Soft or Hard Collapse for Amerikan Empire?

This is the eve of a turning point in the ongoing collapse of the Amerikan empire. Tomorrow's presidential election will help determine whether this inevitable collapse is a soft landing, like that of the British Empire. After World War 2 the brits faded empire softly folded into being an Amerikan protectorate, what one analyst memorably called 'a theme park for the Americans'.

A Trump victory offers a potentially harder and quickening collapse than a Clinton win. As a fan of Vlad (the bomber) Putin, Trump's victory could signal a rapid deterioration of the U.S. into a mafia state similar to Russia. In place of the Russian oligarchs, a rogue Amerikan mafia state would have as leaders the 'hollow men' board of directors of the multi-national corporations based in the U.S.

A Clinton win would be more of the same old same old. She'd likely continue inadequately managing the weakening imperialist policies of Obama, who couldn't manage much of anything he promised while in office, including closing Guantanamo and implementing an efficient national health care system. As Mao said, I don't care if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.

At the tail end of my youth I was a Marxist, and one of our major Marxist tenets was defining the 'major contradiction' in a political situation. Trump brings to the fore at least two major contradictions in the Amerikan empire. These are the internal contradictions which confound every empire - a large percentage of the citizenry must be marginalized so they can easily be recruited to fight the foreign wars necessary to hold the empire together - while externally the colonies of oppressed people continue to struggle to free themselves.

In fairly recent decades we've witnessed the weakening ability of the Amerikan empire to hold sway with its once powerful rule of Pax Americana. First the Amerikans got their ass kicked in Vietnam. I'm proud to say I was one of the young people who actively resisted participating in that horrible war. Now they routinely get their butts kicked, as witnessed by Afghanistan and now Syria. This is where the dividing line between a 'soft' Clinton and a 'hard' Trump blurs a bit. Trump is supposedly an Amerika Firster, a protectionist, while Clinton has sounded hawkish on Syria. They are both such blustering cartoonish characters that neither offers much hope, although Clinton at least appears sane!

All in all, sitting up here on the sidelines in Canada watching the bizarre reality TV show which is the U.S. of A.,  I'm grateful I had the foresight to leave the U.S. forever in 1969. I never realized what great entertainment it can be watching an imperialist ship of state sink so slowly and crazily. 


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On 2016-11-07, at 3:21 PM, Kent  wrote:

Right on Chris!
Kent


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Thanks Kent!
this is quite the bizarre show - not with a whimper or a bang, but as an episode of "The Simpsons"
Chris