Tag: Arc of the Sun

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Arc of the Sun

We are sabotaging our main labor resource with mindless rote learning to pass “achievement” tests to avoid being punished for not being full of kids of upper middle class households, we are allowing our equipment resource to collapse through lack of demand and we are sabotaging our natural resource through treating nonrenewable resources as an excuse to destroy renewable resources and treating renewable resources as non-renewable resources, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fifty years we have gone from technological leadership on all fronts to technological leadership only in some of those areas under the umbrella of War Department Industrial Policy, and from massive trade surpluses that demanded recycling via overseas investment and imports to maintain international liquidity, to massive trade deficits to allow the Chinese to export their unemployment to us.

In forty years we have gone from energy independence to importing twice as much oil as we produce.

And thirty years, we have shifted our record on land wars in Asia from 0-1 with one draw, to at best 0-2 with two draws, and at worst 0-3 with one draw.

If this damn Empire collapses soon enough, we might have a chance to start rebuilding from the catastrophe it represents, but an equally plausible outcome is falling apart into a squabbling series of small and mid-sized nation states, many harboring revanchiste dreams of re-establishing the Empire.

Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Arc of the Sun, in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos, though to the best of my knowledge he doesn’t know it.

What if They Threw an Empire, and Nobody Came?

Sometimes there is nothing more tedious than an argument over the meaning of terms. It often gets called an argument over semantics but semantics … that is meaning … is what is important arguing over.

The trivial argument that brings “arguing over semantics” into disrepute is which meanings to attach to which word. And, of course, if you want to call that an “argument over semantics” and leave the “of words” implied, be my guest … if I can work out what you are trying to say, that’s good enough.

One of those words that spark endless argument is “Empire”. Is there an American Empire? Well, like what Empire? Like the British Empire? Like the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Like the multiple Chinese Empires? Like the several Roman Empires? Like the Zulu Empire?

Whether we call it an Empire or Empire-ish or The Natural and Automatic Consequence of Being the Latest Greatest Country on the Face of the Earth … is there an alternative?