Thursday, August 11, 2011

circling the drain

I'm about to bend one of my own rules here
and wax a bit political.


graphic by Art Winstanley © 2011

I read somewhere that the average shelf-life of "global" empires has been roughly 300 years and that their demise has been, more often than not, caused by economic collapse rather than invasion and conquest.

Take Rome for example. . .
By the time Alaric and the Visigoths (the infamous barbarian hordes) came riding over the hill and stormed through the gates of Rome looking for food, there wasn't any food
to be found.
After a century and a half of inept emperors, a Senate corrupted to the point of being dysfunctional and an overextended military, the Roman Empire was bankrupt.

By then, the political and monied classes had long since seen the writing on the wall and moved their interests, any sense of governance and chariot races to hide behind Christianity in Constantinople; leaving the plebeian/proletariat class
(the working stiffs like you and me) to fend for themselves.

Sounding vaguely familiar yet?

In the present American "global" empire, we have a President who ran like a visionary but governs like a functionary.
(face it, Barak is a disappointment)
We have a Congress and Senate that can't, or won't, legislate themselves past their own self-interests and, after ten years of worthless war, a military stretched so thin you can see through it. (oh but we've made great strides in robotic prosthetic limbs)

All our bullsh*t bureaucrats need to do next is move their "seat of power" to the Turks & Caicos to be near their corporate cronies who don't pay taxes and restart the chariot (a.k.a. NASCAR) races there, with Christ on their side.

It might be helpful, at this point, to remember that the American "global" empire is 235 years old.

Only 65 years to go. . .

2 comments:

Dick Moody said...

We conservatives told you he wasn't up to the job, unprepared, and full of imature hopey change leftist gibberish. The MSM covered up or ignored his leftist friends and his Alinsky hero worship. I read Alinsky and he is following him to the letter.
It's nice to see my friends and others seeing the failure......Your image is the country as it goes down the drain....

Arthur Winstanley said...

Good to hear from you Dick. No matter who's supposedly running the show; conservative, liberal or one of those far right religious wingnuts; the rest of us are screwed.