Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire

Quite simply, Morris Berman thinks America is going down! His book is a very comprehensive examination of American cultural, geopolitical, economic, and urban development. He looks at where we are now and the history that got us here. And then projects the direction we as a society are going, economically, culturally and politically. The title of "Dark Ages America" was chosen by Mr. Berman because of the similarities he sees with the present day United States and post Roman western Europe in the aftermath of the fallen Roman Empire; the dominance of religion over reason, failing education, and most significantly, "....the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture...."(p 2). Remember those shocking images of prisoner mistreatment that emerged from the American controlled prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib? For me, the Abu Ghraib scandal was the most dire warning to date of something gone terribly awry with the State of the Union. Mr Berman refers to the findings of Seymour Hersh; that the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was ordered by Donald Rumsfeld as an expansion of operation "Copper Green", which consisted of physical abuse and sexual humiliation. American soldiers were ordered to sexually abuse prisoners of war??? Prisoners of a war of aggression, started by the Bush Administration that tasked the United States military with invading a country that did not pose any threat to us, and had not played any role in ever attacking the United States. The Army reservists in charge of providing security at Abu Ghraib, were lead by military intelligence and interrogators (mercenaries) hired under private contract (p 224) to institute operation "Copper Green". This isn't the army of our grandfather's time. The Red Cross also confirmed systematic abuse of soldiers and also revealed that American military doctors, at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "....collaborated in the interrogation and abuse of detainees"(p 225). Mr Berman goes on to deplore the lack of public outrage at the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Rush Limbaugh, with an audience of twenty million, compared the mistreatment to a fraternity prank. Donald Rumsfeld remains unapologetic. As of 2006, no independent investigations were called for by Congress. Officers above the rank of colonel were found innocent of wrong doing by the military, although they did scapegoat a few enlisted personnel, imprisoning Lynndie England and others for the results of operation "Copper Green". The Washington Post is quoted as writing, " the worst aspect of the Abu Ghraib scandal is this: The system survived its public exposure.... Mr. Bush will perpetuate this systematic violation of human rights, and fundamental American values...." (p 290). One could claim that the 2008 election of Barrack Obama was the ultimate public rebuke of Bush Administration policies, including the legitimization of torture. But as of this writing, more than a year into the Obama presidency,

Author Morris Berman brings up some very disturbing points in "Dark Ages America (The Final Phase of Empire)." But we definitely need authors who disturb us, rather than pacify us. I want to be aware of what is really going on, I don't want to be a part of the problem. This book was published in 2006 so it is a rather fresh look at American Culture and Society. I thought at first that this book would be nothing but a satirical dive into making fun of America and Americans, and I am quite pleased that this is not the case. There are far too many books and articles that only seem to make light of such subjects. This book is actually a very thorough and biting exercise in both observation and psychology, served up cold. No witty stories to be told in this book. Just the truth. The first thing I noted when I read through about fifty of the first pages, was that I finally felt like somebody understood. A few things I always remember my father would say was that people in this country (and even Canada), tend to say things they don't mean. "They will say let's have dinner together one day" or "I'll call you" said my father, "and then they'll never call you." He said that people in this country, especially certain states like California, are filled with "the worst" people of them all, mostly because everyone who comes here is just about money, and ME, MYSELF, and I. I always thought my father may have been been bitter, but maybe he was right. I do find that many people in this country lack ability to be true friends. They want friends for the sole purpose of some self-aggrandizing, connections, "someone important to know," or something else. As Berman writes in his book, this country is all about "no free lunches" and "all about me." For instance, What can you do for me? The saying goes to imply that no good deed goes without another desired in return. No one wants to spend time with you because they really care about you as a person deep down, it's all superficial. Co-workers and neighbours usually won't talk about anything except the weather or work. Else it's all about something else that's superficial, a vacation, a date on Saturday night. Some quotes that haunted me from this book reveal not only the superficiality of this society, but its obsession with work, surrounding one's self with electronic gadgets like cell phones or a Bluetooth, and speed. Not speed the drug, but speed, the pace at which we push ourselves to work. All this hard work is admirable in some respects, but we take it too far. When is working so many hours enough? I understand, as Berman does, that some people need to work two jobs, or even three, to make it, but in sum, it's wearing us down to the point that we don't spend any time with family. I hardly know anybody who has time for family or hobbies. It's a choice for many of them. They want bigger and better things. They want that new BIG-SCREEN television, or they want that new degree that wi

I am happy to see that Morris Berman's latest book is getting at least some of the attention it deserves. For over 15 years I have been recommending Berman's writings to my sociology students, citing him as one of the USA's leading public intellectuals and, for that matter, a national treasure. Unfortunately, today's young Americans, even Ivy kids, do not as a rule read much of anything, so the advice has become pointless. Indeed, a few months before Berman's timely book came out I got the first negative teaching evaluations of my academic career, from University of Michigan students no less, and the summary report nicely substantiates the depressing anecdotes in Dark Ages America: "Students complained that professor mentioned books that they had not heard of." The rub is, America is a social system that has been systematically crippling its capacity to survive - by among other things turning universities into day care - and Berman's new book deserves praise for even hinting that good books and rationality still are worth writing and promoting. Undoubtedly, some sort of human settlement will continue to exist in the geographic space known as the USA, but its chances, just a few years from now, of being a carrier of the civilizational values underpinning Berman's opus are as grim as he makes them out to be. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

A work of breathtaking erudition and synthesis, DARK AGES AMERICA offers no hope for arresting America's career as a self-destructive global hegemon. While that's a difficult conclusion to swallow, Berman amply defends his thesis, drawing his supporting evidence from a variety of disciplines: history, cultural studies, polling data, economic analysis, sociology and social psychology. The possibility of America's turning away from its dark destiny, which in Mr. Berman's analysis is now clearly manifest, is made to seem remote, and, regrettably, convincingly so. Particularly compelling is Mr. Berman's discussion of America's need for an enemy, an Other upon which to focus in order that we never turn our attention to the emptiness at the center of the American psyche: The Red Menace, the Cold War, the War on Drugs, The War on Terror. Each of these wars has served to diminish and even outlaw critical thinking about America's empiric career. In a constant state of emergency, history for Americans is a set of bullet points which are cynically served up as justification for the latest military adventure. Berman's anecdotes and survey findings paint an American populace that is self-absorbed, provincial, and willfully anti-intellectual, a people for whom bullet points more than suffice. We watch television shows about tightly knit families and groups of friends, staving off the loneliness generated by the individualistic, devil-take-the-hindmost ethos that is America's real civil religion, Berman says. We turn away from the terror that we inflict on innocent people in order that we may claim their oil wealth and so keep this dwindling life-blood flowing in the veins of the American project of global empire. We pay no attention to the vast sums of money spent to prop up the energy-military-industrial complex. Instead we are distracted by cynical stories of welfare queens, wicked tax and spend liberals, evil dictators and axes of evil, our resentments kept well-stoked and smoldering. On a personal note, landing at Kansas City International Airport the other day, my vision of America altered by my in-flight reading of Mr. Berman's remarkable work, I saw the landscape through new eyes, a landscape I now understood to have been systematically vandalized by the corporatocracy: big box stores, chain hotels and restaurants, strip malls and gas stations, a landscape everywhere repeated across the United States, a landscape we intend to impose upon the world in order to fulfill our destiny as bringer of freedom as expressed through consumption. While this cookie-cutter landscape had always before aroused in me a sense of unease, an unease that had become in me clich? and so easily subdued, with the assistance of Berman's perspicacious vision, I became alive to the fact that this American landscape represents in physical form the ingenuity and monomania of America's new empiric form. Empty of community, driven by the ethos of radical individualis

This is the best book on the state of this faltering nation that I have ever read. It is an in-your-face description of a fatally overextended America where overwrought consumerism, mindless selfishness, and hopeless ignorance born of an obsession with individuality - and neglect of the values of community - has run wild. An America which has lost the virtue of its founders and whose sole purpose for existence has devolved into brutalization of other countries to force them to conform to our interests in a game where we make the rules up as we go along. Inevitably, our neighbors will become our enemies and circle our wagons. Most books that paint such gloomy (in this case more like abysmal) pictures offer a helpful laundry list of measures we can take to redeem ourselves. But it is to the great credit of Berman that he has the courage to explain in excruciating detail that he can see no path toward redemption, that the next vision that will lead to the next great civilization will arise elsewhere and elsewhen while or after the greatness that was the United States of America passes into the detritus of history. The only question Berman doesn't address is "Who will tell the children?" The book will never be acclaimed by the mainstream because it tells the truths that no one in power wants to hear. It is a bitter pill indeed. But don't let that stop you from reading it.