Mansouled Fiery Islands: The United States Imperium; some ancillary consequences

The New York Times, April 28, 2008:

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

The Economist, May 19, 2012

Excessive incarceration is an American problem. The country has about 5% of the world’s population but almost 25% of its prisoners, with the world’s largest number of inmates and highest per capita rate of incarceration.

OK. So maybe we'll have to amend our National Anthem to say something like "he land of those of us who happen to be free at the moment." The word "free" is sung too high for must of us to reach anyway.

But what about 'home of he brave." Can't we keep those words?

'Fraid not.

SIPRI Yearbook 2011 - World's top 15 military spenders

The world's top 5 military spenders in 2010.
Figures sourced from the SIPRI Yearbook 2011.

Rank	Country	Spending ($ Bn.)^[1]	% ofGDP	World Share (%)	Spending ($ Bn. PPP)^[2]
—	European Union^[3]	304.0		18.7
13	Australia	26.7	1.8	1.5	16.6
14	Canada^y	24.7	1.4	1.4	19.9
15	Turkey^y	17.9	2.3	1.0	25.2
11	Italy^y	34.5	1.6	2.0	28.5
10	Brazil	35.4	1.5	2.0	33.8
9	Germany^y	46.7	1.3	2.7	40.4
12	South Korea	30.8	2.7	1.8	42.1
6	Japan	59.3	1.0	3.4	44.7
5	France	62.5	2.3	3.6	50.1
4	United Kingdom	62.7	2.6	3.6	57.5
7	Saudi Arabia^z	48.2	8.7	2.8	58.8
3	Russia^y	71.9	3.9	4.1	93.7
8	India	46.8	2.5	2.7	112
2	China^y	143.0	2.0	8.2	228
1	United States	711.0	4.7	41	711.0
—	World Total	1,630	2.6	100	1562.3

Various reports give various numbers:

But they all agree: we spend about as much on War as all other countries combined. That does not, it seems to me, suggest that we are brave. Dangerous, surely; but not breve. Dare I say "cowedly bully?" Guess not. Not accurate. Consequences flow from being the most powerful; thos consequences include that there are those who would take us down. Call us "prudent." But don't call us "brave."

At least let us celebrate the title "Imperium;" "The United States Imperium." It has a nice ring to it.

We are, or I am, through no effort of my own, born into an Imperium that is the most influential cultural entity on the Globe, that has the strongest economy and by far the strongest military power the World as ever known.

I think Republicans would have a president use the imperial power openly, with ostentation. Our current president, who bomb whomever he pleases in what ever country he choses, nevertheless is modest in public assertion of the imperial power, which I think is likely to earn us fewer enemies that a more ostentatious suse of it. More on this in a later post.

So,

"O'er the land of those of us who happen to be free at the moment . . .

. . . and the home of the, er, prudent."

I'm afraid that's the best I can do with our National Anthem. We really need a new Anathum, one that sings of the wise use of the modest glory of the Imperium.

[This chart is interesting, though not relevant to our bravery: it purports to show that the World spends now only slightly more, in constant dollars, on War than it did in 1888.]

If you wonder what it would be like to be one of those 2,300,000 fellow citizens whom we have unnecessarily locked away from the "land of the free", consider:

. . . to die, to sleep

No more; and by a sleep, to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks

That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished.

"Corrections" officials

Conditions are crowded, too, in some foreign prisons . . .

Russia

Thailand

Iraq

. . . and some cruel . . .

. . . but none so cruel as libel Governor Pat Brown's Pelican Bay, where prisoners are locked alone in tiny cubicles 23 hours a day, with no tv, no writing material, no thing to read, nothing to do, indefinitely -- a period which may, at a guard's whim, extend for a day or for the rest of your life, and you can't know what the time period will be.

Footsteps approach. It is to announce my release? Footsteps pause. Or did I only imagine a pause? Footsteps fade. No human communication is permitted. No human touch. I lose my tenuous gip on reality. I go mad. Wouldn't you?