Stop Me Before I Vote Again

http://www.harpers.org/RepublicOrEmpire.html

It's a digest of his latest and last volume in the Blowback trilogy, Nemesis, a book of 300-odd pages, which I streaked, standing up at a bookstore last night.

Much of it got my bowels gurgling, but I'm bugged on one point -- enough for this post, anyway -- and this line from the Harper's article gets right onto that bug's back:

"Like the British after World War II, the United States could choose to keep its democracy by giving up its empire."

Giving up its empire? Swearing off it? By choice? Is that what the Brits did? Is that what Chalmers means -- or did Homer just nod?

Beacuse of course the Brits did nothing of the sort. Yes, in one beastly place after another, all across the planet, after '45, they folded up their Victorian charm schools, and like an exposed snake oil salesman, fled for cover. But Chuck, they didn't jump, they were pushed -- and pulled, twisted, and kicked, not just by the lesser breeds, but also by brawny Cousin Jonathan.

And even so, they are hardly in retirement. They may no longer command the major world courts as singles players, but they still play doubles on the imperial circuit, with Uncle Overhead Slam as partner in chief.

Let's agree on one fact here: ever since old Europe's 19th century empires all beat each other senseless between 1914 and 1945, and even before that useful bogey, Russia's Marxoidal figment, disintegrated in '89, we earthlings have been living either under, against, in, or through a unitary global empire doing business as America the Exceptional. My dear, and deeply esteemed, professor Johnson, empires of any sort -- even shabby, crumbling ones like the Brits ran prior to '45, and let alone unitary ones like Uncle Hedge runs today -- just can't take honorable leave of their global obligations, depredations and gainful exactions. The very idea is pure Disneyesque Tinkerbell hallucineering. Shame on you, dearest Chuck. You know better, and say as much in your trilogy, over and over. Doom is the beat of your narrative's drum throughout -- and rightly so.

Yeah, it's tempting to think that Uncle Sam might join some nonexistent little Britain in imperial rehab -- that the American titan might morph into some kinda of hulking Tom Jefferson in spurs. But Chucky, you must know that that was out of the question probably 30 years before 1896.

Headline impossible:

Weebles to Wall Street:
LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF!