Paul,

Of course to blame the decline of the US totally on Reagonomics is disingenuous. I don’t pretend to do that. Reaganomics has been a factor though. Of course Reagan simply seized the mood that had been building since the failure in Vietnam. Marcus Aurelius was right on the money. Then again how do we define decline? And a decline for whom? Certainly there are those of us who may not feel a decline at all. It is subjective to the perspective that each individual has. A construction worker who has lost everything he has worked for in a lifetime, including his home, is not going to see things quite as the same as corporate CEO getting a 6 or 7 figure bonus, eve a 5 figure bonus.

Even basic capitalist theory as per Adam Smith is that labor is the creator of wealth. Once that labor class starts to disintegrate and the wealthy elite class is oblivious of the disintegration then that is what would be defined as a collective decline as far as I’m concerned. This is what I see the beginnings of. Recently I watched the movie Marie Antoinatte, of course it was only a movie which is where I prefer to get my dose of fiction. Personally I only read non-fiction. Anyway the message was how the French Royals led the lavish and decadent lifestyle on the backs of the poor and how the country crumbled around them. They seemed to be totally isolated and oblivious of the suffering of the masses until it was too late. So Marcus Aurelius quote fits perfectly.

I’m not a Marxist but when you read the Communist Manifesto the analysis that Marx does is totally on the money. It’s as if he wrote that yesterday. Unfortunately he doesn’t deliver practical solutions since his solutions create another elite bourgeois class whose power is not based on raw capital the way our society is.

China being a totalitarian/authoritarian homogeneous society already has an advantage.  With little internal strife, timely political/economic decisions, the term “Yellow Menace” takes on a new whole new meaning.

No, I wouldn’t blame the decline of America on Reaganomics, tihsstaezevahc; I consider it to be the inevitable onward march of history. The world is changing, but those fools and dimwits in Mordor-on-the-Potomac are married to the Status Quo, and imagine this period to be just a “blip” on the radar-screen of history. No doubt many of them are eagerly expecting the emergence of a “New Reagan” in 2012 ...

As the Roman emperor/Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in the late 2nd Century AD, “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”

IMO, unless we all cooperate to create “morning throughout the world, it’s very likely to be quite dark eveywhere.

Wasn’t the quote: “It’s morning in America?”

How did it become “It’s morning in China?”

Oh! I just remembered, 30 years of Reaganomics.

Morris—and Reeves—left out the second line of that quadrain, which, if I recall it correctly, reads:

“Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgement Seat.”

The world now is straining to support, the delusions of madmen. Hidden, behind a veil of self deception, the fragile props that prevent mankinds extinction, and decent into Ragnarok are disintegrating.

Nixon, was brilliant, yes..But, because he was brilliant, he had a far greater capacity for madness than most men. And he infected so many others, who have no way to see again.

Out on the fringes of society, exists the protests, and the urgent calls, of those who have discovered the poison at the center of our consciousness, that is devouring us, slowly at first.

They are ignored, by those who prefer that we die in our sleep.

Humanity cannot survive, because mankind has lost it’s sanity. We’ve taken a wrong turn, somewhere, and won’t be able to find our way back before it’s too late.

The hope of Another war, another confrontation, is just one more proof that we are a doomed species.

You are probably right lamsog, but I think your time frame may be a bit off, I think radical changes in the worlds climate and energy supply will happen in 20-30 years, not 90.

And then all us hippies will be right (again) that all of our problems center around over population. Oh well, after the great tribulation, there will be far fewer of us to worry about. Just think, many of our most infamous assholes should be raptured by then anyway.

Of course, peak oil and climate change may have something to say about the coming Asian century.  Furthermore, by 2100 China may find its massive population quite the albatross around its neck.