On a slightly different tangent, and returning to memory lane for posterity, this writer remembers well taking an interest in a young, up and coming Senator from Massachusetts, John F Kennedy (JFK), who looked and acted unlike other politicians of the era. His election to the presidency in 1960 I recall being more than just vaguely aware of -- especially his 'the torch has been passed to a new generation' inauguration speech in 1961. This seemed like in some ways he was speaking to me, and he wasn't even my president. I'm sure many other non-Americans possibly reacted the same way. Although only about eight at the time, even then I was in the process of developing political sensibilities and a curiosity about history, along with at least a sense of the message JFK was trying to impart to his fellow Americans and the rest of the world, and what it all meant.
Yet in November 1963, like almost everyone else on the planet in close proximity to a newspaper, radio, TV or another sentient carbon based life form 'in the know', I heard the news! The president was dead! Shot down like a rabid dog in the street. This appeared to me even then to be a game changer (although I admit I'm using a more contemporary phrase to describe my reaction). Like millions of other Australians, I was deeply shocked and unnerved by the Big Event (not the least because even then I had some sense of cui bono regarding such matters.) And again like many Australians, we viewed America as a force for good in the world. Who would want to kill their president, a man who seemed to embody that "force" and personify that "good"?
To be sure the JFK assassination was one 'big-ass' History Mo', and one which this writer has spent half a century on and off trying to make sense of. From that time onwards I never viewed America in quite the same light again, which is not to suggest I've stopped looking. I guess one could say my views are a result of that ongoing effort to see the country in the same light I did all those years ago. Of course this is an unrealistic endeavour.
That aside, it seems that without a "New Torch" and a whole new way of thinking by a "New Generation" of folk that the days of the Empire -- much like JFK's own were in November 1963 when he boarded Air Force One bound for Texas -- are numbered. The American Caliphate in the making is unsustainable if it persists down the path it is heading. Far from being the "indispensable nation", it will become sooner rather than later, the eminently dispensable, indeed disposable nation. A former shell of its exceptional self then?
It's a truism of history that all empires have their use-by dates, yet they also share another compelling, concomitant similarity. They were all victims of not just their own successes but excesses as well. They not only repeat the mistakes of other empires that history tells them they shouldn't, they repeat their own mistakes, thus bringing with it an unsettling feeling of having experienced this before leaving one pondering as to why. History to be sure provides many tutorials in the 'wise use of power' to which its proponents always profess to have taken on board, but for some reason this fails to translate into practice. It seems then the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. Moreover, at this point in the Empire's trajectory, it appears safe to say there have been few if any times in its past where that "power" has been so injudiciously exercised for so long with such dire consequences, many of which are already painfully obvious, with doubtless many more to come that we have no way of predicting when and in what form they will arrive.
And let's be clear here: It was the enemy within -- whether personified in its leadership or reflected in its collective psychopathology -- that brought down empires. It was not the godless spear-chuckers on the Empire's borders nor the mercenary, unwashed barbarian hordes banging on the front door! The "godless spear-chuckers", "unwashed barbarian hordes" and assorted evildoers were more a symptom of the empire du jour's pre-existing, terminal malaise and usually a justified, indeed necessary, reaction against the complacency, and contempt exemplified by their respective and successive leaders and/or ruling classes.
Put simply the external enemies -- possibly imagined at first, then all too real -- were more often than not of the empire's own making. Above all, in one word, it is hubris that is the Empire Exterminator Extraordinaire!
It is eminently notable that in his book Washington
Rules -- America's Path to Permanent War, Andrew Bacevich talks about an "American credo" which he says calls
upon the United States -- and the United States alone -- to 'lead,
save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world'; and the "sacred trinity", a firm belief that the fundamental essentials of
international peace and order requires America to:
"...to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism."
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