March Of Folly: Fall Of American Empire

“Folly is a child of power.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

By Jim Quinn / The Burning Platform

“A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense, and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

The term “folly” is particularly apt at this stage in the decline of the great American empire. Folly is defined as: criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct; an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking. If ever a word captured the actions of American political leaders in the 21^st Century and reflect the tragic downfall of an empire borne out of the ashes of the Second World War, it is the term “folly”.

For the last two decades I’ve been befuddled by the inane foolishness of our leaders, as they have driven the nation into a bottomless pit of debt at an astoundingly ridiculous pace, initiated military conflict across the globe, and in the last three years initiated anti-human policies guaranteed to destroy our economic system, depopulate the planet, increase human suffering, and turn the world into a techno-gulag where we will own nothing, eat bugs, and bow down to the commands of globalist overlords.

None of what is being jammed down our throats is based upon reason, facts, or common sense. Why do governments initiate policies destined to destroy the nations they have been entrusted to administer? Is it purely incompetence and stupidity, or is it purposeful and evil?

When I heard the term folly last week, it triggered a memory of reading Barbara Tuchman’s 1984 book – The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. After reading her Pulitzer Prize winning treatise on the opening days of World War I – The Guns of August – I immediately became a huge fan of her work. She had the ability to bring the boring dry facts of history to life with her vivid descriptions of events and making it interesting for the average person.

Her storytelling acumen was second to none. She made you feel like you were part of the story. I subsequently read her other Pulitzer Prize winning tome – Stillwell and the American Experience in China, along with The Zimmerman Telegram, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War – 1890–1914, and A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. But it is her March of Folly book which captures the absurdity of our world at this time in history.

Tuchman addresses four instances throughout history when, paradoxically, governments pursued policies clearly contrary to their own interests. The first three were: the Trojans’ decision to move the Greek horse into their city, the failure of the Renaissance popes to address the factors that would lead to the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century, and England’s policies relating to American colonies under King George III.

But Tuchman spent half of her 1984 book discussing the most recent government folly – the Vietnam War. Vietnam was still an open wound in the mindset of Americans, after the deaths of 58,000 U.S. boys, over 150,000 wounded in action, and the emotional and physical toll on those who came back haunted by what they saw and had to do to survive. This epic folly also resulted in the deaths of over 2 million Vietnamese. It appears the arrogant leaders of all empires fall into the trap of committing foolish acts out of hubris and overestimation of their intellectual and political power.

“The follies that produced the loss of American virtue following Vietnam begin with continuous overreacting, in the invention of endangered national security, the invention of vital interest, the invention of a commitment which rapidly assumed a life of its own.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

For an empire which only came into existence in 1946 through the destruction of Europe and Japan, along with agreement by the vanquished and the nearly bankrupt victors to elevate the USD as the currency to rule the world, an avalanche of folly has led us to near ruin. This path towards empire began shortly after Jefferson warned to not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt and Washington warned to not engage in foreign entanglements and costly alliances. Lincoln’s consolidation of Federal power, while pushing the nation further into debt, and setting a precedent of using military might to accomplish political ambitions.

As our industrial strength grew, imperialist tendencies continued to blossom, with the government and media (Randolph Hearst) joining forces to instigate the Spanish American war. After being elected on a platform of not getting the U.S. into World War I, Woodrow Wilson reneged on his promise and sent American troops to fight in a war we had no business entering. This after he had already handed the financial future of our nation over to a private banking cabal and set in motion the perpetual creation of debt and taxation which would eventually create the dynamics of collapse, now on our doorstep.

“The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Wilson’s global machinations and involvement in the vengeful Treaty of Versailles laid the groundwork for WW2, where the supremacy of the American Empire began its ascension and power-hungry men put a final nail in the coffin of the idea of an American Republic of the people, by the people, and for the people. America has squandered any claim to being a virtuous and moral light in a darkening world. Instead, those who have degraded and discarded the Constitution over the last several decades have captured the levers of power within government and are inflicting their tragically foolish intrigues upon a world gone mad.

Ever since Bretton Woods insured the USD would reign supreme across the globe, at the point of a gun, the American empire has expanded and bullied the rest of the world into falling in line. When bribery didn’t work, missiles and boots on the ground were employed. Not once in the seventy-eight years since WW2 has our nation faced a threat requiring the use of our military, but somehow our political leaders, at the behest of the military industrial complex, have intervened militarily more than 250 times in countries around the world.

Not one conflict since WW2 has been waged with a formal declaration of war as required by the U.S. Constitution. The Korean War, Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine have all been fought under the cover of UN Resolutions. Vietnam, Iraq, and the never-ending War on Terror were all authorized by Congress, without a formal declaration of war. Essentially, the U.S. president can bomb anyone he wants anywhere in the world, with no accountability to anyone.

Tuchman concentrated the majority of her book on the greatest folly of the American empire, until that point, the Vietnam War. The persistent aspects of folly all played a part in the disastrous outcome of that foolish bloody conflict.

“Their three outstanding attitudes – obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement, illusion of invulnerable status – are persistent aspects of folly”. ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Lyndon Johnson, an arrogant power-hungry politician, listened to his soulless neocon warmongering Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and bloviating incompetent generals in using the fake Gulf of Tonkin attack as the motivation to broaden the war in Vietnam. Johnson saw the U.S. as the last bastion against the expansion of communism by the Soviet Union and China.

He and the military industrial complex, warned about by Eisenhower, saw themselves as invulnerable and able to defeat any foe. They found it laughable that a mighty military empire could be defeated by lowly peasants in rice paddies. He was so arrogant he thought he could even defy the law of economics which said you had to choose between guns and butter. He chose guns, butter, and his Great Society welfare state. These insane choices set in motion a tsunami of inflation, debt creation, and a never-ending cover-up operation to give the empire the continued appearance of stability and power.

As Johnson dropped tons of bombs, napalmed villages, sprayed agent orange to defoliate jungles while poisoning his own soldiers, and sent 550,000 young men into the swamps of hell on earth, the American public began to realize there was no vital strategic interest in Vietnam. He ignored the violent protests and growing discontent sweeping across the land, led by the youth of the country. McNamara realized the war was unwinnable and resigned in 1968.

Johnson followed by choosing not to run for reelection in 1968. But the nature of a folly once set in motion is to continue in motion. Despite knowing the war was unwinnable in 1967, the politicians, bureaucrats and generals sacrificed the lives of 38,000 American boys between 1968 and 1975, when the war officially ended. These boys were cannon fodder so their leaders could save face and not admit they had made a dreadful decision in fighting that war.

Weak men would rather let the awful murderous momentum carry-on rather than ceasing their folly. A lack of intelligent thought, use of reason, understanding the facts on the ground, a major dose of hubris, cognitive dissonance, and cowardliness in refusing to admit they were wrong, permanently damaged the reputation of the United States as a bastion of righteousness and integrity in the world. As usual, the only lesson learned from history is the leaders of empires never learn the lessons of why previous empires have fallen. As Tuchman noted, persistence in error is the ultimate folly.

“The folly consisted not in pursuit of a goal in ignorance of the obstacles but in persistence in the pursuit despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable, and the effect disproportionate to the American interest and eventually damaging to American society, reputation and disposable power in the world.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/02/19/march-of-folly-american-empire/