Your writing and scholarship has been so beneficial to me because it enables me to see that my circumstances are not necessarily unique to my situation, but rather are part of broader patterns
There are many of us who've been saying this for quite a while now. The U.S. empire is rapidly declining and imploding. Britain is largely dead now and on life support. They don't have much longer to live as far as their government is concerned. Like most failed nation states, they'll cycle through new leaders rapidly as disaffection continues until a major uprising takes place and a lot of people get hurt and die in the revolt. With the latest massive crackdowns on speech there now, it won't be much longer.
Martin Luther King pointed out, I believe it was in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that our people had become so enamored of the baubles and trinkets of a material age, that we lost our moral, ethical center. (I'm paraphrasing his work, poorly, here. The speech is worth tracking down, reading.) Gained the world, lost our soul.
As empire collapsed, it left bloody messes, which are still no where near resolved today: the partition of India/Pakistan, the carving up of the Levant, to name a couple.
"With every mistake, we must surely be learning," a great poet once wrote, "Still my guitar gently weeps."
Thank you for this generally unknown history and how our current Techno-Mandarins and political mistresses are leading us into a box canyon which will, if not overturned, end us all in short order.
We are just the latest empire in the irreversible process of collapse. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world dumps their US treasury securities and refuse to finance the national debt. Trump is leading us into national bankruptcy and we know who will get screwed by it--the poor and middle class.
Just the thing I need to cheer me up and help me deal with the holiday blues . . . Seriously, the analogies between the early twenty-first-century U.S.A. and the declining years of previous empires, like Rome, Britain, and others, tend to be hit-you-in-the-face obvious. We can't dismiss them. I speculated, during Trump's first four years, that his incompetence was so spectacular and his behavior so over-the-top that I wouldn't have dismissed as crazy the possibility of some kind of military coup, knowing how much of the U.S. military detested him. I even thought some kind of military protectorate might emerge, sort of Cromwell-like. Foolish thoughts. I vastly underestimated how effective the media would be at normalizing Trump, and as usual, I forgot how weak the Democratic Party had become. Keeping with the Kipling theme, if the current vicious morons in the White House see themselves as successfully taking on some "white man's burden," they'll find themselves doing a faceplant like few things we've ever seen.
Don't count on the military to save us. Trump and Hegseth have purged the ranks of potential dissenters. Here in Los Angeles I have seen National Guard and Marines repeatedly violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 as they assisted Trump's Gestapo in illegally arresting people and tossing them in the Wall Street prisons that KKKristi contacted with.
The military is now solidly in Trump's corner and they will do whatever he commands.
Excellent, informative, realistic as always. I wish all journalists were as clear-sighted and honest as Chris Hedges. The US empire is disintegrating rapidly, hopefully will crash before the world is destroyed when Israel decides to use the Samson option.
I recall starting to watch the movie "My Boy Jack" (I may have the title wrong), which was based on the story of Kipling's son's death. Daniel Ratcliff and Kim Cattrall were in it, but I forget who played Kipling. I'm thinking that the son just went missing and was never found or accounted for. I should try to see the film in its entirety.
Thanks for a timely reminder that the U.S. and its citizens are little different from former empires and their ultimate self-generated collapse. Your comments about the state of affairs of the British citizenry following WWI immediately brought to mind, the efforts to avoid that fate, following WWII when a Labour Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, replaced the reactionary Churchill, and nationalized the railroads, mines, civil aviation, electricity, gas and steel. Unemployment benefits and retirement pensions were placed into law. In short, over 20% of the entire economy was nationalized, at the same time the country was blessed with free universal healthcare. All was well...until 1979 and the new Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the British Reagan, undertook the destruction of the progress realized in the intervening 34 years. Much like, as in the United States, abortion rights, 4th Amendment protections, and free speech in Universities, such social and political progress is always at risk of disappearing, as the forces of Oligarchy await their opportunity. If human society survives the 21st century, one wonders who or what will take control of what remains.
1. British strategy has remained unchanged since 1917 - get Americans to do their fighting for them. This strategy worked in 1917, in 1941, in 1949, in 1999 and 2011.
It famously did not work in 1956, sending the british and french (and Israel) slinking back to their lairs, there to resume sulking, scheming and plotting.
2. "...order women in the military to meet the “highest male standards” for physical fitness." That is never going to happen, any more than Alfred could get the tide to obey.
Our historical moment is indeed "eerily similar" to the British Empire leading up to the first World War. But if H.G. Wells was right about the ignorance and ineptitude "...of an entitled ruling class that was unable to analyse or address the social problems it had created", there are also profound differences. The entitled ruling class of billionaires that makes up the Trump regime has had gangs of diabolically clever minions working for them in think tanks for decades, forging the vulgarization of our government and society. Racism, Christian nationalism, and simplistic cliché-ridden public discourse fuel the fire stoked by billionaire-owned sensationalist media. It's deliberate, designed to transfer wealth. There is none of the ignorance or ineptitude involved that Wells decried. To the contrary, our historical moment has been masterfully calculated.
Thank you once again, Chris. As stated, the metaphorical writing is clearly on the wall; yet there so very few scholarly type in the halls of power who can read it or manifest any semblance of good clear realization as to how similar the US's fate is to that of the British Empire. We are controlled by a herd of dimwitted Nero's, fiddling along while everything burns. I see the deterioration all around me, in my community in Florida. It's everywhere. There is little to do now except nurture what little we can of the ecosystem around us, as well as our loved ones and friends, and brace for the inevitable collapse.
Why do you not write about the infamous Balfour Declaration, the one given to the Jewish people via Lord Rothschild and which led to another 3 years of war during WWI and led to the USA entering the war, courtesy of our indigenous Jewish Zionist traitors. The Kaiser offered generous peace terms in '16, but the Entente refused outright to even go to the negotiating table and continued to push on for the unconditional surrender of Germany and its allies. Financially, the Entente was almost insolvent. Britain’s leadership role in global finance was in jeopardy, and its expenditures exceeded revenue by a factor of three. For France, the ratio was about five to one. In fact, as this article originally published in the Washington Post in 2018, on why WWI lasted so long, it points out how the Entente (Allies) chose "honor" over realism and saving of lives, money and property when refusing the peace overture. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/11/why-the-first-world-war-lasted-so-long/. With its refusal, the Entente condemned probably a million more men to death on the battlefield, doing it largely out of their foreknowledge that World Zionist leaders had offered to get America into the war in exchange for a promise by the U.K. to procure and hand over the Palestinian territories to them in order to create the state of Israel, one of the worst decisions, imho, ever made.
Your writing and scholarship has been so beneficial to me because it enables me to see that my circumstances are not necessarily unique to my situation, but rather are part of broader patterns
There are many of us who've been saying this for quite a while now. The U.S. empire is rapidly declining and imploding. Britain is largely dead now and on life support. They don't have much longer to live as far as their government is concerned. Like most failed nation states, they'll cycle through new leaders rapidly as disaffection continues until a major uprising takes place and a lot of people get hurt and die in the revolt. With the latest massive crackdowns on speech there now, it won't be much longer.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King pointed out, I believe it was in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that our people had become so enamored of the baubles and trinkets of a material age, that we lost our moral, ethical center. (I'm paraphrasing his work, poorly, here. The speech is worth tracking down, reading.) Gained the world, lost our soul.
As empire collapsed, it left bloody messes, which are still no where near resolved today: the partition of India/Pakistan, the carving up of the Levant, to name a couple.
"With every mistake, we must surely be learning," a great poet once wrote, "Still my guitar gently weeps."
Thank you for this generally unknown history and how our current Techno-Mandarins and political mistresses are leading us into a box canyon which will, if not overturned, end us all in short order.
This time around the final flailing decline of the US Empire will likely lead to the end of most flora and fauna on earth.
We are just the latest empire in the irreversible process of collapse. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world dumps their US treasury securities and refuse to finance the national debt. Trump is leading us into national bankruptcy and we know who will get screwed by it--the poor and middle class.
Just the thing I need to cheer me up and help me deal with the holiday blues . . . Seriously, the analogies between the early twenty-first-century U.S.A. and the declining years of previous empires, like Rome, Britain, and others, tend to be hit-you-in-the-face obvious. We can't dismiss them. I speculated, during Trump's first four years, that his incompetence was so spectacular and his behavior so over-the-top that I wouldn't have dismissed as crazy the possibility of some kind of military coup, knowing how much of the U.S. military detested him. I even thought some kind of military protectorate might emerge, sort of Cromwell-like. Foolish thoughts. I vastly underestimated how effective the media would be at normalizing Trump, and as usual, I forgot how weak the Democratic Party had become. Keeping with the Kipling theme, if the current vicious morons in the White House see themselves as successfully taking on some "white man's burden," they'll find themselves doing a faceplant like few things we've ever seen.
Don't count on the military to save us. Trump and Hegseth have purged the ranks of potential dissenters. Here in Los Angeles I have seen National Guard and Marines repeatedly violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 as they assisted Trump's Gestapo in illegally arresting people and tossing them in the Wall Street prisons that KKKristi contacted with.
The military is now solidly in Trump's corner and they will do whatever he commands.
Damn discouraging thought.
Excellent, informative, realistic as always. I wish all journalists were as clear-sighted and honest as Chris Hedges. The US empire is disintegrating rapidly, hopefully will crash before the world is destroyed when Israel decides to use the Samson option.
Kipling’s only son was killed in the war.
I recall starting to watch the movie "My Boy Jack" (I may have the title wrong), which was based on the story of Kipling's son's death. Daniel Ratcliff and Kim Cattrall were in it, but I forget who played Kipling. I'm thinking that the son just went missing and was never found or accounted for. I should try to see the film in its entirety.
“We died because our fathers lied”
Kipling wrote that after the war. Too late.
Thanks for a timely reminder that the U.S. and its citizens are little different from former empires and their ultimate self-generated collapse. Your comments about the state of affairs of the British citizenry following WWI immediately brought to mind, the efforts to avoid that fate, following WWII when a Labour Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, replaced the reactionary Churchill, and nationalized the railroads, mines, civil aviation, electricity, gas and steel. Unemployment benefits and retirement pensions were placed into law. In short, over 20% of the entire economy was nationalized, at the same time the country was blessed with free universal healthcare. All was well...until 1979 and the new Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the British Reagan, undertook the destruction of the progress realized in the intervening 34 years. Much like, as in the United States, abortion rights, 4th Amendment protections, and free speech in Universities, such social and political progress is always at risk of disappearing, as the forces of Oligarchy await their opportunity. If human society survives the 21st century, one wonders who or what will take control of what remains.
1. British strategy has remained unchanged since 1917 - get Americans to do their fighting for them. This strategy worked in 1917, in 1941, in 1949, in 1999 and 2011.
It famously did not work in 1956, sending the british and french (and Israel) slinking back to their lairs, there to resume sulking, scheming and plotting.
2. "...order women in the military to meet the “highest male standards” for physical fitness." That is never going to happen, any more than Alfred could get the tide to obey.
boysvswomen.com
And I sure do note how Israel has coopted that strategy--getting us to do their dirty work in Iraq and Afghanistan...and elsewhere too...
Our historical moment is indeed "eerily similar" to the British Empire leading up to the first World War. But if H.G. Wells was right about the ignorance and ineptitude "...of an entitled ruling class that was unable to analyse or address the social problems it had created", there are also profound differences. The entitled ruling class of billionaires that makes up the Trump regime has had gangs of diabolically clever minions working for them in think tanks for decades, forging the vulgarization of our government and society. Racism, Christian nationalism, and simplistic cliché-ridden public discourse fuel the fire stoked by billionaire-owned sensationalist media. It's deliberate, designed to transfer wealth. There is none of the ignorance or ineptitude involved that Wells decried. To the contrary, our historical moment has been masterfully calculated.
Thank you once again, Chris. As stated, the metaphorical writing is clearly on the wall; yet there so very few scholarly type in the halls of power who can read it or manifest any semblance of good clear realization as to how similar the US's fate is to that of the British Empire. We are controlled by a herd of dimwitted Nero's, fiddling along while everything burns. I see the deterioration all around me, in my community in Florida. It's everywhere. There is little to do now except nurture what little we can of the ecosystem around us, as well as our loved ones and friends, and brace for the inevitable collapse.
I remember "you're a better man than I, Gunga Din".
Why do you not write about the infamous Balfour Declaration, the one given to the Jewish people via Lord Rothschild and which led to another 3 years of war during WWI and led to the USA entering the war, courtesy of our indigenous Jewish Zionist traitors. The Kaiser offered generous peace terms in '16, but the Entente refused outright to even go to the negotiating table and continued to push on for the unconditional surrender of Germany and its allies. Financially, the Entente was almost insolvent. Britain’s leadership role in global finance was in jeopardy, and its expenditures exceeded revenue by a factor of three. For France, the ratio was about five to one. In fact, as this article originally published in the Washington Post in 2018, on why WWI lasted so long, it points out how the Entente (Allies) chose "honor" over realism and saving of lives, money and property when refusing the peace overture. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/11/why-the-first-world-war-lasted-so-long/. With its refusal, the Entente condemned probably a million more men to death on the battlefield, doing it largely out of their foreknowledge that World Zionist leaders had offered to get America into the war in exchange for a promise by the U.K. to procure and hand over the Palestinian territories to them in order to create the state of Israel, one of the worst decisions, imho, ever made.