All empires die. The end is usually unpleasant. The American empire, humiliated in Afghanistan, as it was in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, as it was at the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam, is blind to its own declining strength, ineptitude, and savagery. Its entire economy, a "military Keynesianism," revolves around the war industry. Military spending and war are the engine behind the nation's economic survival and identity. It does not matter that with each new debacle the United States turns larger and larger parts of the globe against it and all it claims to represent. It has no mechanism to stop itself, despite its numerous defeats, fiascos, blunders and diminishing power, from striking out irrationally like a wounded animal. The mandarins who oversee our collective suicide, despite repeated failure, doggedly insist we can reshape the world in our own image. This myopia creates the very conditions that accelerate the empire's demise." ~ Chris Hedges (via azspot)
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The first word that comes to mind is decadence, which I think applies to the whole western world and has been in motion for a long time, for us humans always carry the seeds of our own destruction whatever the greatness of the societies we build, one over another. As Mother Nature does not seem to see us fit for a next stage of evolution – an actual 'sapiens' stage would be nice – her pandemic response may be part of the solution at halting that cancer we became to the Planet. So be it.
I guess we all should start taking lessons in Mandarin.