And don't fool yourself: we Americans live in an empire, and the depravity has risen fast. (I speak in part of President Trump, the most decadent person who has ever gotten so far in America!) But he is far from alone in culpability.
Empires do not have a clear date of either birth or death, but they have stages of existence. Empires begin with pioneers establishing a new society, go through an age of conquest spreading the new order into other places, then an age of commerce (transforming raw wealth into something more refined and lucrative), an age of affluence from the profits, an age of intellect (creativity as the definitive white-collar way to make wealth without great capital investment), and finally an age of indulgent decadence.
We are apparently in an age of decadence -- an undisciplined, over-extended military (note the images of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners), lusts by elites for luxury in ostentatious display of wealth, a great disparity in living standards between the rich and the poor, a desire by many (now including right-wingers) to live off a bloated state, an obsession with sex, and (worst and most flagrant) the debasement of currency.
Corruption becomes rampant, and whatever democracy the order ever claims to have had is a sham. (Note my contempt for a legislators in the federal and most state legislatures responsive solely to lobbyists responsible only to the super-rich who hire them to ensure government of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites).
Empires do not have a clear date of either birth or death, but they have stages of existence. Empires begin with pioneers establishing a new society, go through an age of conquest spreading the new order into other places, then an age of commerce (transforming raw wealth into something more refined and lucrative), an age of affluence from the profits, an age of intellect (creativity as the definitive white-collar way to make wealth without great capital investment), and finally an age of indulgent decadence.
We are apparently in an age of decadence -- an undisciplined, over-extended military (note the images of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners), lusts by elites for luxury in ostentatious display of wealth, a great disparity in living standards between the rich and the poor, a desire by many (now including right-wingers) to live off a bloated state, an obsession with sex, and (worst and most flagrant) the debasement of currency.
Corruption becomes rampant, and whatever democracy the order ever claims to have had is a sham. (Note my contempt for a legislators in the federal and most state legislatures responsive solely to lobbyists responsible only to the super-rich who hire them to ensure government of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.