Game Over: Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling by David Michael Green So. Youâve built yourself an empire, eh? Well, bully for you! Whatâs next, you ask? Well, now youâve got to do what everybody does when they have an empire, of course. Youâve got to worry about it falling apart, mate! But how to tell for sure? Let me see if I can be helpful. Here are some rules of thumb to keep in mind, thirty-six sure-fire indicators that your empire is falling apart: You know your empireâs crumbling when the folks who are gearing up their empire to replace yours start blowing up satellites in space. And then they donât bother to return your phone calls when you ring up to ask why. You know your empireâs crumbling when those same folks are cutting deals left, right and center across Asia, Latin America and Africa, while you, your lousy terms, and your arrogant attitude are no longer welcome. You know your empireâs crumbling when youâre spending your grandchildrenâs money like a drunken sailor, and letting your soon-to-be rivals finance your little splurge (i.e., letting them own your country). You know your empireâs crumbling when itâs considered an achievement to pretend that youâve halved the rate at which youâre adding to the massive mountain of debt youâve already accumulated. You know your empireâs crumbling when you weaken your currency until it looks as anemic as a Paris runway model, and youâre still setting record trade deficits. (Hint: Because youâre not making anything anymore.) You know your empireâs crumbling when âthe little brown onesâ (thank you George H.W. Bush â certainly not me â for that lovely expression) in country after country of âyour backyardâ blow you off and proudly elect anti-imperialist leftist governments. You know your empireâs crumbling when you canât topple those governments and replace them with nice puppet regimes â like in the good old days â even if you wanted to. And you badly want to. You know your empireâs crumbling when one of their leaders comes to the United Nations and makes fun of your emperor, calling him the devil, and joking about smelling sulphur where he just stood. And though a few folks cringe, everybody laughs. You know your empireâs crumbling when just about your entire military land force is tied up in a worse-than-useless war launched on the basis of complete fabrications, that every day is actually making you less â not more â secure from external threat. You know your empireâs crumbling when almost half the soldiers in that war are high-paid mercenaries, and you donât dare institute a draft. You know your empireâs crumbling when you send soldiers into war with two weeks training and a lack of armor, and then you keep them there for three, four and five rotations. You know your empireâs crumbling when a member of the Axis of Evil can test missiles and explode nuclear warheads, and all you can do about it is mumble some pathetic warnings about how they better not do that again or there will be consequences. You know your empireâs crumbling when you even think that there is an Axis of Evil. You know your empireâs crumbling when a rag-tag military hodge-podge of irregulars has you pinned down in an endless fight you canât win, but also canât lose. You know your empireâs crumbling when youâre too dumb to even ban Humvees as a first step toward ending your dependency on a foreign-owned crucial resource. You know your empireâs crumbling when you trade your prior moral leadership on human rights issues for global disgust at your torture, âextraordinary renditionâ (a.k.a. kidnaping for torture) and the dismantling of nine centuries worth of civil liberties progress. You know your empireâs crumbling when you blow off international law that you once helped create, and undermine the institutions of international governance that you once helped build. You know your empireâs crumbling when opinion polls confirm that every month youâre more and more despised throughout the world. You know your empireâs crumbling when you canât even pull off the hanging of a tin-pot murderous former dictator without turning him into a hero. You know your empireâs crumbling when youâre the richest country in the world, but nearly 50 million of your people donât have basic health care coverage. You know your empireâs crumbling when the World Health Organization ranks your healthcare system 37th âbestâ in the world, just above Slovenia, and just below Costa Rica. (And far below Colombia, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.) You know your empireâs crumbling when instead of making it easier for citizens to obtain a higher education, youâre making it harder and more expensive. You know your empireâs crumbling when your government gives tax breaks to industries as a reward for exporting your jobs elsewhere. You know your empireâs crumbling when the so-called âoppositionâ party canât even turn that obscenity into a viable campaign theme and use it to clobber the worst emperor in your history. You know your empireâs crumbling when your middle class has been stagnant for three decades, while the wealth of the hyper-rich continues to climb through the roof. You know your empireâs crumbling when your reaction to that is to exacerbate the problem by enacting tax policies that massively increase further still the gap between the rich and the rest. You know your empireâs crumbling when the predatory class has taken over your government and is stripping the country of everything not bolted down to the floor. And then it sells the floor itself, as well, to your rivals. You know your empireâs crumbling when youâre spending tens of billions of dollars you donât own on new nuclear warheads and space weapons that donât work, to be used against an enemy you donât have. You know your empireâs crumbling when one of your cities drowns and your government does next to nothing before, during and after. You know your empireâs crumbling when a massive environmental nightmare is looming around the corner, and your emperor not only ignores it, but claims it isnât real while taking steps to exacerbate it. You know your empireâs crumbling when your emperor is warned by a CIA briefer of an imminent terrorist attack of vast proportions, and responds by remaining on vacation and dismissing the briefer with the words: âAll right. You've covered your ass, now.â You know your empireâs crumbling when the same emperor drops everything to fly across the country from his vacation home in order to sign a bill intervening on the wrong side of a personal medical drama involving a single family. You know your empireâs crumbling when gays and immigrants are used as diversionary issues to keep people from thinking about the pillaging of their country and their wallets actually taking place. And it works. You know your empireâs crumbling when people are getting more religious and less scientific, not the other way around. You know your empireâs crumbling when your political leaders start to be chosen by dynastic rules of succession. And you especially know your empireâs crumbling when the most idiotic child of one of the least accomplished leaders in its history is not only crowned as the next emperor, but is even revered for a time by most of the public as a great one. Rome? Britain? Spain? At this rate weâll be lucky to end up like Belgium. http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views07/0202-26.htm
Attack the messenger, as expected, what else can you do? Can you roll over? Sit up? Beg? Shake hands? ROTFLMAO....
Pretty retarded. It contradicts itself at least twice with the whole building nuclear weapons that don't work to face an enemy we don't have when earlier up it mentions the enemy empire blowing up a satellite. Also, our military is fine. If need be we can muster up a few million men easily. The Iraq war is still a very low cost in relation to GDP and war spending is still a low percentage of GDP when compared with the cold war. Furthermore, we shot down our first satellite in 1985. Whoopedy fuckin doo da. And we were designing the most sophisticated bomber in the world, the B2 stealth bomber during WWII. Big fucking whoop to China shooting down a satellite. None of us can even begin to fathom the kind of weaponry we are currently developing in secret.