\"A War like no other\"; by Victor Davis Hanson

[Ghostmojo]

... Ironically, the Founding Fathers of the US much debated the forms of their constitution during its conception. Athens, as a model, was abandonned in favour of Republican Rome. Too much direct power in the hands of the "great unwashed" was not appealing to monnied gentry even unto the creation of the Electoral College to provide a barrier between that enfranchised multitude and the direct election of a President.

And so the US modelled itself upon Republican Rome - even down to its architechture. Whilst I don't suggest that the factory state analogy above was also adopted - the US's long abandoned "isolationist" foreign policy speaks against it - the modern fascination with the Washinton/Rome analogy is eerily correct, though not for the immediately aparrent "reasons". Misadventures in Mesopotamia come to mind as do efforts to secure resources (Egypt, for example, before its subsumation).

This is something that has long struck me - the obvious metaphoric similarities between Republican/Imperial Rome and Imperial Amerika. I'm not sure if the analogy extends to the British Empire as being the greater ancient Greek diaspora, but it is an interesting thought. As a basically pro-American Brit (who has lived there on two occasions) I couldn't help but observing the essential bread and circuses aspect to American life. This huge powerful nation is so parochial in so many ways. Few if any people I knew had passports or had travelled much. Few cared about the world across the Pacific or the Atlantic. The national and local press and TV was totally inward-looking with little to report from abroad. You had to dig deep to find any external influences - a specialist import shop I used to visit in NYC to get my marmalade, tea and Cadbury's chocolate (never anything from Europe in the supermarkets) - cable TV stations to find British or other programmes etc. etc. Of course there was always the odd exception, like a (ex-CIA) guy I worked with who only listened to the BBC World Service! The yanks are friendly, accommodating, hospitable people who are glad to have you aboard - and awfully surprised when you choose to return home. I visited the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield Park one weekend and having wandered the site, I bought a few books in the visitor centre. I got chatting to the guy behind the till who couldn't accept I was looking forward to returning home (after several months in NC) to the UK. Why? He kept asking? The inference was - isn't everything you could possibly want here? He'd never been any other place of course.

I blame the media. The bread and circuses. Keep them fed and entertained. Keep promoting the USA is best patter. Hopefully they won't be too interested in what we get up to around the planet. Of course other countries and societies are guilty of this - but it is writ large in America. Uncle Sam's comforting embrace is so seductive that many Americans I have met are absolutely genuinely shocked that anybody could think ill of America('s projection of power and self-interest) around the world. They truly believe their government is the good guys sorting out the ills of the world wherever they reach. Speading democracy and the American way. I mean that's surely what everybody wants? What they need? Isn't it?

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the entities salivating at the fall of US hegemony in favor of whatever powers come next will enjoy it about as much as Thebes' trade of Spartan for Macedonian masters.

A good point, but as with previous policing world powers I would guess the Pax Americana will pass without many tears being shed. The hope is that a more equitable multi-national entente can be established involving North America, Europe and SEAsia/Australasia before the Chinese start to take over. Let's face it, national interests projected across the globe rarely have little to do with the real nation's population's interest (in each case) but more with its own internal powerful elites. Perhaps not the most appropriate place to say it, but I have found the whole Wikileaks situation quite refreshing with so many po-faced national politicians deeply embarrassed at their shameful hypocrisy. We know these buggers are entirely self-interested and lie to us continually every single day. And when they get caught out they naturally want to kill the messenger. Same old story...