Danny Wool : All's Wool that Ends Wool

The Decline of Empire

"I was reading Kevin Phillip's American Theocracy the other day, and was struck by his description of how empires fail. In describing the U.S. of the George W. Bush era, he writes: "Rome, Hapsburg Spain, when it was half of Europe, the Dutch when New York was New Amsterdam, and Victorian and pre-1914 Britain—were just as cocky because they, too, had dynamic origins and also believed that they were different." Thinking about this, I couldn’t help wonder, Does this just apply to political beasts, or is it true of Internet empires as well? Could this apply to Wikipedia? The parallels are fascinating."

The decline and fall of arrogant empires is an instance of the generic model for Greek Tragedy, in which the would-be hero has the character flaw (hamartia) of hubris (arrogance). The would-be hero stumbles and falls, and thus becomes the goat.

The US is currently in the throes of one of these classic hero-goat dramas.

GW Bush still imagines himself to be the heroic saviour of freedom and democracy.

Most of the rest of the world now perceive him as a miserable failure whom history will remember as the goat whose idiotic policies led to the decline and fall of the American Hedgemonic Empire.

The US is always in the midst of a classic hero-goat drama. Just as every decade in its history becomes the era that America lost its innocence.

It's one thing to lose one's innocence.

It's another thing to become evil.