Another great article from Patrick Lawrence in my view. I've started many threads here by referencing one of his articles, as can be seen here:
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/search.php?searchid=7976568
If the link above doesn't work, just do an advanced search, put lawrence in keywords, select search titles only and put phoenyx in user name.
He talks of a theme that I've been hearing for around 2 years now. Here's a thread I made almost 2 years ago that references another author I greatly respect on the same subject:
Chris Hedges: The Unraveling of the American Empire | justplainpolitics.com
Interestingly, Lawrence' article also begins with an article that written a few years ago on the same subject. He brings up various current events around the globe and all point towards the decline of the American Empire. Below is the start of his article:
**
March 29, 2024
I just read a most remarkable piece in The Seattle Times—remarkable for its bluntly nihilistic candor. The headline atop Ron Judd’s August 2021 essay for The Times’s Pacific NW Magazine gives a good idea of the writer’s point: “The decline of American civilization.” And the subhead: “There’s more bad TV than ever; it’s available everywhere; and it’s making us fat, lazy, selfish and stupid.”
News sometimes seems to travel slowly in these parts, but never mind that. If Judd’s observations were pithy three years ago, they have the gravitational pull of Jupiter as we read them today. Here is Judd bringing home his thesis:
Now does not seem the time for bad TV or brains gone to Jell–O. In consequence of a rapid succession of events, none appearing related to any other, the collapse of America’s seven and some decades of hegemony is dramatically accelerating. Some astute observers now think the “international rules-based order,” as the policy cliques call the projection of American power, is already done for. I suppose the choice lies between accepting this reality and watching bad TV, and O.K., the latter proves tempting to a surprising many.
Awake, O sleepers, and arise from the dead!
On the eastern flank of the Atlantic world the imperium’s managers have lost a war they were confident they would win when they started it with the coup they arranged in Kiev a decade ago. The West’s wild miscalculation in Ukraine leaves Russia the victor, and it would be hard to overstate the consequences of this blow for American power and prestige.
Added to this, the policy cliques’ years-long effort to isolate Russia, cripple its economy and destroy the value of its currency has manifestly failed. As measured by the growth rate of gross domestic product, the Russian economy is handily outperforming America’s and Europe’s. With ruble-denominated trade increasing at a startling pace, the currency is stable. Moscow is now a leading force as the non–West, a.k.a. the Global South, coalesces behind a multipolar order based on legally binding principles of sovereignty, the U.N. Charter and other multilateral documents and declarations.
Some readers may have taken little notice, but the new leaders in Niger, who came to power in a coup against the nation’s pro–Western president last July, have just 86’ed the U.S. military, which has long maintained a $250 million outpost in northeastern Niger that the Pentagon considers essential to Washington’s effort to project power across West Africa and the Sahel. So much for the “full-spectrum dominance” of the neoconservatives’ turn-of-the-century dreams.
Saving the worst for last, the United Nations Human Rights Council just received a 25–page report and a 12–minute video summary [youtube link in original] from its special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, titled “Anatomy of a Genocide.” You can read all the blurry New York Times apologias you want about the Gaza crisis. It remains that in the eyes of the world’s majority, the U.S. is sponsoring a mad-dogs regime as it exterminates an entire people. The price the imperium will pay for this in years to come will be steep.
**
Full article:
Patrick Lawrence: Imperium: Decline on the Way to Fall | Scheerpost
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/search.php?searchid=7976568
If the link above doesn't work, just do an advanced search, put lawrence in keywords, select search titles only and put phoenyx in user name.
He talks of a theme that I've been hearing for around 2 years now. Here's a thread I made almost 2 years ago that references another author I greatly respect on the same subject:
Chris Hedges: The Unraveling of the American Empire | justplainpolitics.com
Interestingly, Lawrence' article also begins with an article that written a few years ago on the same subject. He brings up various current events around the globe and all point towards the decline of the American Empire. Below is the start of his article:
**
March 29, 2024
I just read a most remarkable piece in The Seattle Times—remarkable for its bluntly nihilistic candor. The headline atop Ron Judd’s August 2021 essay for The Times’s Pacific NW Magazine gives a good idea of the writer’s point: “The decline of American civilization.” And the subhead: “There’s more bad TV than ever; it’s available everywhere; and it’s making us fat, lazy, selfish and stupid.”
News sometimes seems to travel slowly in these parts, but never mind that. If Judd’s observations were pithy three years ago, they have the gravitational pull of Jupiter as we read them today. Here is Judd bringing home his thesis:
Based on our current state of national dysfunction, cultural warfare and garden-variety public psychosis—more on this after a few commercial messages urging you to ask your doctor about a new wonder drug, Byxfliptaz—it’s undeniable that the mainstream American today possesses all the crisp, mental faculties of a Jell–O salad left too long out in the sun at an August picnic at Marymoor Park.
Now does not seem the time for bad TV or brains gone to Jell–O. In consequence of a rapid succession of events, none appearing related to any other, the collapse of America’s seven and some decades of hegemony is dramatically accelerating. Some astute observers now think the “international rules-based order,” as the policy cliques call the projection of American power, is already done for. I suppose the choice lies between accepting this reality and watching bad TV, and O.K., the latter proves tempting to a surprising many.
Awake, O sleepers, and arise from the dead!
On the eastern flank of the Atlantic world the imperium’s managers have lost a war they were confident they would win when they started it with the coup they arranged in Kiev a decade ago. The West’s wild miscalculation in Ukraine leaves Russia the victor, and it would be hard to overstate the consequences of this blow for American power and prestige.
Added to this, the policy cliques’ years-long effort to isolate Russia, cripple its economy and destroy the value of its currency has manifestly failed. As measured by the growth rate of gross domestic product, the Russian economy is handily outperforming America’s and Europe’s. With ruble-denominated trade increasing at a startling pace, the currency is stable. Moscow is now a leading force as the non–West, a.k.a. the Global South, coalesces behind a multipolar order based on legally binding principles of sovereignty, the U.N. Charter and other multilateral documents and declarations.
Some readers may have taken little notice, but the new leaders in Niger, who came to power in a coup against the nation’s pro–Western president last July, have just 86’ed the U.S. military, which has long maintained a $250 million outpost in northeastern Niger that the Pentagon considers essential to Washington’s effort to project power across West Africa and the Sahel. So much for the “full-spectrum dominance” of the neoconservatives’ turn-of-the-century dreams.
Saving the worst for last, the United Nations Human Rights Council just received a 25–page report and a 12–minute video summary [youtube link in original] from its special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, titled “Anatomy of a Genocide.” You can read all the blurry New York Times apologias you want about the Gaza crisis. It remains that in the eyes of the world’s majority, the U.S. is sponsoring a mad-dogs regime as it exterminates an entire people. The price the imperium will pay for this in years to come will be steep.
**
Full article:
Patrick Lawrence: Imperium: Decline on the Way to Fall | Scheerpost
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