McCain Will End the Empire

Not a lot of comedy recently, but these are times that beg for a certain seriousness that I can supply when the need arises.

True radicals understand the fundamental dilemma in front of us: The U.S. is declining under the party-for-the-rich policies of Dub-Yah. Our decline is so steep that the end of the empire is in sight...

Our military might is stretched thin between two broke-ass, torn-up third world countries. The mighty U.S., that once turned the tide on Nazi Germany, now has a rough time fighting cave dwellers and other Bedouin descendants. I mean, we ought to be fucking embarrassed. Then again, against the Nazis, we actually had some kind of mandate of what we needed to get done, in clear and concise terms. Another term, and another third world country invaded (ahem, Iran), and we're done for, militarily speaking. We're luck the Chinese and North Koreans aren't as bad as we've made them out to be in the past - because if they were, we'd be invaded by now.

Our economy is on the verge of collapse. With no investment in infrastructure, and the gutting of the manufacturing base that started in the Clinton years, then got accelerated in the Dub-Yah years, is almost complete. The U.S. produces very little now outside of food, and high-tech gear that does not have the same universal commercial application then say, the highway system, or a hydroelectric dam. The capital flight into the stock market that accompanied this gutting, followed by flight into the housing market when the "dot.com" collapse happened, were accompanied by losses all around. Where's the capital going to flee to now? It's almost all been squandered, while inflated values make it seem like it still actually exists. That's how trillion dollar surpluses become trillion dollar debts - the money, or more appropriately, the goods and services that the money is supposed to represent, don't exist. The house of cards is collapsing.

Politically, all that's been accomplished in the past seven years is that we've shown the world that we're lousy bullies, with absolutely no idea about the complexity of cross-cultural values, nationalism and international accord, and ultimately that we don't care about our ignorance. This has been exploited, rightfully so, by Latin America, which has enjoyed an amazing amount of autonomy for the past seven years. Used to be a time that is someone like Hugo Chavez came to power, they wound up like Salvadore Allende. Evo Morales would be facedown in a mass grave, alongside a few hundred women and children, courtesy of some goon squad that were trained here in the U.S.'s School of the Americas.

We've become so pathetic that when rattling sabers at Russia, their president essentially laughed at us. This is the same Russia that collapsed in its long economic/military struggle against us from the 50's to the 80's. They used to respect our ability to manipulate the world to our advantage, and our ability to contain them and cause them economic and political hardship. Now, now they dictate the terms upon which we'll act.

People act like Obama is the great hope... and to some extent, he is. He's the one most capable of turning this decline around. Hence the dilemma: do we really want this turned around? I mean, Latin America at this point ought to be routing for McCain - four more years of being left to their own devices, increasing their independence and autonomy. I'm sure the entire world is looking at Obama as a more reasonable person - but they're just worried that they'll become the last or second to last target of the U.S. military, as we further our decline and become more desperate for some kind of pyhrric victory to demonstrate how "awesome" we are.

There is a historical and personal perspective on this that I wish to share. While I didn't snitch, because snitching is the wrong thing to do, I did consider it. Why? Not to get out of trouble, mind you. I thought about it because I know that close to 1/3 of the population uses drugs. Probably a tenth of them deal those drugs. That's about 10 million drug dealers out there. if we all snitched each other out, the prison system would collapse under our collective weight. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do, since no one was pushing in the other direction: if we all went to trial like I did, the justice system would collapse under the weight of those they're already prosecuting.

The point is this: Obama will be a slide back into a reasonable manager of the empire. Which means empire continues. McCain, on the other hand, will continue this train wreck of an administration, and the empire is already so close to the edge that collapse seems imminent.

Does anyone think that the world is honestly better off with the U.S. acting as empire?