The Trump/Harris debate reminded me of the death of empires. That's weird, huh?

Also: South Park, and the wisest entity I've ever come across reveals a critical answer.

So, I watched the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris last night. I snapped a picture of this “clash of titans” from my perspective on the couch. Here it is:

It’s hard to say who “won” the debate. It was pretty awful. From my libertarian perspective, I saw a dim-witted, statist, lying, corrupt, puppet of the regime face off against an ignorant, statist, lying, incoherent, ego-maniac. You know, a giant douche versus a turd sandwich.

So who won?

I guess I’d have to say the US debt won.

The US federal government is over $35.3 trillion dollars in debt, with another trillion being added roughly every 100 days. It’s a pretty big problem. Many people say it’s our country’s biggest problem by far.

The debt wasn’t mentioned once. Zero times. Not even by the “moderators”. It was glossed right over. What does it mean when we have a problem so big that nobody wants to talk about it?

It got me wondering if this is what living through the end-stage of an empire is like. We reflexively talk about the “fall” of empires, but of course they never fall overnight. It takes a while for huge things to corrode and decay so much that they crumble apart.

These things are a little subjective, but some historians say the “fall” of Rome took around 300 years.

So what about the US empire? And please, let’s not pretend that the US is a republic. We haven’t been one of those for a long time now. Is our empire falling? I think so. I think that’s clear. But exactly how far along in the process are we?

I think most people agree that there are classic markers for the progression of the disease that kills empires, that there are milestones along the path of the fall.

Historians don’t always agree on exactly what those markers are, but I’ve cobbled together a list (in no particular order) that fits my biases. Let’s see what you think about them — and where we are on the journey downwards.

My first marker I’ve already mentioned. Debt. Our colossal, unmanageable, ever-increasing debt. Debt kills everything, even empires.

A second is an over-extended military, usually due to expansionist foreign adventures. Our empire fought a Cold War, and won it. Then, instead of claiming our promised “peace dividend”, we immediately threw huge amounts of blood and treasure into war in the Middle East and a proxy war in eastern Europe while we simultaneously gear up for war in the South China sea.

I’d say we’re pretty over-extended.

A third marker is a decline in public health. Average US life expectancy peaked at 79 years in 2019, but has declined now to 76 years. Experts say Covid and drug overdoses are the primary culprits. Maybe, but I have another suspect and it’s the next milestone.

My fourth marker is a decline in the quantity or nutritional value of the food supply. The decrepitude of our rotten food system is infamous. We do manage to produce great quantities of food, but the nutritional content is terrible. In fact, one of the reasons RFK Jr. ran for president this year is to try to fix our poisonous (and corruptly so) food production systems.

A fifth marker is “bread and circuses”. This phrase describes how an empire will attempt to both bribe and distract the populace such that they can keep conducting their machinations undisturbed by criticism or revolt.

Which leads directly to my sixth marker. Government corruption. Surely I don’t need to convince you fine folk that the US has successfully checked off this particular box.

A seventh marker is a tendency for the public to fixate on a rigid ideology or ideologies. I think we have several of these to choose from. Classic empire-destroying ideologies are nationalism or religion or racism. We have all of these of course, and also a few more: identitarianism, wokeism, post-modernism, etc.

An eighth marker is crumbling infrastructure left to decay rather than be maintained. The sad state of our roads, tunnels, and bridges, etc. is obvious. But I would also throw into this category our failure to maintain the enormous capital structure that provides the abundance we have grown accustomed to.

We are eating our seed corn, so to speak. And that ain’t good.

My ninth marker is a declining population. The US population isn’t having enough babies to maintain our population. There are a lot of possible reasons why, but the basic truth is that while a sustainable replacement birth rate is around 2.1 births per woman, the US birth rate has fallen to around 1.67.

A tenth marker is constant defensive war or invasion. Looking at the current US situation, we have to ask ourselves, do these hordes of “invading” migrants count? I’d have to say: It depends.

If people are coming here not for hand-outs but to instead adopt our cultural values and work to achieve their piece of the American dream, then I’d say, “No.” And in fact, if this is the case, it could be the solution to the birthrate problem.

But if the migrants are instead coming to leech off of our welfare state, or wish to overthrow our laws and culture in favor of those from whence they fled, then I’d say, “Yes, this counts as invasion.”

And we know for certain that many countries in western Europe are currently witnessing that migration can indeed be an invasion.

And my eleventh and final milestone on the path to imperial collapse is something I will sum up as a general moral decay of the populace. Whatever moral virtues led to the rise of the republic-turned-empire, these rot away, replaced by hedonism, escapism, and nihilism.

The evidence that this is occurring will be society-wide. Participation in the workforce falls. People’s time-preference increases. Seemingly senseless violence increases.

At the extremes, the population suffers from massive civil divisiveness and unrest and a descent from a high-trust society into a low-trust one, while both productivity and peace diminish.

So, if I’ve got these markers/milestones roughly correct, how far along to the collapse of the US empire are we? Can we reverse course? Is it possible for a society to recognize that it’s falling and repair the damage before it hits “bottom”?

I’ve no clue, so I asked the wisest entity I know:

Did you watch this most recent debate of Douche v Sandwich? What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Naturally,

Adam

PS: Want to learn more about the rise and fall of previous empires? Learn about all that and more at Liberty Classroom!