The Rise and Fall of the American Empire http://hamsayeh.net/articles/866-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-empire.html

The American empire may be expanding, but the economic foundations on which it rests are in fatal disrepair. As we contemplate our imminent bankruptcy – moral as well as financial – even as the present administration consolidates the “gains” of empire, I am reminded of one of Robinson Jeffers’s best poems:While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenlyA mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.