the coming of the dictator

A recent AP story at Yahoo! news informs us that private health insurance rates are now spiking 15 percent or more in four states, and that similar increases can be expected in a lot more places in the days to come. The gangsterish nature of our corporatocracy has become a lot more obvious in the new century.

The paralyzed national government is unable to help us. Our economy is dysfunctional because our political system is dysfunctional.

Bob Herbert's New York Times column this morning has the details of how China has now sprinted way ahead of everybody else in the world in the production of solar panels and wind turbines.

They're eating our lunch with technologies that WE developed, and moving full-throttle toward the inevitable future while our lumbering dinosaur of an economy is stuck on stupid.

But of course, we can't go that route because the boyz at Exxon wouldn't like it.

Instead, we're expending our resources playing so'jer in Afghanistan. I'm sure that's gonna help.

Our political system is now utterly incapable of addressing our problems, which is why, before too long, the U.S. government will have to devolve into a dictatorship.

I find it both amazing and fascinating to consider how closely political and economic developments here in the Empire of the Pentagon's "Homeland" are following the trajectory of the history of the ancient Roman Empire. Mark Twain said that "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." If that's the case, our own history is rhyming with that of the ancient Romans in tightly-disciplined couplets. Harry Reid, in his bumbling, fumbling, mumbling incompetence acts as if he's following a script.

As Rome evolved from an agrarian Republic into an empire, its traditional governmental functions were gradually overwhelmed by the enormity of the forces they sought to control. The republic dissolved in civil war in the first century BCE, fueled by the personality cults of the most accomplished and aggressive generals, and the old modes of law and order ceased having any effect. It became obvious that to survive, the state needed to become highly centralized and autocratic, otherwise the government would be unable to reassert its authority over the forces contending for control. The stage was set for Octavian Augustus's victory at Actium.

Personally, I'll welcome the advent of dictatorship. At least it will give us a government that functions, sometimes well and sometimes badly. But that will be better than what we've had the past nine years.