{"id":35110,"date":"2018-06-14T07:31:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T12:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35110"},"modified":"2018-06-14T07:31:51","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T12:31:51","slug":"declining-and-falling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35110","title":{"rendered":"Declining and Falling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Declining and Falling<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Are we destined for the same fate as that other empire?<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the end of World War II, the US enjoyed geopolitical supremacy unmatched since the Roman empire. Friends and foes had been devastated by the war: millions dead, thousands of towns and cities destroyed, commercial and industrial infrastructure decimated. The only conflict on US soil was Pearl Harbor. Total war casualties were comparatively light. The US had the atomic bomb. American industry was intact, could quickly be retooled for production of civilian goods, and would face limited competition in global markets.<\/p>\n

Power corrupts in direct relation to the degree of power; absolute power corrupts absolutely. That leaves only one direction for the occupant of a summit: down. That would be the proper starting point for some future Edward Gibbon, writing a magnum opus on the decline and fall of the American Empire.<\/p>\n

The New Deal was a motley menagerie of ineffectual statist nostrums, cover for a naked power grab. The government took control of the economy, credit, the financial system, agriculture, industry, and a much larger share of the gross domestic product. Notwithstanding its unprecedented call on American incomes, it ran record deficits. Opposition was demonized, cowed, or persecuted. The judiciary was reconstituted as a rubber stamp and the Constitution stretched beyond recognition. The New Deal paved the way for further expansion of government control during World War II.<\/p>\n

At war\u2019s end, America\u2019s rulers had no intention of relinquishing that control. Conveniently, the Soviet Union, wartime ally but postwar foe, developed its own atomic bomb in 1949. Now the US government had the excuse it needed\u2014the Cold War\u2014to justify global interventionism as \u201cleader of the free world,\u201d and the military and intelligence programs and budgets needed to sustain that role. Leaving office, Eisenhower issued his famous warning about the \u201cmilitary-industrial complex,\u201d but by then it was too late. The establishment would maintain its empire by fair means or foul.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Declining and Falling Are we destined for the same fate as that other empire? At the end of World War II, the US enjoyed geopolitical supremacy unmatched since the Roman empire. Friends and foes had been devastated by the war: millions dead, thousands of towns and cities destroyed, commercial and industrial infrastructure decimated. The only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[150,259,10956,9589,12280,20518,12281,827],"class_list":["post-35110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-collapse","tag-empire","tag-imperial-collapse","tag-imperial-decline","tag-robert-gore","tag-roma","tag-straight-line-logic","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35111,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35110\/revisions\/35111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}