Originally Posted by cpg35223
Oh, it will last quite a long time as a political entity. However, that does not mean that it will necessarily exist in its current form.
To me, it's pretty obvious that we're moving from a Republic to an Imperium, and nobody is really paying attention to the transition. Kind of a permanent investiture of power in the hands of our commander-in-chief because of the exigencies of real and imagined threats, foreign and domestic. Mind you, I am not singling out the current administration, for we have watched the Executive Branch slowly strip power from Congress for decades without so much as a whimper of protest from the people. Quite frankly, I think Congress has been glad to be relieved of the burden of actually governing. As a result, the executive order now pretty much has the force of law. We now have warrantless wiretaps. We hold combatants in a kind of limbo between the strictures of the Geneva Convention and the mandates of the justice system. The Justice Department recently arrogated to itself the right to read any and all e-mails without a warrant, as if it were a quaint relic of our legal past. A quasi-government entity, the Federal Reserve, determines the amount and value of our currency, without Congress even having so much as the power to audit the books. Assassination by means of drones has become a de facto tool of foreign policy overseas, even against American citizens. We can invade and occupy countries without an explicit declaration of war. And, if we really were diligent about matters the list of encroachments upon our constitutional rights would take up an entire forum.
Yet nobody really protests this continuing empowerment of the Executive branch for it is always done for what are supposedly prudent reasons. Nobody really protested the draconian laws against drug possession passed in the 1980s even though they violated the Bill of Rights when it came to seizure of property without due process. Why? Because nobody wants to see his own children on drugs. Today, we have warrantless wiretaps and the government's belief it can have unrestricted access to e-mail. Why? Because no one wants to see Manhattan enveloped in a mushroom cloud.
The last true showdown between the two chief branches of government was Watergate. But the Congress only prevailed at the time because nobody trusted Nixon, and his transgressions were outrageous for the time. Today, they would barely merit an item in the back pages of the paper, for dirty politics is just how the game is played. Oddly, despite its combative nature on talk shows, today's press is really a toothless watchdog. I mean, all you had to do is watch the softballs that 60 Minutes served up to the President and the Secretary of State the other weekend. The only real investigative reporting left today is really concerned with the misdeeds of celebrities because nothing about Washington really surprises anyone anymore. If you agree with Mencken's dictum that the purpose of journalism is to afflict the comfortable, and if the misdeeds of the government have completely lost the power to shock, what does that say about us as a nation?
So we'll probably wind up as an Imperium with a vestigial legislative branch, unchallengeable by any foreign foe for the anticipated future -- Not China, certainly not Europe, not Russia, not anyone. Nobody will call us an Empire, of course, because of the implications for the word gleaned from repeated viewings of Star Wars. We'll still pretend to have the trappings of democracy. But we are becoming a democracy in name only.
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