autopsy

It's hard to fix the exact date of the collapse of anything as large and nebulous as American legitimacy. My own feeling is that Uncle Sam never came back from Vietnam, and was one among many casualties of the militarization of US society and government, which led to the growth of an ever-more aggressive and expansionist empire.

I see evidence that American legitimacy is already deader than a pound of hamburger everywhere I look these days. What passed for a debate last night among the scrum of ridiculous candidates (J Huntsman excepted) of what used to be a political party but is now degenerated into a freak show could serve as Exhibit "A." The casual brutality on display at UC Davis recently is another symptom, for that kind of profligate cruelty is never used on unresisting people except by authorities who have lost all claims to legitimacy.

The now-departed USA will not be "mouldering in the grave" for long, however, as the nutrients remaining in the corpse are needed to envigorate the green thing which has already sprouted from it.