The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

This is not an original thought, by any means, but it appears as if the signs of the end of U.S. American global hegemony are legion these days.  China, not the U.S. is now widely expected to be the economic savior of a euro in grave danger of a major collapse thanks to the economic crises in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain.  For that matter, the last year has been marked by all kinds of currency issues - China, among other nations, has suggested that maybe the U.S. dollar is not the best de facto global currency anymore.  Meanwhile, in another hemisphere, the economies of Brazil, Chile and Uruguay have thrived while the so-called developed world has suffered through three years of stagnation.  


Meanwhile, in the homeland, we have elected a president incapable of communicating over the partisan din.  This partisan din has become such a self-parody that, I suspect, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi could be looking out the same window at the Capitol, and if Pelosi said it was sunny, Boehner would immediately protest that he's never seen such a ferocious rainstorm before...and then probably accuse Pelosi's closet Marxism of distorting her view of reality.  Pelosi would then accuse Boehner of being a capitalist toady of Wall Street, and it would then sound like every C-Span transcript from the past several years.  Perhaps it is small wonder that a community organizer, like Obama, has appeared to struggle as a leader - community organizing rests upon the notion that a leader shouldn't do anything that the community can do for itself, and God knows this community inside the Beltway seems incapable of doing anything, let alone anything sensible.  Maybe I sympathize more than I think with those who insist that government is the problem; at the very least, this government seems more a problem than a solution.


And what do we find when we go beyond the glorious Capital?  We find our financial leaders engaged in the buying and selling of campaign promises - the Koch Brothers, for example, purchased the finest public union-busting bill that money could buy in Wisconsin.  Of course, George Soros is, no doubt, funding the policy efforts of the other end of the ideological spectum...provided, of course, that they don't regulate HIS fortune too much.  This can't stand without seeming like the voice comes from Main Street as much as Wall Street, however, and so the Tea Party watches the nouveau Robber Barons as they gobble up profit however they can...and then squawks that it's those teachers and their extravagant salaries that are driving us to the brink of fiscal annihilation.


Then, we go to the hinterland provinces - combine-patrolled expanses of prairie and small towns that feel abandoned by the world.  The great cities could not possibly care less about Gopher Prairie and Grover's Corners; Garfield and State, or 110th and Broadway, have too many problems of their own right now to be bothered with those damn rurals.  Meanwhile, the residents of flyover country and the Rust Belt are treated to the shrill histrionic displays of the Becks and Bachmanns, the pompous bloviating of Gingriches and O'Reillys, and the slippery antics of Romneys and Pawlentys.  


And so, we turn on our televisions for whatever opiate we fancy, be it the salvation salesmen and their silk suits and Rolexes on Sky Angel and TBN, or the mind-numbing profusion of opinions presented as facts on Fox News and MSNBC, or Paula Deen and Guy Fieri helping us dull our minds by exploding our waistlines, or enough spouted statistics about the arcane batting average of AA minor league players to fill our brains so full of sports figures that we can easily leave behind the world outside the green grass of the playing field.  We go online, and read articles about LiLo's latest escapade, and whether or not Paris and Brittany have "accidentally" treated the paparazzi to a a view of what's not being covered by panties, and if Kim Kardashian's butt is real (breaking news: there's an X-ray of it).


In the meantime, our effective unemployment rate hovers between 15 and 20 percent.  Record numbers are on food stamps.  An average job search has gone from a matter of weeks to a matter of months...or years.  Health care costs have skyrocketed, while average accessibility to effective health care has dropped.  The same brilliant minds who brought you the near-collapse of the stock market in 2008 insist that social security and access to medical care are better left in their hands, for as much profit as they can make off them, than in the hands of the government (talk about being between the devil and the deep blue sea...).  Racism, sexism, homophobia - all alive and well.  Christian religious extremism is reaching fever pitch, right alongside the perceived threat of Islamic extremism.  We look at X-rays of a talentless twit's butt...and forget.  We forget that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We neglect the poor and worship the rich and famous, even as they throw their financial weight around in order to piss on our leg and then tell us it's raining.  I'm beginning to suspect that, when the inevitable happens and all we wake up one day and realize that China, or Mercosur, is the new U.S....we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves, our greed, and our foolishness.  And may God have mercy on us.