AlterNet: President Jonah: "Novelist Gore Vidal argues that America under Bush is evincing characteristics of the post-fall-of-Rome Dark Ages."

...

Unfortunately the foreign gross of 'King Kong,' the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood--the Indian film business--may soon surpass us! Berman writes, 'We have lost our edge in science to Europe...The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America's creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil in euros instead of dollars?...An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was 'careening toward insolvency.' '

Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place. Well, we still have Kraft cheese and, of course, the death penalty.

...

Mr. Berman spares us the happy ending, as, apparently, has history. When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. 'Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?' He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: 'How eager you are to be slaves.'"

(Via AlterNet.)