the decline and fall

i am attempting once again to read through edward gibbon's 'decline and fall of the roman empire.' it's a 800+ page beast, that all told is a bit of a page turner. with my first attempt, i skipped around and eventually settled on reading of the beginnings of islam, which was quite interesting.

one of the things that has inspired me to take another stab at the book is the current state of the american republic and how it relates to rome. we all keep hearing about how our republic is in decline. that's as easy a statement to make as any, but whether this is factual or not is what i'm interested in.

the culture of the american empire, being too young to have a real culture of it's own is nothing more than an aggregation of the sum of it's parts, parts being it's people. the romans, out of necessity adopted the culture and even gods of their new territories, also becoming the sum of it's parts. this is an interesting parallel. though rome, at it's heart was ever in awe of the greeks and their system of democracy, the arts and gods, rome hadn't a true culture of it's own.

i've only made about a hundred page dent in the behemoth, but the scene is set and much information on the cause of it's fall has already been presented.

while saying what the cause of it's fall is is essentially arbitrary, there seems to be a pattern that can be parsed. the pattern is the consolidation, successively by the emperors and the decline of the senate. this is also an interesting parallel with the american democracy, especially under the reign of george bush II, who has ruled in complete ignorance of the democratic process.

the roman people, for fear of threats to the republic, from even within, rewarded each emperor with increased power to the detriment of the democratic process. with this process removed, the empire was subject to the caprice of nature. each emperor had a different temperament. some were virtuous, others bloodthirsty. the only way to remove them, by assassination. the increased powers granted to decent emperors like marcus and severus were passed along to successive tyrants. eventually, the senate was emasculated. all power resided in whatever emperor happened to be in the throne at the moment. few emperors were allowed to die of old age.

had the democratic process been restored, it is possible that rome may have at the very least declined with honor.

there were some who had attempted to correct these ill trends like the emperor pertinax and julian the apostate, but fate would not be altered. pertinax was assassinated by the praetorians, that is the army sworn to protect the emperor. julian attempted to restore polytheism to the empire, having been infected with the stain of christianity, only to be murdered by the christians.

once again, fate would not be altered. decline was inevitable.

the president of the united states, has been granted immeasurable power. it's political parties, oddly named "republican" and "democrat", has colluded with the president in giving him this power, by both decree and inaction. i remember this starting with reagan and increasing exponentially. now, each successive president can choose to abide by democracy or not.

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the 20th century has been nicknamed "the american century." even then, the only actual length of time in which the united states was top dog was during the second half of the century. we are no longer in the 20th century. since it's close, we have witnessed due to executive avarice, a visible decline in power and influence. there is no denying this.

right now, we are making all the wrong moves. a significant part of our recent history can be attributed to one commodity - oil, which is apparently running out. while other parts of the world prepare for their new future, there is a sudden call in our country to drill for more oil, putting off the inevitable reality that at some point, there will be no more oil to drill for. europe and other parts, who prepared for this inevitability possibly decades in advance, will be that much further ahead and us, that much further behind.

then there is our country's many wars. war on drugs, war on terror, war in iraq, war in afghanistan. these wars merit a significant portion of our domestic product. while our nation's 20th century infrastructure crumbles, everywhere else in the world, they are building 21st century infrastructure. instead of updating our infrastructure, we spend it on conflicts that have no possible resolution. take the drug war, if the war on drugs was ended and drugs legalized not only would we be saving money but the tax revenue from newly legalized drugs would be tremendous.

but we are stuck in our vicious cycle of old-think. if we don't break free of this cycle, we will most assuredly decline and fall as well.

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