Ah yes, the Blogiversary. One year of bringing you the hits. And the catastrophic failures. Our Countdown of Ugh concludes with the worst post of the year, as measured by your complete indifference. Nothing on this site received less love than this one. It came to you, hat in hand, a humble post seeking attention. And the Internet looked elsewhere. The Internet yawned.
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Maybe it’s the fresh take on the space-time bending and head-blowing implications of Goodnight Moon, which has retroactively haunted my many thousands of readings of that book. Or maybe it’s just my usual interest in comparisons of Rome and America. In either case, I was struck by this passage:
The stagnation of the Roman Empire may carry important lessons for a more modern superpower: The United States. We too are a huge, rich, powerful nation that for much of our history has dominated the field of competitors. We too have a whole century of dominance – the 20th – under our belt. And if there’s one thing we don’t want to do, it’s turn into the Roman Empire.
What’s that, you say? You’ve heard enough of these theories about the demise of Rome and what it means for America today? Well…reader, I cheated! This isn’t about Rome at all, but about quite a different historical example. The undoctored quote is this:
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