"Once you go down the path of empire, you inevitably start a process of overstretch, of tendencies toward bankruptcy, and, in the rest of the world, a tendency toward the uniting of people who are opposed to your imperialism simply on grounds that it’s yours, but maybe also on the grounds that you’re incompetent at it.
Indeed, one wonders whether we have already crossed our Rubicon, whether we can go back. I don’t know.
The Department of Defense is not, today, a department of defense. It’s an alternative seat of government on the south bank of the Potomac River. And, typical of militarism, it’s expanding into many, many other areas in our life that we have, in our traditional political philosophy, reserved for civilians. Domestic policing: they’re slowly expanding into that.
So, what do I suggest probably will happen? I think we will stagger along under a façade of constitutional government, as we are now, until we’re overcome by bankruptcy."
Chalmers Johnson
That bankruptcy will not only be financial, but moral and spiritual. It will be a fiat culture, that is, reality will be defined as whatever power says it will be.
Below is a talk given by Chalmers Johnson in April, 2007
This was before the financial crisis and bailouts.
And before the Reform President Obama largely ratified the abuses of his predecessor and given over the welfare of the people to the corporations and the moneyed interests, finance and militarism, the pen and the gun, the bullet and the bribe.
