The Curse Of Empires

Jumanji Game Board

The curse or bane, if you will, of empires is Reality.

Reality is the left upper-cut to the chin of Sargon, Caesar, and Hitler. In short, it is the world of facts which so quickly and elegantly derails the freight train of the imagination.

In effect, how do you run it?

Let me put this proposition forward:  A country which cannot control its own financial system in such a manner as to avoid widespread ruin and inequity is not a country that can run an empire.
The entire neo-conservative undertaking of American Empire was never, ever founded on ruminations about such homely things as: how shall we pay for it? Or, rather, when the question was put to the neo-cons, their answer was something along the order that it would pay for itself. In such a fashion they believed, for example, that our future client state of Iraq would reimburse us for our efforts through oil prices and profits.

As Max Lerner points out on the Nazi enterprise in 1941, if it were to be successful to a degree, it would face the terrible dilemma of mere existence after the wars were over, for the Nazi economy was based on war and the production of war material; the Nazi economy was an unreal economy, an economy of Mordor.

The stuff of childrens' minds, a Neverland of Empire! Glorious Jumanji of the present age!