Provisional Truth  |  Book Reviews  |  May 2007  |  Link

  Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire  
  by Morris Berman, April 2006

And the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons. If this biblical prophecy holds true, than we as Americans are now reaping the ill-effects of those transgressions of our forebears, mostly of the last 60 years following World War II, the origins of which trace to the end of the nineteenth century. I am speaking of the empire known as The United States of America, and, if the current scholarship of Morris Berman is to believed, it is an empire, as all eventually before it, in decline.

Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire is Berman's latest assessment of the state of the American Empire and goes far to explain exactly why we so uniformly are despised around the world. In a carefully constructed thesis, bringing to light the underside of American history never taught in any school, Berman depicts an American nation that has surpassed its ability to change, and, thus, as all empires past, most notably the Roman Empire, is in an inevitable process of decline and fall.

On that cheery premise, Berman sets about deconstructing the myths we have been taught about the American empire and why "this time" it is different.  In the end, he presents a stark case of a nation marching on until its bitter end unless radical changes are made in American politics, economics and entertainment.

Few countries ever have been able to stand down successfully from empire. Britain, for one, dismantled its global empire over half a century beginning in the 1900s, and most recently the former USSR more abruptly fractured into its individual republics in the early 1990s, wisely disengaging from the Cold War and leaving the US without a nuclear sparring partner.  (Russia eventually may be reseated at the adults table, along with China, given its vast energy resources.)

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Provisional Truth  |  Book Reviews  |  November 2006  |  Link

  The Road                                                                             
   by Cormac McCarthy, July 2006

"A long shaft of light followed by a series of low concussions" is the entire description of a calamity that has befallen humankind. Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic saga offers little explanation as to what happened or why, but rather follows a man and his young boy and their efforts to survive in a resulting dead, ash-covered, cloud-darkened world.

The cause is left to the reader's imagination: whether all-out nuclear war (Armageddon?) or perhaps a massive asteroid impact, Earth has been subjected to the ravages of nuclear winter, in which chiefly from lack of sunlight virtually all plant, animal and marine life eventually has perished, and the remnant of humankind survives by scavenging preserved foods and canned goods - and by cannibalism - for a few years with only fading hope for some better future and dimming memories of an idyllic past to separate them from the many who in despair took their own lives.

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Provisional Truth  |  Book Reviews  |  September 2006  |  Link

  Why The Christian Right Is Wrong:  A Minister's Manifesto for Taking Back
  Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future
  by Dr. Robin Meyers, April 2006

Dr. Robin Meyers, progressive minister of Mayflower Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in Oklahoma City, expands upon a speech delivered at an interfaith peace rally at the University of Oklahoma in November 2004.  That speech was transcribed and posted on the internet, where, at the speed of light, it circled the globe and put into words what so many people have been feeling.

Dr. Meyers rips into the Jesus-as-superhero image prevalent among “Left Behind” series readers and other “chosen” who see the world in the simplistic overtones of the present administration and the leader of the free world who have divided humankind into the good guys and the evildoers, those who either are with us or are for the terrorists.

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  The Long Emergency:  Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-
  First Century
  by James Howard Kunstler, April 2005

In a straightforward, logical, non-hysterical manner, author James Howard Kunstler puts forth the distinct possibility of a century of radical change in America and the world as we come to grips with a post-petroleum-era future which he has christened The Long Emergency.

Over a period of decades – hence the long emergency – Kunstler envisions the demise of our automobile-dependent society as a finite supply of petroleum becomes to expensive and rare for ordinary citizens and becomes the catalyst for sweeping changes in almost every human endeavor.

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  Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican
  Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans
  Can Do About It
  by Pete Peterson, July 2004

Pete Peterson, former Secretary of Commerce under Richard Nixon and a founder of The Concord Coalition, presents a factual summary of how both Democrats and Republicans – our elected representatives in Washington – have in the last 25 years propelled our country to the brink of bankruptcy through unbridled spending and tax cuts funded by increases in the national debt.

That debt – approaching $9 Trillion and counting, of which half is privately held – more and more is owned by foreigners (foreign governments). Of the $4 Trillion or so of privately held federal debt – more than half now is owned by foreigners, crossing over the 50% mark in 2004. We are ever-more dependent on foreigner “investors” to sustain our standard of living, our government expenditures, our tax cuts, our military adventures and our way of life as never before in the history of our country.

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  The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason
  by Sam Harris, August 2004

Sam Harris, now completing a doctorate in neuroscience, offers a well-researched warning to the world of the ill-effects of religious fundamentalism – of any stripe – in an era of weapons of mass destruction. Harris' potentially bleak view of the future of the human race centers on how religious extremism sets the stage for a potential disaster should unaccounted former Soviet Union atomic warheads, or other chemical and biological weapons, ever fall into the hands of those willing to use them in an effort to turn back the calendar a millennium or two.

The unfortunate conclusion to this well-written book is that the world's religions are irreconcilable, principally the sky-god Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and are following what may become a destructive course of irrational violence that jeopardizes the future of humans as a species.

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The Chalmers Johnson "Empire Trilogy"

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