Why delay a post-mortem just because the twitching hasn’t stopped?  Fine, here’s your caveat:

And I admit: the current thrashing might might be America’s death rattle, not rigor mortis.  Making this autopsy slightly premature.  But whether the U.S. is moments from death, or is already pining for its Fords, so what?  It’s not a big deal.  All nations and cultures die. 

There are various ways to go.  The most popular has been by bludgeoning, aka “genocide”. Just look at ancient, departed peoples like the Amalekites and Midianites or marvel at the petrified remains of the Stalagtites. 

Oh, wait.  You can’t.  (Except for the Stalagtites.)

Today’s Jews (whose ancestors bludgeoned a few tribes themselves) are the bludgeonee-of-choice for half the planet.  Some of that is jealousy; Orthodox Judaism has outlasted other human cultures by millennia.  It shows no sign of being vulnerable to other causes of death.  So Israelwill be around until someone or something bludgeons it to death.  If the mullahs don’t succeed, the sun will. 

Another exit is by asphyxiation.  One culture drowns within another. America is an oddity here; it actually built artificial lungs…aka “reservations”…for the societies it was choking to death.  Of course, forcing semi-nomadic people into fixed locations isn’t exactly “au naturale”.  But since straight-up bludgeoning and strangling are the norm, America deserves credit for trying.

But how do the big boys die, those too big to bludgeon or strangle?  The sprawling giants like Rome…Persia…America?  They die of poisoning. 

But before getting into cardiovascular problems, let’s look at America’s  neuromusculature.   Did you know that our three federal branches (executive, legislative, judicial) are  expressly designed to oppose each other?  The system of “checks and balances” means those three are meant to constantly work in opposition. 

Man, those Founders were nuts!  Right?  What possible good can come of a system where some parts are designed to undo the efforts of others?

Why, whatever can be done with quads and hams, biceps and triceps.  If your arm muscles weren’t opposed, upper limbs would resemble either fried chicken wings or Carl Hubbell’s.  That is, unstraightenable or unbendable, take your pick.     

The executive/legislative/judicial tension is similar.  The purpose was to limit and control range, not strength.  The Founders wanted a government strong and confident in its actions.  They didn’t fear limitless strength, they dreaded unlimited scope.  Thus the built-in constraints and conflicts. 

This might seem a digression, but America’s murder was over that very limitation.  More specifically, “Clue”-style:

Mr. Roosevelt, in the Court Chamber, with the cyanide.

He had help, of course.  Four generations’ worth of poisoners, poisoners by the million.  Nothing less could slay the greatest nation in hisory.  But murder it they have.

Identifying the method is easy, if you know how cyanide kills.  Here.  It cuts victims off from oxygen, from their very pneuma.  Arterial blood is oxygen-rich and red, venous blood is oxygen-poor and blue.  Cyanide victims turn blue as their cells become starved for oxygen their blood can no longer supply. 

This is the proper analogy for “Red States/Blue States”: cyanide poisoning.  So it’s obvious what America’s pneuma is.  But it still needs saying:

Oxygen = Freedom 

Even the “reddest” of states is actually deep purple, due to our insatiable Federal government.  Anyway, it never mattered how red or blue a particular state was.  Only federal tyranny could have slain the entire nation. 

When did the poisoning start?  (Regular readers already know.)  Right here.  This article is an excellent overview of the controversy, but has some mistakes: 

To the everlasting credit of the American people, they raised a tremendous uproar and protest against the plan.

Wrong.  There were only two appropriate responses to FDR’s judicial power-grab:  A) throw him out in shame if he “knew not what he did”, or B) drag him out behind the White House and execute him for treason.

(For the record, his bullet-ridden corpse should also have been dumped in theSoviet Unionrather than pollute our fruited plains.)

FDR didn’t actually pack the SCOTUS, of course.  But he did break its will.  As is noted,

Justice Roberts voted with the other side in the watershed case of West Coast Hotel vs. Parrish in 1937. From day that forward, the Supreme Court would never again declare any ofRoosevelt’s economic programs unconstitutional…

And five years later the Court ruled that the federal right to regulate interstate commerce included banning activites than were neither interstate nor commerce.  Now, with Obamacare it will shortly decide whether Congress can require activities from us, its serfs.

Such is liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the Land of the Free.

In the 30’s and early 40’s America received a lethal dose of cyanide.  In one generation, we went from requiring a Constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, to unelected federal bureaucrats banning Americans from growing crops on their own property.

So why didn’t it die then? America upchucked a lot of that poison during WWII and the post-war years.  1950’s-era Americans were so inventive and productive they outstripped the progressives’ ability to keep everything under their thumb. 

And the Federal government even had an opportunity to expand American liberty.  Just destroy Jim Crow and provide equality under the law.  Instead we got affirmative action, quotas, and “diversity” mandates.  Out with state inequalities, in with federal ones!  

So LBJ and the “Great Society” folks resumed the poisoning in the 60’s and kept it up through the 1970s.   Naturally, America got sicker and sicker.  We improved economically during the Reagan years, but in what sense were lost liberties recovered?  The poison uptake lessened, but we didn’t purge any either.    

And meanwhile fiscal discipline collapsed. America’s debt is now $50,000 for every man, woman, and child.  We managed to hit this mark just as the demographic “entitlement” bubbles start bursting.  The Ruling Class response:  ban incandescent light bulbs and double the cost of energy.

The United Statesis dead.  A freer and better society may emerge, but it will be the phoenix to America’s ashes. 

When did it pass one?  It’s a failure of your coroner, but I can’t pinpoint the time of America’s death.  The corpse is behemoth; it will be thrashing and decaying for decades.  I can only share my gradual realization of its demise.  This was in the last month or so.

Even now, in theory, it’s not hopeless.  I detect no national pulse.  But CPR and defibrillation could restart America’s once peerless heart.  In theory.

But the window for such heroic measures is short.  I still had hope until recently.  That the rise of the Tea Partys would lead to the Emergency Room miracle that was America’s last hope.  But the Republican Party (if not most Republican voters) has chosen the Beltway over Main Street.  The Tea Party influence wanes, not waxes.  It might resurge, but to what end?   

In hindsight, perhaps it was a mistake to focus on fiscal matters.  That’s a secondary problem, after all.  Trivial, even, compared to what actually killed our nation.  We should have stood for freedom and shouted FREEDOM and dared our countrymen to face us and say otherwise.

But that probably wouldn’t have worked either.  Americans have chosen security over liberty for generations now.  The Ruling Class always sweetened that offer by using other people’s money to pay for it.

Of course we know how that ends. 

Ahh.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Is our patient actually hale and hearty?  Am I the world’s worst forensic pathologist?  It’s just that I watch America, 2011 A.D., and the phrase “a more perfect union” echoes in my head. 

A more perfect union.  I sure don’t see that.  Nor any path to it.  What I see is, increasingly, the exact opposite.  Half the country has bankrupted the nation and fiscally enslaved the other half, all while screaming that its slaves are racist, misogynist, violent, bitter, hate-filled theocrats.

What’s the resuscitation plan from that?  There isn’t one.  The best outcome is that  enslaved Americans rise up against the Ruling Class.  The slavers are incapable of seeing us as equals or even considering our argument, so physical overthrow will be necessary.  Civil war.  At best.

Keep defibrillating if you want, but I’m closing the case.  Pulling the sheet over the corpse’s head.  America:  born in 1776.  Came of age in 1865. 

Died in 2011. 

Requiescat in pace.