The first article in this series was a primer for some serious blogging about The United States of America, it's current choices, the future it faces and the consequences of this countries likely future on you, the reader.
Please remember, I am an American citizen and what I write about America is from a completely honest perspective. Although some of the scenarios I entertain may frighten you, they are not meant to offend, merely cause you to think. This article explores a few of the very real issues that contribute to Americas decay as a great nation.

Today, in the heated days before the 2004 Elections, over 90% of Americans have taken a firm position on how their vote will be cast. Many of my fellow citizens are dug in, firm in their beliefs that their canidate is a better choice than the other. What we all have failed to realize is that this election does not matter in the course of Americas future! How can this be? Certainly the Presidential elections matter; Americas policies for the next four years depend on who is elected!
Actually, it doesn't. The United States is dying. America, the latest Empire to spread it's hand across the globe, is in a state of decay that cannot be stopped. It's the inevitable decay of something that has reached it's end, the natural order of all things is to die, and this great nation is no exception. We, the citizens, and the leaders of each political party, have merely failed to realize that this country's death is inevitable.
Now don't be offended too much. I really do love America. I pray I don't live to see this great nation fall. I truely believe that America, in the totality of it's existance, has served the greater good. This country has inspired freedom in a way no other nation ever has. It has crushed oppression, it has reached out to the sick and defended the weak in their hour of greatest need. And yet, all things must die, it is only natural.
I believe we have seen the signs if we open our eyes to them. Not miraculous signs, or visions offered by the radicals handing out pamplets on the street corners; very real, historically based signs found in the downfall of other great nations. Britania fell, Rome fell, Egypt fell and even the great Tang Dynasty fell. Many other great nations (which I will collectively group as 'Empires' for the sake of this discussion) have fallen by the wayside of history, none able to outrun time.

Corruption is an excellent starting point. Can anyone say, without doubt, that their canidate hasn't broken the rules to some extent? Do you really think John Kerry/ George Soros aren't on speed dial? Do you think Cheney never talks to his old buddies on Haliburtons board? Can you imagine for a second that Bill Clinton wasn't lining his pockets for all 8 years he was Commander in Chief? The bodies are there, the evidence floats in and out of main stream media like so much flotsam on a dirty river. Yet as citizens we choose to believe in a higher ideal, that 'our' canidate is somehow different. He may be different. Your guy might be genuinly nice, he might really believe in the party talking points, but he did not get where he was by walking the straight and narrow in todays political arena. Just for Congress alone (that place where Kerry has been sitting for 20 years), lobbyists spent 1.45 billion (source: Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House) in 2003 alone. Thats not how much special interests got back from Congress - thats how much they INVESTED in Congress. What kind of return do you think the special interest groups got back from the 1.45 billion they spent last year? How much of your tax money didn't go to the people, but went to a friend of some Congressman (woman) who enjoys the summer home they received as a gift from Zurich Financial?
Corruption, a sure sign of decay within a nation, is rampant in the United States political system. It always has been, but never more so than on the level weve seen since the 1970's. Did you know that George Bush and Ken Lay are good friends? Did you know that while Democrats were ranting about Enron and its political ties, the upper eshelon of the Democratic party were cleaning house at Worldcom, a corporate scandal on par with Enron but only receiving a 1/4 of the coverage? It's everywhere, and it doesn't look to stop for either side.Yet corruption has always existed to some degree, and will not destroy a country on its own. It is merely a symptom of the disease.

A shortage of natural resources can cause a great Empire to fall. Anyone ever heard of "the oil peak"? I first heard about it working for Shell Petrochemical about 8 years ago, asking what a map of current global estimates I was looking at referred to "peak levels" meant. This is where over 1/2 of the global oil has been consumed by humanity. That means it's gone, bye-bye, never to return. The fun part of the oil peak is that once you've hit the halfway mark, oil becomes more difficult to extract from the Earth. It's not as if all the oil is in a few easily accessable caverns underground... think of the Earth containing pockets of oil that seep into the pores of sedimentary rock... some pockets may be large, some very small. The more oil we use, the more expensive it becomes to access the remaining oil, and the more expensive oil becomes. To give you an idea of how serious this is, check out the Association for the study of peak oil. As oil supply decreases, we Americans are still demanding more and more. I'm NOT an enviromentalist, but even I see a huge problem here.
Everything we use is created with oil. Your computer, your home, your AC unit, your kids toys, even your toys. Oil, oil and more oil. It's not all about gas and heating. When oil hits $85 a barrel (think about how oil has jumped +$30 in the space of a few years) from its expensive $50 a barrel price now, how many manufacturing plants do you think will scale back employees? How many managers will be dropped? How will the stock market react? Not favorably, I can promise. Look for economic depression. But this is just another part of the equation.

Back on track, let's take a look at the 'War on Terrorism'. Huge issue in this debate, right? One canidate can win the war, one can't. It's probably your guy that can win it, because the other one has botched the focus/ has a crappy record on defense.Actually, neither of the current canidates can win the war on terror the way they have proposed to fight it. President Bush has a plan that is semi-feasible when held up to Senator Kerry's, but lets face hard facts here: both canidates want to fight the war on terrorism like a mix between the unsuccessful 'War on Drugs' and the Cold War.Regardless to which degree of confrontation you believe is a solution, our current canidates will both be ineffectual in comabting terrorism.
Invading countries is not the answer. Policing terrorism is not the answer. There are only 2 workable solutions to fighting terrorist attacks on our homeland, and neither answer is pretty. First, The United States can withdraw. People say this would cause the terrorists to win, but this is not a win-lose scenario. The fact that deadly biological agents abound, that nuclear material is profecient and that humanitys capacity for deadlier forms of destruction increases dramatically every decade makes this one of the only truely viable solutions. Police State like laws and searches, closed borders and a limitation of freedoms will stop our enemies from dropping ricin into the public food supplies, or a nuclear fissle material from making its way from Canada or Mexico onto US soil. This scenario spells the willing end of the United States as we know it, and is not very appealing to most citizens, Personally, this disgusts me.
The other solution, and perhaps the only real way out of the 'War on Terror' is the involuntary downfall of the United States. Once The United States ceases to exist, our enemies will no longer have it as a target of hatred. Without going into too much detail, freedoms could be preserved in smaller regional splinter countries, much like the current European model, but without the long history of bloodshed and revolution. This will likely occur within the next 75 years, due to economic oil pressures, government corruption, unwinable elections being dragged through courts, economic pressures resulting from Americas post WWII foreign policies (which we see now, in this election, are starting to dare come out and face us directly).
Of course, we could conquer the world, buts thats not very likely to happen.

There is also a moral gauge for great Empires. Look at any dynasty, any great nation in history. You will see that it was founded on clear moral principles. The principles in question may not have been yours or mine. Rome was built upon a mythos that would be very alien to todays Christians and Aethiests. It is not for us to judge an Empires morality here, but to observe what happens as the Empire dies in relation to its founding morality.As Rome lost power through the centuries, Christianity spread throughout the Empire, undoing the moral traditions of Greece and Rome. As the citizenry became divided without the original moral compass to follow, the politica and laws became unraveled. See anything similar in todays United States? How many attornies are lines up for this elections results? How many lawsuits are being thrown about that are non-sense? Should prayer be allowed in classrooms? Why is it even in court? Everything we do has poured into the legal system over the last few decades, because the moral compass that this countries principals were founded upon has lost its way, much like Rome, much like Egypt, much like every great nation that has come before us.You don't have to agree with the moral compass this country was founded on - I'm certain nobody here thinks it's ok to own another human being as Jefferson and Washington did, or that everyone believes in the semi-Puritanical values of the time. Just observe what has become of those morals, and compare it to history.
This ties it up for now. Blog entries shouldn't be this long, and although there many more symptoms of this nations death occurring around us, these will do to get my point across.

Next article... American Empire, pt.3: The USA is dead, long live the NAU!