America: The end of the beginning, or the end?

by WorldTribune Staff, May 16, 2024 Contract With Our Readers

Is America in the batter’s box of doom? Is the Mighty Casey of the modern world about to strike out?

Or is there still a home run that keys a massive rally left in that bat?

“All empires fall,” independent journalist Steve Rodan noted in a May 8 Substack.com analysis.

Illustration / Substack.com

“The historical symptoms are there: division, corruption, violence, nepotism and the end of liberties. The middle class is rapidly shrinking. Home ownership is becoming unattainable. National debt is astronomical, and the government has been hijacked by major corporations.”

A study of the decline of great societies concluded that “disappearances of empires due to catastrophes have been extremely rare in history.”

Rather, Rodan noted, “they slowly but steadily corrode and crumble from within.”

In 2010, economist Thomas Sowell wrote a book titled “Dismantling America”.

The conservative Sowell dismissed the military and economic power of the United States and argued that fortitude marks the key ingredient to national survival. Like Rome, Sowell said, the American empire has benefited from miracles over its 250-year history.

“Today, however, the elite is purposely dismantling American values and institutions to ensure power,” Rodan wrote in a pessimistic assessment.

American’s elite have also been preparing.

Mark Zuckerberg “secretly bought an island in Hawaii and constructed a bunker the size of a small city. Known as Koolau Ranch the property includes 2 mansions, a 5,000 square foot underground shelter, surrounding tree houses and an industrial-sized kitchen and is valued at more than $270 million, according to Wired.

The entire complex will also have its own energy and food supplies, South China Morning Post reported.

You can bet his superrich colleagues have made similar arrangements,” Rodan noted.

“What the country hasn’t seen is a complete divide along racial and religious lines that blur common destiny. In other words, except for money Americans can’t agree on a future and might not even agree on whether there is a need for a country from sea to shining sea,” Rodan wrote.

The end of the beginning of America could come peacefully, with a smaller yet more cohesive nation.

Or, Rodan wrote, “it could be a nuclear version of the Civil War in 1861.”

Will America fall? And, if so, when?

Rodan wondered: “Will it collapse in November when a doddering Joe Biden is re-elected, or a Michelle Obama slips into the Oval Office? Or does it fall in 2025 when enough red states band together and close their borders?”

The federal government, Rodan continued, “has been preparing for mass insurrection since the Bush years. Camps have been erected that could hold hundreds of thousands of civilians — just like during the Civil War. There is no way that any president would allow the secession of the so-called flyover, the mass between the East Coast and West Coast.”

As for Washington, Rodan continued, “it has been outsourcing global reach. Over the last 20 years, Washington made nuclear Iran the looming power in the Middle East. Germany became America’s proxy, given the green light to form a massive army to fight Moscow. In South America, the preferred choice has been Colombia, transformed from drug haven to NATO partner.”

For ages, “empires have sought to rule a huge swathe of this planet,” Rodan wrote. “But the baggage proves too much. That’s how every empire ended — when an aging and corrupt giant became a prey for rivals.”

Rodan concluded: “Still, the retirement of the American policeman can only be a good thing at a time when the land of the free and the home of the brave needs to save itself. The problem is that nobody in power is giving this much thought.

“And that’s how an empire falls.”


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