Editor’s note: This commentary is by Nate Denny, a former woodworker and teacher from Northfield.
In order for a people to become a nation, a government establishes rules that concentrate wealth and power for the betterment of overall health and welfare. For a nation to become an empire, other nations are subjugated to the will of the dominant culture. For an empire to last a respectable period of time, being a citizen must be an enviable and attainable state of being for those stuck on the outside looking in. These aspirants to citizenship bring energy and ideas to the marketplace while also refreshing the political sphere. Meanwhile, the citizens must in general be of admirable character, sacrificing some of their time and wealth for the common good. The polity must defend itself from attack, from within as well as from without. If the political center manages to balance its greed for wealth and power with a generosity of spirit, the people will flourish and the empire will be remembered in the annals of history.
The original 13 American colonies became a nation when they rejected British rule and the limitations that the growing 18th century empire placed on westward expansion. Everything that follows is the fruit of that poisoned seed, from the constitution that embraced slavery, to the Indigenous peoples destroyed and largely forgotten, to the current state of affairs, in which the Treasury prints money willy-nilly and casts it about so that the people can be persuaded that they are not experiencing the decline of an empire unable to mount an organized response to an epidemic.
That the United States is declining is not in question. What is unknown is how much time we have left. The British are still smarting from the loss of their empire and threatening to shrink still further. The descendants of the Romans managed to unite their small but dynamic states in time to join the hugely destructive race for overseas territory at the end of the 19th century, but Italy is now a byword for dysfunction. The Han Chinese look set on becoming the dominant world power for the foreseeable future, but at what cost? Obviously the destruction of the Uighur and Tibetan peoples come to mind, but they will also finish the job we started, of overheating the planet with their rampant economic growth. As the self-proclaimed “greatest nation in history,” the United States must either cooperate with or challenge the rise of this new power even as we manage our own decline. Yet increasingly we are isolated as our ineffective management and uninspired leadership casts a pall on the free world, causing nations that used to admire us to hedge their bets.
A new gilded age is upon us even as the nation has been hollowed out, unable to make protective and medical equipment to shield ourselves from disease, so we die by the thousands due to the misinformation, unhealthiness and inequality experienced by the people. Or is this a repeat of the Roaring 20s, just before the collapse of the markets and the start of the Great Depression? Perhaps we can look to our billionaires to save us? Bill Gates is certainly doing his best, but he’s not going to save us from ourselves.
As the 14th state of the union, Vermont made a deal with the devil, signing on to a young and rapacious nation, to go along as territories were stolen and promises were broken. We experienced modest booms and major busts, recovered from disastrous floods and contributed our share of blood and treasure to the growing empire. We are old but mature in comparison with our passengers on this voyage. Can we help guide the party boat of state to a better way forward through the choppy waters ahead? Or will we go down with the ship, our outstretched hands stuffed full of freshly printed dollar bills?
