The Recessional

 It is heartbreaking how far the United Kingdom has fallen. The independence of Ireland was a blow. The fall of Singapore was a blow. The withdrawal from India was a huge blow. Suez was a TKO. Hong Kong is gone. But that was not the end of it. Now, the mighty Royal Navy is not even capable of sending a frigate to defend their base in Cyprus. Greece has sent two frigates; Spain is sending one. France is sending an aircraft carrier. The UK has nothing: a helpless mendicant. Global humiliation.

There seems a good chance that Northern Ireland will vote in a few years to rejoin Ireland. Demographics demands it, and economics makes it irresistible. There is a lively separatist movement in Scotland. And the native population of England is being replaced by immigrants. 

Will anything be left in fifty years?

It is pitiable.

Perhaps once you have had a mighty empire, it is not possible to just subside back into comfortable significance. A dynamic has been set up, a growing avalanche of morale that cannot be satisfied by mere respectability, but demands self-sabotage. 

Spain, after all, went from global dominance to being a European backwater for a couple of centuries. Western Rome did not retreat back into Italy and become a nation-state. It vaporized, and Italy formed into city-states. Babylon, Assyria, Carthage, the Mayans, Akkad, the Khmers, the Incas; when they left, they did not leave large or deep footprints.

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!