The Decline of an Empire

I'll never forget how proud I was when I got a perfect score on my computer programming final. My teacher said it had been four or five years since anyone had done that. Degree in hand, I got a job in San Francisco during the boom years. The ninety grand salary almost justified the 200 grand my folks paid for my college education. Boy, were they proud of me. "Our son, the computer programmer." Success beyond their - and my - wildest dreams! Besides being proud of my accomplishment, I felt a great sense of relief that their investment had paid off. I had graduated right around the time of the first Gulf War.

America had come away smelling like roses. We had just defeated the bloody dictator, Saddam Hussein, after his invasion of Kuwait. If any war seemed justified, that was it. Bush 41 had full support internationally. Even though Iraq had ancestral claims on Kuwait, who was Saddam Hussein to try to make good on them? He didn't have enough oil? The thing that troubled a lot of people, though, was: Why didn't we finish the job? Here we were at his doorstep, ripe for the taking, and we just pulled out.

My uncle John, a Vietnam veteran, was beside himself. Like Patton, who wanted to take Berlin at the end of World War II, he wanted us to go to Baghdad. Things started to turn sour for me with the decline of the internet stocks.

The boom, the speculation, was nothing more than a shift of economic resources. Unlike the computer driven boom of the 80's, with real manufacturing jobs being created and real goods being sold, the boom of the 90's was nothing but speculation. Instead of more jobs being created, the economy just shifted from old technology to new technology, with online companies trying to take the place of conventional companies. Some companies, like Amazon.com and Ebay, succeeded. Most didn't.

As the boom faded, so did the number of lucrative jobs in Silicon Valley, as it had come to be called.

Tom, a friend of mine from Chicago, had moved to Silicon Valley to get a $100,000 a year job, but it was so expensive to live there that, after two years, he quit and moved back to Chicago.

Like the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, America is facing a crisis of corruption. My Uncle John told me about the misgivings he had about the Vietnam War, how it had not been a declared war. "We should have declared war," he said. "It sets a horrible precedent." Now, our Presidents go around the world making war on feeble nations, paying lip service to freedom and democracy, asking for meaningless resolutions, but Congress has shirked its responsibility to declare war Constitutionally. The politicians don't want to be perceived as warmongers, but they want their constituents to make money, so they give the President free reign to do as he pleases, saying to themselves. "Let the President take the fall."

So, it occurred to me that there are these very interesting, if not frightening parallels: Just like Rome, which started out as a Republic, we have had a succession of military dictators who make war on behalf of the special interests who invested in the latest Caeser, er, I mean, President. Johnson had his Vietnam. Reagan had his Grenada and Panama. Bush 41 had his Gulf War. Clinton had his Somalia and Kosovo. Now, Bush 43, premising his War in Afghanistan on finding and getting a bogeyman named Osama bin Laden and premising his War in Iraq on the existence of those elusive weapons of mass destruction, has decimated two more countries, and no sign of Osama and no sign of these mysterious weapons.

I used to be a proud American, but now I'm not so sure if Old Glory stands for the Constitution of the United States or whether it stands for the Big Corporations. Please, America, give me a reason to be proud again!

It used to be that the tech buildings in Silicon Valley had the lights going all night long. The programmers, engineers, and business people burned the midnight oil sometimes 'til sunrise. There was so much excitement. The boom was tangible. The computer geeks didn't care if they ran out of deodorant. They just kept hacking away, sleeping on the office floor or on a cot to take catnaps. Those were different times. Things were starting to slow down just before Y2K. Now that I look back, I realize that Y2K gave the industry a shot in the arm. Old-timers who new languages like FORTRAN and BASIC were being recalled to work on the problem.

The government never admitted it publicly, but the Strategic Air Command computers went down for two weeks right after Dec. 31, 1999. The millennium bug had struck! My friends who worked for the missile defense system told me about it. This news only made a few technical journals. The military could never admit publicly that they, and we, were totally defenseless for two weeks.

But since the world didn't stop, all the newspaper editorials were saying that Y2K was just a bunch of hype! It wasn't hype; and all the programmers know it wasn't. The billions of dollars spent on preparation was necessary. The private sector did what it had to in order to prepare. In the process, a lot of new jobs were created and a lot of new computer equipment was installed. But that was the end of the boom! Modernization through panic! That's what drives the economy today.

Because I had the most seniority, I was one of the last ones to get a pink slip. The days when the office lights were left on throughout the night are long gone. There are maybe two or three offices that still have enough work to justify late hours. The corporations started moving their facilities overseas, to places like India, where there are plenty of mathematicians and programmers who are willing to work for half as much money and who have ten times as many mouths to feed. Here I stand, a once proud computer programmer, with no job and a big mortgage. I'm going to have to sell the condo at a loss and move back to Indiana. The uncertainty began creeping in slowly, but now it is reality.

The Roman Empire fell because of internal corruption. (Alliterates and rhymes with "international corporation," doesn't it?) With one Emperor in charge of the East and another Emperor in charge of the West, their interests often conflicted. Most people don't realize that Rome was just as much an economic empire as it was a military empire. The reason Julius Caesar invaded Britain was to try to capture the mining operations. Why pay for tin when you can steal it? The British defeated him twice, both times by cutting off his supplies.

With the subsequent persecutions of the Christians throughout the Empire, Rome was at war with itself, collapsing from within, from decadence and political intrigue. The competing economic factions within the Empire fought each other as much as they fought the barbarian hordes.

Today, in America, we have the Empire of the Democrats and the Empire of the Republicans, with their respective special interest groups. We "protect" our airports while the illegal immigrants ("barbarian hordes") stream across our borders unimpeded. Question: Can you tell the difference between an illegal Arab and an illegal Mexican once the Arab dons a sombrero? (Doesn't Vincente Fox look like Saddam Hussein's twin brother?) They call this "Homeland Security." Both Parties pay lip service to real causes and concerns but neither delivers the goods. It's always more business as usual as the politicians play mind games and the people take the propaganda seriously.

Here I am back on the farm in Indiana. Times are very hard. At least I have a place to stay. My parents don't blame me, but I feel I have let them down. My dreams of a high-paying job and a house with a swimming pool -- the American Dream, if you will -- are over. Actually, I never had such a dream. I was too busy working to even think about it. I just got caught up in all the action. Aside from the odd jobs I've been doing in the surrounding towns and the occasional trip to Chicago looking for work, my dad has been teaching me how to farm.

Constantine the Great did not want to rock the boat by giving Christians equal rights with pagans, but the social unrest was unending. Something had to be done. His mother, Helen of Wales, a devout Christian of British stock, who should be more famous than Helen of Troy, had long been urging him to make this move. She wanted it for her religion. He did it out of expediency, like all politicians do. But nothing could stop the downward spiral of corruption in government. The end was near.

As the lights fade in the White House, the winds of change dominate the landscape. History repeats itself. The international corporations, some working for the left, others working for the right, and law firms and consultants working for both, lean on corrupt politicians and play the Republicans against the Democrats for political favors, with oil money and the military/ industrial/pharmaceutical complex feeding both parties with "contributions," and none of them upholding the commonwealth or the Constitution.

Like Nero and Poppea, the infamous husband and wife duo of decadent Rome, I watched as Bill and Hillary, the infamous husband and wife duo of America, dominated the American landscape of the Nineties. Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned. William played his saxophone while Waco burned. David Koresh never got his day in court. Conniving women, like in a soap opera script, dominated the background. Poppea pulled strings behind the scenes in Rome. Janet Reno, in a clear violation of the Law of Posse Comitatus (the U.S. military shall not be used against U.S. citizens), sent in the tanks to "save the children."

Hillary ran the White House while Bill was doing the important business of chasing other women. When confronted with her husband's infidelity, Hillary danced to the tune of "Stand by Your Man." Demonstrating that their rhetoric does not match their actions, the feminists "stood by their man" and looked the other way while his female victims suffered legal and public outrages after the sexual ones they had endured. So much for the "compassionate liberal!"

In both ancient Rome and modern America, the populace swooned and cheered when the military parades marched by and when the speeches promoting war and "democracy" were proclaimed. The Bible is correct. "There is nothing new under the sun."

As the Zionists, under the leadership of the House of Rothschild, the world's most powerful corporation, manipulated Britain into signing the Balfour Declaration, thus betraying Britains's pre-WWI promise to return Palestine to the Arabs -- so much for the word of an Englishman! -- they were preparing the U.S.A. for its future role as the world's main Zionist puppet. When the British Empire was in its heyday, Friedrich Nietszche said of Great Britain: "The greatest export of the British Empire is cant." The torch of deception and world-class demagoguery has indeed been passed to America. As long as Zionism maintains its state-within-a-state parasitic grasp on the reigns of power in America, this nation will sink further and further into the mire of deception while more and more unwitting soldiers (both Muslim and Christian) are sacrificed on the altar of Zionism.

Today, the world looks on and sees that the greatest export of the American Empire is war contrived for the benefit of the Zionists. While the mass media (owned and operated by Zionists) looks around and scours the planet for petty dictators who might be the reason for the next war, the American people scratch their heads and wonder why the government can't be trusted. Demagoguery today masquerades as patriotism, democracy, and liberty. It used to be "liberty, equality, fraternity."

In Washington, D.C., the only buildings where the midnight oil burns are where public relations firms are busily devising campaigns to sell the public on the latest war. That section of the economy is booming. Why pay for oil when you can steal it? Like Constantine before him, a nominally Christian Bush 43 watches while the sun sets on the Empire.