empires are expensive. they've tended to bankrupt the imperial power. it's happened again and again.
personally i don't think the collapse of empire is a bad thing. i don't see it as a cataclysm. more a gradual slide away from hegemony, a gradual slide out of the illusion that power is transparent. a gradual becoming-austria. so not like rome---no sacking by the barbarians. more like the hapsburgs.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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