The Decline of America
You see it everywhere
The unmistakable signs
That the decline of America
Is in full swing
As our emperor in waiting
Withdraws the US
From the climate change agreement
Giving the proverbial finger
To 195 world leaders
And ignoring the personal appeal
Of the G7 and the Pope
Making America Great
By making America all alone
In its growing irrelevance
As the world leaders turn away
From dealing with the US
And we have gone past the tipping point
There is nowhere left to go
But downward
As the Empire begins to collapse
Victim of imperial overreach
Like all empires before
The DC metro on a good day
Is a broken-down remnant
Of a once proud system
On a bad day
It is an accident that happens
Over and over again
Killing and maiming people
The future of mass transit
Its proponents said
The interstate highway system
Is falling apart day by day
Our bridges are falling down
Our transit is a world joke
The cost of rebuilding America mounts
And our politicians are afraid
That it will cost trillions of dollars
Just to prevent the US from collapsing
Into third world irrelevance
And our idiot president’s answer
Is to sell our highways and bridges
To the highest foreign bidder
Treating the US as just another failed company
Ready to be stripped for cash and profits
By the vulture capitalists who took over the government
We have the world’s most expensive military
A million dollars per missile
And yet we can’t find the money
To provide decent health care for all
Bombs and tax cuts for the wealthy
Are the only things
That the Republicans care about
And the world looks in amazement
At the clown boy President
As he struts about
Looking more and more
Like some Banana Republic
President for life
With his family grabbing as much loot
As they can
From the federal government
Before the coming revolution
Overthrows them
When did we start this decline?
Some say 1960s started it
Others say Nixon’s to blame
Others claim that it was Carter’s fault
Or Saint Reagan’s fault
Or the other boy President GW Bush
Or Obama the fake American’s fault
Does it really matter
All I know
Is the America I knew
The can do anything country
The country that went to the moon
Is alas no more
And I morn for our lost liberties
Our lost sense of purpose
Our lost sense that America
Was the last great hope of Mankind
And still I wonder
Can America be made great again?
As our President Trump proclaims
The end times approaches
Nuclear war is talked about
Another missile crisis
And instead of JFK leading the country
We have Donald John Trump
The one and only
The greatest con man
To ever get elected
And I fear the end is in sight
As America begins its decline
Will we be one country
Or will we erupt into a civil war
Can we survive
Two nations divided
Into the red and blue camps
The coastal elites and multiethnic cities
And Jesus land in the rural hinterlands
And the deep south remains apart
The right claims that the left has started it
And the left claims that the right has started it
And both sides claim that the civil war
Is inevitable
A fight for the future of our country
Will we go back to the mythical past
When white men ruled the land
And women and minorities knew their place
And gays stayed in the closet?
Or will we embrace a progressive future
With an economy that works for all
And a world in which there is no ethnic majority anymore
And women and men are equal
And the GLBT community has full rights
I have no answer
It seems the end is coming
Sooner than we think
As Emperor Trump leads us
Down a dark, strange dangerous path
And so, it goes
The decline of empires
And I pray
That I may survive
The end of times
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was the last Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. His rule is associated with tyranny and extravagance. Most Roman historians offered overwhelmingly negative assessments of his personality and reign. Publius Cornelius Tacitus reported that the Roman people thought him compulsive and corrupt. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Cassius Dio, and Gaius Plinius Secundus (who called him an "actor-emperor" and an "enemy of mankind") all claimed that he was responsible for the Great Fire of Rome in 64, and Publius Cornelius Tacitus (who claimed that Nero "formed a desire of cutting off virtue itself") reported that people believed it was instigated by him to clear the way for a palatial complex; Suetonius and Cassius Dio alleged that he sang the "Iliupersis" (the "Sack of Ilium" by Homeros' pupil Arctinus of Miletus) in stage costume while the city burned. Suetonius wrote that he was "carried away by a craze for popularity ... since he was acclaimed as the equal of Apollo in music and of the Sun in driving a chariot, he had planned to emulate the exploits of Hercules as well." However, that he was "carried away by a craze for popularity... since he was acclaimed as the equal of Apollo in music and of the Sun in driving a chariot, he had planned to emulate the exploits of Hercules as well." However, his contemporary Dion Chrysostomos indicated that he was popular among commoners, "for so far as the rest of his subjects were concerned, there was nothing to prevent his continuing to be Emperor for all time, seeing that even now everybody wishes he were still alive. And the great majority do believe that he still is" a legend that St. Augustine still referred to in the 5th century. Unaware that the Senate was reluctant to carry out its intention to beat him to death, and too cowardly to commit suicide, he ordered his private secretary to kill him; that scribe's slave, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, described Nero as spoiled, angry, and unhappy. "Qualis artifex pereo" (What an artist dies in me) he proclaimed about his end. According to the Hebrew numerology of gematria, "Nero Caesar" (written in Aramaic) equals 666 (the sign of the devil in "Revelations," written at about the time of Nero's reign), and also in the numeric equivalent of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and also in the Hebrew transliteration of his name in Greek.
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