Signs of a Dying Empire

[Galen]

(09-15-2017, 03:43 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The degradation of American democracy has happened in stages, and the election of Donald Trump could be the start of the last stage. Could be. My most optimistic hope is that America reverts to its old pattern of a liberal-conservative divide in which quality matters more in politics than does ideology.

The problem the US empire faces is the changing logic violence where projecting power is becoming harder relative to defense.   As James Dale Davidson have said, "The most important causes of change are not to be found in political manifestos or in the pronouncements of dead economists, but in the hidden factors that alter the boundaries where power is exercised. Often, subtle changes in climate, topography, microbes, and technology alter the logic of violence."  This is what is shaping the demise of the nation-state and the US empire.  Trump is an effect not a cause.

The petrodollar is what has been keeping the US empire going since 1973 and the middle east wars of the last sixteen years are part of an effort to keep it going.  Once the petrodollar goes down, which looks like it will happen in the next five to ten years, then the US empire goes down with it.  I suggest you read the following two articles which describe the current state fo the empire as well as anything I have seen recently.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2...in-us.html
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2...-gold.html

While the next quote from James Dale Davidson will annoy most of you hear it contains much truth and you would do well to contemplate it.  The cultural equivalence that the SJW crowd believes in is completely absurd.

"Cultures are not matters of taste but systems of adaptation to specific circumstances that may prove irrelevant or even counterproductive in other settings."

-James Dale Davidson, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.