Yes, Claymore, your forecast may prove accurate if Bush doesn't manage to improve the economy soon. The main thing that worries me is that Karl Rove may talk him into another convenient war shortly before or just around the time of the next presidential election...and that it will be fought primarily to disarm the Democrats (!) rather than the Koreans/Syrians/whoever. Disarming them will be a merely secondary consideration. The first concern of any political administration is staying in power. That was Saddam's first concern, and Stalin's first concern too. It's universal among politicians.

In 1939-40 Hitler proved pretty convincingly that Germany was, at that moment, the most powerful and effective military power in the history of the World...and the German public was mightily impressed and delighted by how things were going. So...winning military victories is not necessarily a guarantee of longterm political success (though it beats suffering military defeats... ) (*grin*).

The Russians, by the way, also proved to be " a Nation that has the ability to change leaders who do not provide for the wishes and concerns of its citizenry"...only they did it through a far less democratic mechanism...the Communist Party bureaucracy. What I mean is this: After Stalin's death, they repudiated Stalinism and considerably liberalized the system under Kruschev. In so doing, they were certainly partially responding to the desires of most of the general public...to a point. They subsequently changed leadership in a peaceful manner several times, and made further attempts at liberalization, culminating in Gorbachev's "Glasnost" and "Perestroika". These again were attempts to meet the wishes and concerns of the citizenry, as well as to simply deal with practical realities in a changing world (which is another way of saying the same thing). Gorbachev's only error was in assuming that his populace was mature enough to embrace such radical change and not capsize the boat in the process. They were not. Yeltsin promised them unrealistic dreams, and they fell for it. Too bad. They could have done better.

But I have to disagree with your final statement. No nation-state or political entity is "functionally capable of existing for the duration of Earth itself". Not Rome. Not Assyria. Not the Egyptian empire. Not Atlantis. Not the Incas. Not the USA.

The only way your assertion could prove true would be if the World ended a lot sooner than I think it's going to....like quite soon, in other words.

Face it, man. You will shortly reincarnate as something other than an American, and your loyalties will then be given to some other temporary beneficiary. This life is a stage play. I appreciate the fact that you play your particular part in it with real gusto.

- LH