The Rise and Fall of America (w/ poll)

Rome grew from a small agricultural settlement on Italian hills to a world superpower through expansion, military conquest, economic dominance and political assimilation.  It lasted for over 1200 years and evolved from a city-state kingdom, to a democratic republic, to an autocratic empire. Rome's culture and self identity was molded and inspired by the older culture of Ancient Greece.

America has grown from small agricultural settlements along the North American eastern seaboard to a world superpower through expansion, military conquest, economic dominance and political assimilation.  It has lasted 400 years since the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies and has evolved into a vast continent-stretching republic.  America's culture and self identity has been molded and inspired by the older culture of Great Britain.

United States would strike many Romans as familiar terrain. America's mythologising of its past - its casting of founding fathers Washington and Jefferson as heroic titans, its folk-tale rendering of the Boston Tea Party and the war of independence - is very Roman. That empire, too, felt the need to create a mythic past, starred with heroes. For them it was Aeneas and the founding of Rome, but the urge was the same: to show that the great nation was no accident, but the fruit of manifest destiny.

And America shares Rome's conviction that it is on a mission sanctioned from on high. Augustus declared himself the son of a god, raising a statue to his adoptive father Julius Caesar on a podium alongside Mars and Venus. The US dollar bill bears the words "In God we trust" and US politicians always like to end their speeches with "God bless America."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

The United States of America is very much like Ancient Rome and may share its fate.  I fear that the tipping point has been reached and we are now watching the Fall.

The US government is on a "burning platform" of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called "chilling long-term simulations".

These include "dramatic" tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were "striking similarities" between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including "declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government".

http://www.ft.com/...

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

http://www.independent.co.uk/...

Stocks slumped on Friday after surprisingly weak earnings from General Electric Co and data showing consumer sentiment at a 26-year low fed fears the economy is in recession.

http://news.yahoo.com/...

Gas and diesel pump prices jumped to yet another record Friday, piling on the costs for motorists as well as consumers reliant on trucks, trains and ships that deliver goods to market.

http://news.yahoo.com/...

The end of the American dream?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

•  Has America peaked and now is declining?

  by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:09:36 PM PDT

  •  I think that it's a plateau.

    Physical energy will become increasingly dear. Fortunately, value is subjective, so it's in our power to continue growing our wealth in a very real way, if we assign more weight to things that don't take as much physical energy. We will need to develop our ability to appreciate intangible values such as Community and Art.

    Personally, I'm a big fan of webcomics. I didn't even know that my favorite genre is Mad Science, since that isn't a genre in most media!

    by SciVo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:21:10 PM PDT

    •  Rising costs

      energy, health care and education is adding to the economic misery.  This is being followed by the rising costs of housing and food.

      As the economy falls, the violent and petty crime rate rises and people become afraid of their neighbors and communities break down.

      It becomes a downward spiral that becomes very hard to break from.

      by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:29:29 PM PDT

      •  It is a downward spiral to more Republicanism

        More law enforcement, more hatred of government, more 'my money', more fear of the 'Other'.

        We need to pull our head out of our asses, man.

        by k9disc on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:50:51 PM PDT

        •  We need to have our heads pulled out

          by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:54:42 PM PDT

  •  It's a process. It's a long-term fluctuation

    that began BEFORE the first white settlements 400 years ago.  There were wars among the native peoples who lived here; there were good times and bad times for their tribes and settlements.  

    There have been various points in American history in the last 400 years when people thought the country was in decline.  Many people who experienced the transcontinental railroads being built thought that the country was changing irrevocably for the worse.  During the Great Depression, many people saw the country as headed for decline.  Things wax and wane; interest groups and circumstances come to the fore then transmute.  Even if the United States is in a period of shifts away from hegemony and away from some measures of "greatness," that doesn't mean the country has peaked. I don't think we'd be able to know something like that in our, or our children's, or our grandchildren's lifetimes.  Give us another 800 years or so and then let's see whether there indeed has been only "decline."

    by concernedamerican on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 08:14:05 PM PDT

    •  May be too late, in 800 years

      Some young student somewhere in Asia, South America or Africa will be bored while being lectured on the great and sudden collapse of the once great United States of America

      by aaraujo on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 06:13:51 AM PDT

•  I welcome the decline

  My hope is that when we don't have to live up to our national ego by fighting stupid wars and pretending everything's fine when it isn't, we'll begin to understand that the point of living together is for all of us to have good (fed, sheltered, safe, opportunity laden) lives.  

  by Urizen on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:34:36 PM PDT

  •  My fear

    Like a rubber that is pulled to far, it bounces back further than where it originated.  Our decline may be dramatic and swift.  

    I fear the chaos and fear that may be unleashed.

    The Great Depression of the saw a huge increase in organized crime and the birth of the mafia in America.

    The social upheavals of the 1960's saw rioting in the inner cities.

    The malaise of the 1970's saw a bump up in violent crime and narcotics.

    I fear that a dramatic decline would unleash the same kind of chaos and violence.

    by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:43:05 PM PDT

    •  a Rubber Band

      not a "rubber", that is!

      :)

      by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:43:47 PM PDT

    •  Looking further down the road

      When Europe recovered from it's "failure of empire" it's populace turned toward peace and security (stuff like healthcare).  Now they're propering and the food is good (no GMOs) etc.

      by Urizen on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:55:10 PM PDT

      •  It's failure of Empire

        produced World War I and that in turn led to World War II.

        It was recovery from these European civil wars that put it on the "right track"

        by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:56:39 PM PDT

        •  Beg to differ

          their colonial empires endured into the late fifties and early sixties (70's in the case of portugal).  When they gave up on them (and after the fiasco of WWII) they stopped thinking of themselves as military entities, they began to govern for the sakes of their citizens instead of the glory of their states.

          by Urizen on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:02:00 PM PDT

          •  Today's Europe started at the end of WWII

            decolonization was necessary because postwar recovery became too costly

            by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:06:44 PM PDT

•  A local minimum...

  With 70% of the voter thinking we're on the wrong track, and with an important election coming up, I'd say we're done with our decline.  We've been through this before, many many times.  The beauty of this country is that we're so willing to admit to ourselves that things are going wrong, and that's the first step to setting things right.

  by godwhataklutz on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:44:53 PM PDT

  •  I wonder if the Romans

    knew that they were in decline, also

    by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:55:14 PM PDT

•  On a relative basis, US is losing leadership

  over other countries will be more important in world affairs than in the past.  US relative advantages in wealth and income per capita will also diminish.

  But, over the next 100 years, the US and the world will make lots of progress, though it will obviously have some distress and challenges along the way.

  Small accretions over time will add up to a big positive.

  by science first on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 06:55:37 PM PDT

  •  In the long term future

    i imagine the growing insignificance of political borders and merging of peoples and nations into supranational states like the EU

    by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:00:06 PM PDT

•  Roman Empire.

  A carbon copy, the only thing that's missing are the togas.  Everything else is the same.
  In particular, the photos of Abu Ghraib prison.  When I saw those, it was an instant flash back to the movie "Caligula".
  Cheney = Caligula.
  Absolutely horriffic.  Meaningless, valuless torture inflicted on innocent people, not even done for the purpose of inflicting terror to keep the colonies in line. Just - pure sadism.

  1 difference - Now as far as a decline, the "Holy" Roman Empire took about 500 years to finally topple over.  The U.S. Holy Empire only had about 60 years of Fame.  
  (1945 - 2008) R.I.P.

  by Cliss on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:13:31 PM PDT

  •  The Holy Roman Empire

    was a German state that existing the middle ages not related to the Ancient Rome.

    by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:21:05 PM PDT

    •  more info

      http://en.wikipedia.org/...

      by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:31:07 PM PDT

•  Washington is not Rome, but it is Versailles

  In the Life of Brian, there is a wonderful scene when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea get in to a heated duscussion as to what exactly were the benefits of living in the Roman Empire. It would be hard to imagine a similar discussion among either the Vietnamese, El Salvadorians or Iraqis.
  What is a more apt analogy is France at the end of the Old Regime. One only need think of three examples to see where this plays out. First, the obsession on the part of the Washington Press Corps with covering the activities of the President, while ignoring the consequences of his actions is the modern equivalent of The Body of the King. Second, and I think this lies at the core of why Hillary and McCain seem so out of touch, is that the talking heads and the sycophants that service them are the modern equivalent of rank courtiers. The meme last year of Clinton's inevitability and the behavior of journalists on John McCain's  straight talk express are two examples that spring immediately to mind.
  Third, Dick Cheney's comment, when told most Americas opposed the President's policies on Iraq was the modern equivalent of let them eat cake. Also the repeated meme that God  chose Bush to lead America through its time of crisis does not reflect a belief that Bush is the living god, but it does reek with echoes of the Divine Right of Kings.

  by James G Lewes on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:31:35 PM PDT

  •  So, who gets their head chopped off?

    by aaraujo on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:35:36 PM PDT

    •  funny you should ask that

      One of Kunstler's weekly snippets theorized that our country is so broadly out of touch with reality, and so accommodating of avarice, that it could well be nurturing a Robespierre.  Perhaps even dozens of them.

      by eightlivesleft on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 08:38:56 PM PDT

      •  Are we entering a new phase

        in American history?

        by aaraujo on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 05:39:24 AM PDT

•  We got complacent and let some idiots run the

  the country, and let the value on education plummet.

  by brettjay on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 07:56:03 PM PDT

  •  Been like this for at least 40 yrs

    by aaraujo on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 06:14:41 AM PDT