George Bush will bring about the fall of America...it's just history

[Atman]

A buddy of mine, an ex-pat historian living in Madrid, wrote this. It is short, sweet, and to the point. I hope there is still time. But pay particular attention to the lines about not being able to pay the troops.

Historically speaking, empire after empire has fallen because special interest near the top ended up sponging the treasury in one way or another.

Ancient Persia fell to pieces as high taxation on those least capable of paying it fomented revolts. The Persian and "regional" nobility were largely untaxes.

The Roman Empire suffered from a similar fate. Taxation of the lumpen drove the poor into the latifundia of the wealthy. In an era when the army became mercenary and the only ones with anything worth fighting for (the wealthy) paid almost no taxes, Rome fell virtually undefended.

Spain fell through bankruptcy despite American silver. Nobles paid NO tax and the traffic of "titles" became a black market. Charles V lost Germany after winning his greatest battles because he couldn't pay his troops, and his army sacked Rome because of the same.

All great nations became great when there was more equality between the wealthy and the poor. The strength of a nation is its middle class.

Somewhere along the line the Austrian School sold us the bagatelle of economic neoliberalism and equated it with freedom. - Iconoclast_555

[no name no slogan]

1. It began long before Dubya

and it will carry on for another fifty years or so, just on sheer momentum alone.

[indepat]

11. I would opine the looting of the last four years is unparalleled in US

history and cannot continue another fifty years. For starters, massive tax cuts most benefitting the most affluent and large corporations with the concomitant ultimate multi-trillion dollar raid on the mythical lock-box; second, any number of laws giving specific industries large gratuitous tax breaks (prescription drugs, energy); third, an aggressive (pre-emptive) war, seemingly of choice and without end, wherein corporations will close ties to the WH receive humongous no-bid contracts seemingly on unlimited cost-overrun basis and no accountability; fourth, a Congress which blindly grants unlimited funding with no accountability in virtual lockstep; and fifth, the enormous privatization of many public functions, again with enormous and seemingly highly inflated contracts to friends. The treasury has been looted in almost every possible way on a scale heretofore unimaginable as much of the MSM still shill for the man and his dream and the idolatrous throngs still chant: four more years, four more years.

[no name no slogan]

14. GWB == "third verse, same as the first"

The tax rate on the wealthy has been in steady decline since the 1960s, when JFK slashed the highest tax bracket. And the looting of Social Security began in the 1960s with LBJ ("guns and butter").

We've had a wartime economy ever since the late 30s, when the US began supplying the WWII allies via lend-lease. The end of WWII did nothing to slow it down-- in fact, we spend more on war toys today, as a proportion of the budget, than we did during WWII-- even BEFORE the Iraq War and 9/11. The so-called "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War never materialized-- it was only an accounting trick.

The US has waged pre-emptive, unjustified wars all over this planet ever since its inception. Think Havana Harbor, 1898, and "remember the MAINE!". It was a staged bombing of a US battleship by Cuban "revolutionaries" (which turned out to be US agents) which gave our country the excuse to invade Cuba and slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent Filipinos.

The only difference today is that we have 24-hour nonstop media coverage by the elite's cheerleaders in the MSM-- therefore, it's easier for us to take in the big picture on a larger scale then ever before.

GWB's biggest fault is that he's a terrible liar, and not very media-savvy. He's a horrible president, but his program is not much different from the same ones pursued by the other post-WWII presidents of this country. The only difference is that he doesn't try to save face with the American people-- he knows he's screwing us, but acts like he doesn't give a damn.

[indepat]

15. Am aware of and agree with your every assessment,, but the looting

now taking place is unparalleled and unsustainable IMHO.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. We haven't come very far when it is all about paying

THE TROOPS. sigh.

[marmar]

3. Scary...but the signs are all there...

No great nation reigns forever. Each one has its Nero. Perhaps this is ours.

[Lars39]

4. I believe bush was the first president to have an MBA,

and his minor was history. Things are just off the frickin' irony meter these days.

[MissB]

5. Yeah, it is just painfully ironic, isn't it? (nt)

[marmar]

6. And I'm sure that MBA was earned with lots of hard work...

:hide:

[Lars39]

7. Yep, a hard-working kind of guy, that's our george:

[Holly_Hobby]

8. Speaking of falls.....

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

[CrispyQ]

9. We are entering an age of corporate feudalism.

As the wealth becomes more & more concentrated in a few hands we will enter a 21st century version of feudalism. The lords will be the corporate officers, shareholders & bought off government officials (traitors) & the rest of us will be the serfs.

[deutsey]

10. In some ways, 9/11 reminds me of Alaric sacking Rome

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/410alaric.html

[Double T]

12. We are living the FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE.......

and the bush administration, with help from his corporate cronies, is accelerating the process

[IntravenousDemilo]

13. Towards the end of WWI, Czar Nicholas II couldn't pay his troops either.

What ever happened to him? And can Czar George II escape the same fate in the US of A?

An even more recent example might be the fall of the Soviet empire. Even though it was faltering since the mid-1960s, its oligarchy kept pumping more and more money into the military and impoverishing the bulk of its citizenry, and ended up being routed by extremist Muslims in Central Asia. (All the while, of course, the United States government made a lot of people very wealthy in its own weapons industry.)

I dunno, shouldn't there be some respectable interval of time before history repeats itself? Do the neocons not have any short-term memory, or has senility started to set in already?