El Neil on the history of empires

L. Neil Smith finds an uncomfortable commonality between the Roman, British, and American empires:

We have now reached a point — I suspect the Brits reached it in the 19th century, and the Romans well before the birth of Christ — where the political process selects only the most crooked, dullwitted, and demented among us, a point where decent, intelligent, and rational individuals have no place in public life and are winnowed out by the system. A point where commemorating a Revolution is seen as a dire threat.

In a moral sense, America has reverted to the Stone Age. It has become a dark cave where the light of the Bill of Rights never shines. The White House is occupied by a stumbing cretin with the ethical outlook of a piranha, carefully isolated by handlers and flacks — as he has been most of his life, long before he became a politician — so that he doesn't have the merest clue what's going on in the real world.