Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The Impoverished Power of the World's Sole Surviving Superpower

Dear George,

Guess what? Iraq wasn’t about the oil, it wasn’t about WMD s and it wasn’t about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Iraq was a byproduct of the brain rot that accompanies power.

Here’s how it works, so pay attention! When a nation is in the process of climbing the ladder of power, it is fully cognizant of just how unstable each rung is. It is when it reaches the most unstable rung of all, the top rung, that delusion sets in. Perhaps it’s the thin air at the top, but for some reason, the powerful nation believes that it is now standing on bedrock that that will support it for all eternity. It promptly forgets just how unstable the top rung is.

The more a powerful nation believes in its military prowess, the greater is the brain rot. The facile mind required for effective diplomacy begins the atrophy and the nation falls under the delusion that there isn’t a problem that can’t be solved by kicking some ass. The fact that this chronic ass-kicking bleeds its economy dry and results in little or no economic return never occurs to the powerful nation because it is so blinded by the illusion of power that it never realizes that it is emptying its treasury in the process.

It finally reaches the point where a martial momentum takes over and drives it from one disaster to another. As one sage explains it:

A rational cost efficient evaluation of the U.S. major and minor military invasions demonstrates the high economic cost and low economic benefits to both the capitalist system as a whole and even many key economic enterprises.

One of history’s little ironies is that the two countries we destroyed in World War II are now economic powerhouses, while we are staring insolvency in the face. Thank God the glare of our multiple weapon systems blinds us to this reality. There is something about killing and destroying that is so uplifting and addictive that a nation is willing to court economic disaster to feed its habit.

This beat will go on and on until we become a well-armed pauper begging for alms so we can buy more bombs that will sink us even future into penury, but who the hell cares as long as we can maintain the illusion that we are the world’s sole surviving badass.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

2 comments:

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

The illusion is growing so rapidly that I'm surprised we've a leg to stand on that isn't owned or leased from China...Oh. We don't, do we?

Case Wagenvoord said...

They own the shoe leather.