vacuums, no lack of continuity or threat to world markets. Minimal stress.

The US, not even faced with a Hitler-like threat, seems willing to waste its patrimony on the ouster of a 3rd rate dictator and a phony social security privatization scheme. Like the Romans, we've come to expect a certain return on each successive war, hoping the tribute outweighs the costs. Rome imploded (and left a destructive power vacuum) when its latest and most expensive foreign adventure failed to bring tribute. Our 'oil for blood' scheme seems just as likely to fail.

We in the US are accustomed to instant gratification, and expect constant increases in living standards. Many on this board see a coming economic crisis, with fuel shortages, violence and a return to fascism. For a nation which has seen so little suffering over the last half-century, we have a fascination with cataclysm and tragedy. Our current administration seems to share this outlook; that's why they do what they do. The average Joe, while commuting to work in his gas-guzzling SUV (and voting for *) seems to be fiddling while Rome burns.

What are the chances of our being able to emulate the British in this precarious crossroads of change? Why aren't we focusing on the least among us? Why aren't we truly reaching out to those with whom we share this continent, to establish a market or commonwealth in which the three countries are equal and working with each other? Why aren't we cooperating with global central banks to solve our currency mess? Why aren't we trying to pay our debts? Whatever happened to sustainable growth? Why the holy fuck have we not had an energy conservation plan since 1981? Is there just the slightest possibility that the American Way is not the right way? How will history judge a society which cannibalizes its young (by amassing such huge debts) just to maintain its unsustainable, energy-intensive post World War II lifestyle? HOW WILL HISTORY JUDGE US?

[Selatius]

1. It will be neither. It will be a uniquely American way of collapse

In truth it will probably come in a form with only some similarities to both the collapse of the Roman Empire and the end of the British Empire.

What could happen is that the US is superceded by several world powers working in concert. Nations such as China and blocs such as the EU or rising countries such as Brazil and India could check US power by the end of the 21st century.

While power shifts across the planet, the US economy will change as well. The US only can sustain its current level of spending due to foreign financing of our debt load. As long as it is profitable for foreign investors and countries, this will continue, but if something changes that could cause them to call in their debts and demand immediate payment, we could easily default, which would hurt our credit rating, which means future investors would be less likely to come in and bail us out on fears we cannot pay them back.

In some ways, it seems like the Roman Empire: Overextended, corrupt, and unable to defend its own territory. In other ways, it seems like the British Empire at the end of World War 2: Exhausted and bankrupt.

[Cleita]

2. Since we are the Hitler-like threat, I wonder how the world

is going to deal with us?

[enid602]

4. BRIC

As Selatius explained above, the world will adjust. The BRIC alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was formed just a few months ago to counter our aggression. What concerns me more is that the AMERICAN public doesn't demand a better gameplan on the part of our government, now that it seems we are clearly at a crossroads in our 60-year old empire. I want to see more national discussion on how we can adjust to changing situations, even if it means accepting limits to growth and affluence. How can we best insulate ourselves from poverty, and hopefully have a POSITIVE influence in the global arena. If we are in a serious decline, why can't we just fess up to it, and rationally sit down and discuss what is best for our future. We seem to have a narcissistic view; if I can't have it, nobody can.

[Cleita]

6. Well, you aren't going to get anything positive, with a

view to the future from this government or maybe even future ones for a long time since it seems our federal government has been hijacked. I would rather they did nothing until we get some responsible, intellectual, and liberal minded government in place.

[Pacifist Patriot]

3. Neither

Because of our decline coinciding with global environmental crises it's going to look entirely different...and have wider repercussions.

[enid602]

7. environment

How so? Do you think that environmental degradation is so imminent that it will eclipse the story of our downfall?

[Pacifist Patriot]

8. I think they could go hand in hand.

I'm including energy as a component of environment. The soon to come oil peak may very well hasten our decline, but that oil peak won't affect just us.

[G2099]

5. Very well written

In answer to your "whys." The people of Rome died to the spirit of civil responsibility. The spirit of collective civil responsibility for government of the force and power of "we the people" has been destroyed; put to death and taken over by the corporations that are considered "persons." But we the people do not exercise our authority over the state charters of these corporations.

And the "money question" in American politics has been put out of the minds of American people as being the responsibility of the "expert" - those in the Fed.

The American people are "dead" and buried. Let's hope in a "shallow grave." And maybe we will get lucky and a great Prophet will arise in the American empire as in the Roman empire and "raise the dead to life."

[enid602]

9. safety net

I hate to share your pessimitic view, but I'm afraid you might be right. It's amazing how little dialogue there's been lately on the social contract. And it's not just that the government or the media refuse to talk about social responsibilities. The interest just does not seem to be there. Here's to hoping that a 'prophet' will rise to make us see things differently.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[enid602]

12. true

I hope that's true, but I'm afraid there's potential for more foreign policy mistakes while we travel down this road. Why doesn't the public want to shore up what's left?

[EC]

11. Much of Romans demise

was attributed to the health care system falling (which was a socialized system with preventative measures) As more land was taken, expenses started increasing, leaving the infrastructure falling. When the decline of medical care started, decease became rampant, causing a shortage of troops and taxpayers.

The system of how an emperor was rife with corruption since the army chose the next in line, all that had to be done was bribing of the army, with an arrangement of the death of the existing emperor.

Much of this we are seeing now here, with PNAC making sure their man got to be ruler, and the decline of our infrastructure.

[enid602]

13. healthcare

I don't know much about the Roman healthcare system, or about the state of healthcare in Roman times, for that matter. But your belief that our industrial-military complex might want to (continue?) to chose future presidents is troublesome. Perhaps the success of election reform efforts will have a great impact on whether or not we can return to sensible rule.

[Stinky The Clown]

14. Lemme pull my rose colored glasses outta my ass fer a minnit

I'm not sure decline and destruction is a sure thing. Our problem is we tend to live in the moment and see in the moment. And the cabal has cunningly kept the discussion four square on things of the moment. (i.e., SS debate aimed at young people ... not those who it affects now ... just those who don't want to pay now.)

But take heart that only 51% of voters (this isn't a discussion of BBV, so please set that side, for now at least) chose to install this pack of thieves. When you consider that those voters are an even smaller percentage of the country's population, the cabal likely does not have the support of the majority (even assuming that all those 51% would repeat their stupidity, as modeled in their actions last November).

The time will come when we get to the tipping point ... and it may well be closer than we think.

Look around. I was alive and aware during the Vietnam era when there were wall to wall protesters. I see far more deep seated, very real, anger now than then. I remember the gas crisis of the Carter years. I see less concern about that at the moment, but we've not seen the extent that the current problem will affect us all ... and it will surely be worse than before. Much worse.

The economy is about as bad it has ever been. But with new economics science, they're able to prop it all up. But that, too, is a house of cards.

All that and more is looming ... just around the next corner or over the next hill.

And then there's the whole new issue of the Christowackos. We've never seen anything like that before. Maybe Prohibition, but even that was far less extensive than what we're facing now. Carrie Nation was a temperate woman compared to these fuckers. We know how successful, in the end, her campaign of bible thumping self anointment was.

And then we get back to the margin of victory that placed the current crop of fuckwads in power. Add a dash of truth stirred with the alternate, free outlets of truth, and I suspect we're just a few votes shy of that tipping point tipping again .... to our side.

But the whole national dialog has to change. Our essential culture has to change. That has to be what we talk about next ... the future ... not tomorrow ... but the *real* future .... 50 years out ...a hundred years out .... but only after we regain power. I am optimistic that our chances are increasing daily. The opposition is overstepping with increasing frequency and with increasing audacity, and in increasingly large steps. That is as unsustainable as a petro based world.

We live in a world where the rate of change is changing geometrically. The cycles are shorter. We had a 60 year run. They've had a 20 year run (not counting Clinton ... or maybe we should count him .... ). Its time.

Our time.

I hope.

Now lemme put these rose colored glasses back up my ass .......

[enid602]

16. BBV

Not to appear ignorant, but what is a BBV? Too many acronyms; I get them confused.

[Stinky The Clown]

17. BBV - Black Box Voting - Diebold - Election Theft

[enid602]

15. gameplan

Bush's recent declarations that we're in the Middle East to spread democracy, followed up with Condi's trip to Europe (to convince them of same) and the almost propagandist media coverage of these phenomena put the best possible face on our Iraqi disaster. This is not the first time, however that bad people have hijacked progressive ideals to pursue their selfish goals. Hitler, remember, ran as a National SOCIALIST. Lenin's idealism was replaced with Stalin's brutality. Saddam's Baathist Party was started as an offshoot of socialism, and was initially praised by the UN for its promotion of literacy and women's rights. Albeit too late, Germans, Russians and Iraqis saw their leaders for what they were.

Sure, we want to think that Bush just went to Iraq to spread democracy, even though it's cost us $300B (so far), and has materially decreased living standards and threatened the security of the Iraqi populace. And sure, we hope that Bush has equally honorable goals as he peruses his options with regard to Iran, Syria and Venezuela. But at some point the American people must wake up to the eventuality that maybe our leaders don't have the right approach, and demand that they change the gameplan. This notion that foreign adventures are OK just as long as there is no accompanying draft is absolutely absurd.

[Stinky The Clown]

18. Bush wouldn't know an honorable goal if it .....

...... bit him in the ass

[enid602]

20. honor

Whatever do you mean. Just yesterday I read that Bush's own brother took time out of his busy drinking, drugging and bilking schedule in '98 to form an 'ecumenical council' with the future Pope. Can't get more homorable than that.

[AngryAmish]

19. When did Rome implode?

[enid602]

22. Rome

About 500AD, after their latest military adventure failed to bring home enough wealth to prop up their over-extended, corrupt empire. After the hoardes broke down the walls, the Dark Ages began.

[sweetheart]

21. A reincarnation perspective

What has made all these empires is the SAME souls reincarnating over and
over from generation to generation, and often, keeping in their same
social incarnate status. In this regard, Bush was once a pope in the
dark ages who started persecuting jews to extend his power, and now he's
a new kind of pope... same status, different lifetime.

Such is the case with many of the people who built the british empire,
as most are now incarnate in the American empire... and then there are
those souls who take incarnation to feed-on and destroy an empire, and
these as well are incarnate in america as she collapses.

So rather than focus on the empires as what is real, perhaps the cycle
of empire carries with it the waves of incarnate wisdom from one lifetime
to the next. This has unfortunate sideeffects as well, as many of the
neocons are realy reincanate nazis, real ones, who were killed or put
to death for their evil last incarnations (cheney, rumsfield ++).. so
these men take a new lifetime, a new body, and start on with their
genetic habits from past lives of creating a white race war for oil
in stalingrad.

The souls who are in america today, lived through the decline of rome
and as well, the fall of the british empire. Some remember, and find
a special irony that "here we go again." Most do not remember and
wring their hands about how terrible that empires collapse, grossly
misunderstanding the greater complexity at hand.

In your next life, you could be born in any place on earth, yet likely
you will find a birth in a very similar auric situation as what you
are currently in. This is why very wise people realize that the only
important thing to do in life is to attain enlightenment, and awaken
that one is not a victem of circumstance.

So, How will history judge? Well, you, in your next life, get to
choose how you judge it. Likely, you'll find that there are traces
of the collapse of all previous empires in the collapse of the american
one.

This is simply reflecting the fact that souls from the world over are
incarnate in america these days, combine with another factor altogether.

A huge influx of souls from lower dimensions is filling in the
population explosion on this earth. These are basic souls seeking
raw experiences of sexuality, power and domination, not sophistocated
wise beings. This heavy center of population mass will likely make
the future a gross decline of what we have today... so that rather than
there being a golden age tomorrow, the republican filth represent the
tip of a massive iceburg of ignorance that will, in a democratic
system drive the collective intelligence levels of society to the
lowest darwinian feudalist thinking.

THe only civilizations that survive will be those that eschew
democracy in a way to preserve the higher ideals of a noble society
in the face of an increasingly base and unaware population.

America, for a while, was a re-emergence of atlantis, with many souls
from that time reincarnating and remembering atlantean technologies
like computers, genetic engineering, nuclear power and whatnot... and
these few souls had a unique opportunity in one of the few societies
for thousands of years to become "more" enlightened. This however,
was an exception, and the future will be increasingly written by the
most ignorant amongst us.... entropy and decline are a global
phenomena with the coming dark age... unavoidable, like a fly meeting
the swatter. :-)

[enid602]

23. reincarnation

I'm not familiar with your philosophy, so please bear with me. Are you saying that all of this is somehow pre-ordained, and there's nothing anyone can do? Is there no possibility that some of us would not have reincarnated from positive beings that have something useful to offer? Bush and other repugs have direct family ties with Nazism. Is that reincarnation or just merely upbringing?

[sweetheart]

24. Free will within complexity

Figure that 6 billion people will be looking to reincarnate within a
century, and each based on the profile of their consciousness at death.
In this regard, souls tend to keep to the same profile, unless they are
profound or lucky. The folks i know call it the "vibrational" profile,
as percieving life as a series of subtle vibrations, and that this
energy of your life, as much as one might consider it a frequency, when
you leave the body, carries you to another life in a similar banding.

You have absolute control over your frequency, but how many people
in poverty in the bronx, just up and move to manhattan to become
different people? Very much as in life, as in reincarnation... most
people stay with their profile.

Many positive beings, as you mention, have had thousands of lifetimes
on this earth, and have sussed out over lives, how to wind up in
successful and positive vibrations... rather they've mastered a
multi-life "siddha" power, or super power, how to stay successful in
a world that is otherwise a crap shoot.

There is no physical genetics in reincarnation. A soul enters the body
nearabouts birth, based on the "vibration" of the family, and the
potential experiences that the soul is seeking.

There is advanced and beginning principals of reincarnation, with
advanced being from moment to moment, an beginning from lifetime to
lifetime. Each moment is a lifetime, with the same properties. Why
does not a poor chap in the bronx just "become" a powerful business
magnate from moment to moment? One can, just as well, realize that
all experiences are binding, in that they bind you to identify with
who you are, and reflecting on that, experience suffering (sanskrt: Dukkha).

As well, you have the choice to drop all semblance of identity-self
and attain liberation, much as how Gautama Siddhartha, Jesus, and so
many other spiritually enlightened beings have done. In this sense,
some of these enlightened folks, who are not bound to the wheel of
life and death, still incarnate in this world that they might alleviate
the suffereing of the masses who believe they "are" their physical
bodies and live in states of tremendous suffering.

Such souls are called "avatars", or in tibetan, "tulkus"... Everything,
and every moment in life is a chance to change everything and become
enlightened. This is the "advanced" interpretation of the tibetan
book of the dead.... its moment to moment, not lifetime to lifetime.
The book describes entering the dharma kaya, the pure light of truth,
that is present right now... and if you drop all propsensities of
self, you do not have to reincarnate, even in the next moment, and
hence "instant enlightenment" and what is so much heralded in eastern
mysticism.

However, it means being ready to let it all go forever, all conception
of self, all knowledge, power, position, wealth, status and the
karmic propensities or (inertia) of so many thousands of lifetimes,
yet of course this is possible, as much as so few few actually do so.
It is the free will of a moving object to stop. There is also inertia. That is the similar relationship between karma and likely
destiny to enlightenment.

[enid602]

25. Thank you