Every empire is born with an expiration date; the American Empire is no exception.

The American Empire, much like the late British Empire, has witnessed a steady decline—a decline that is now virtually irreversible if history is anything to go by. The impending collapse of our empire, with its military obsession and mania for greed, is an imminent reality.

History teaches that endless war is a pathology of late empire, and the United States engages in countless military blunders around the world. Next year will mark 20 years in the ‘War On Terror,’ a scheme engineered to ensure endless war against an invisible enemy. CNBC puts the price-tag for the War On Terror at an estimated $7 trillion. Terrorist organizations control more terrain in the Middle East today than at the height of the Iraq War, and as we continue to engage in our own game of Battleship, we continue to destroy thousands of innocent lives.

Sadly our foreign affairs are the least of our concerns. From the tyranny we promote abroad, we promote tyranny in our own country. Thucydides once noted of the Athenian Empire, “The tyranny Athens imposed on others, it had finally imposed on itself.”

Some American observe on their streets the militarized police who kill poor people of color with impunity. They can observe the termination of peaceful protests by armed forces who control a monopoly on violence. Citizens of this empire are trained to live in fear—a fear manipulated by those in power.

Perhaps the most egregious feature of our declining empire is the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of an oligarchic elite. A 2019 report from Vox stated that the richest 1 percent of Americans now control more than 50 percent of the country’s wealth. In 2020, Business Insider found that Jeff Bezos, perhaps the most prominent swamp-creature of the corporate state, earns over $215 million in a single day.

This amassed wealth of the oligarchic elite is not reinvested in the workers who spawned their wealth, nor is it reinvested in an environment that their companies continue to exploit. The hoarded wealth of the elites is rather utilized to further the expansion and consolidation of their wealth and power. The elites, through a system of legalized bribery, pour endless sums of classified money into our political system, they fabricate wealth through speculation, and they extract their holdings through draconian forms of debt peonage. The oligarchs have orchestrated a reconfiguration of our economy into a Neo-feudal society, because the ruling elites of our empire know only one word, and that is more.

The elites, in an effort to expand their wealth, have created a system of political paralysis. Bonds of the social-contract, including the consent of the governed, are largely unrecognized in our legislative system. Politicians, bribed by the interests of the elites, pass legislation that render the citizenry powerless. The two party system is as Noam Chomsky writes: “There is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.”

There is no option in America to vote against the interests of the elites or the environmental assault they’ve created. Elections are reduced to personality, and democracy is reduced to oligarchy.

Sadly, the problems we face will not vanish if Trump is removed from office. The victor of this upcoming election has already been selected and it is once again the corporate elites. Either candidate will further the assault on civil liberties. Either candidate will further the tyranny of the military. Either candidate will serve at the behest of the corporate state. And either candidate will further the destruction of the American Empire.

The state of our empire mimics the characteristics of all failed states. America, once the beacon of progress and innovation in the world, is now an international has-been. It has been a slow decline, and now America’s expiration date looms near. To any American, this is a time of great sorrow.