Towards the end of the Roman Empire, after centuries of power, prestige and prosperity, the great nation crumbled inwards as its inability to acclimate to new events and changes finally led to an eventual collapse. Historians often point at the Visigoths and other non-melting immigrants to the empire that finally brought about Rome’s demise, but it may be possible that the sacking of Rome was more a symptom than a cause of it undoing, as it had probably seen its end on the horizon for at least a century before it realized things were as dire as they became.

Which leaves one to wonder if there had been a number of people who saw it coming but just kept hoping that things would last long enough for their own retirements, the ends of their own mortality and beliefs that it would last just long enough for their children to escape the eventual destruction that was sure to come. Somewhere, at some point, there had to be a number of people watching the horizon, realizing that the end was near, suspecting that it was closer than they were seeing through their focus on the distance.

Which then brings me to today, to looking at our own civilization, our own society and the wonderment at whether or not the Visigoths are already within our borders.

For years now, we have been struggling with cyclical recessions that seem worse some decades than others, yet we continue to tell ourselves that things are still great, that we are still the great empire that we once were. We are Americans, and we see ourselves as the successors of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, having lived through the various vicissitudes of struggles, always emerging with the belief that we are better for the efforts of our past, kind of like a version of the “if it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger”.

Yet, I’m left wondering if we are still the same country that stood up to the British monarchy in the 18th century and then again at the dawn of the 19th century. Are we still the people who rushed to defend Europe during the first and second world wars, emerging as the victors, producing what we believed to be a shining beacon of freedom to the rest of the world to always aspire to. Or did something happen that changed us so that the next generations were no longer the same people who could pat themselves on the back as the nation of people who believed they were most definitely a part of an exceptionalism that we believed no other nation could achieve, yet every nation under the sun might one day aspire?

After the Vietnam War, the United States changed, or at least it may have metamorphasized into something different than what we believed it to be. Instead of that nation that others aspired to be, I start to wonder if we began to live on laurels of people who lived before us, convinced that the rest of the world would always see us as the exceptional Americans we believed ourselves to be, even though journeys to other nations would allow to us to see how little other people actually respected us and believed us to be that shining beacon we still kept adding to our resumes.

Over the years, we have supported vicious dictators who killed their own people, all in the name of feigning friendship to us. When a cold-blooded killer emerged to power in some far-off land, we turned our eye and accepted him because he offered us future economic incentives that we used to enrich already very wealthy people in our lands, even though the majority of the people in our country did not benefit as well. And then we sent soldiers to other lands to defend evil people whose only connection to us was they weren’t the “other guys” who we didn’t like a little more than the ones we were supporting. And now, a lot of those choices our forefathers, or our actual fathers and grandfathers, made have come back to haunt us over the years. Where we sided with bad people because they had fossil fuels we could use to propel ourselves to the local Wal Mart, the children of those who suffered no longer see us as the friends we used to believe we would be seen as because of our past dealings.

Which brings me to today. A lot of very wealthy people in this country seem to control the majority of the government, the economic power and even every decision we might make as a nation. The common person has little input, power or even a voice in this current era of government, which leaves me to wonder if all of our efforts led us to create a dynasty of misplaced power that is only now starting to become cognizant of the dangers that lie in the path before us.

Essentially, we have a nation where those who hold the strings of power have little to no connection to the majority of the people who have to live in that paradigm of a society. The last election should have actually been a wake-up call to those holding the reigns of power, but instead voices of complaint have managed to yield no response from those who are now being tasked to make some kind of comment. We have a nation of leaders who claim to represent large segments of people with whom they have never communicated, and yet believe themselves to be worthy of such power.

As was pointed out previously, there had to be Romans at one point who realized there was something on the horizon yet coming closer to the protection of the front gates. Is that repeating itself today, but we’re reacting the same, partying in the chambers of the Roman Senate until the Visigoths finally overthrow us, slaughtering us in our sleep because we never even realized there was a problem in our midst?

All I can hope is that I retire or reach the end of my coil of mortality before it happens. Some may not be so lucky.